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Table of Contents

The school building should be well constructed of brick, stone, hollow-tile blocks or of concrete blocks, with similar materials used in the interior to carry walls and partitions. The entrance should have a vestibule or covered porch, with doors swinging outwards. Separate entrances and separate exits to closets should be provided in schools with more than one teacher. Every school should have, as a recreation room, a basement, at least seven feet high in the clear; ceiled with wood or metal sheathing, to keep the floors above warm (plaster obviously objectionable); and floored with cement or hardwood. The basement ceiling should be four or five feet above the ground level outside, so as it may receive as much sunlight as possible.

Key:

A—Total Number of Pupils Enrolled

B—Total Number of School Buildings

C—Total Number of Classrooms

D—Total Investment for Buildings & Equipment

E—Total for Operating & Annual Increase for School Propt'y

F—Total Number of Teachers

G—Number of Inspectors

H—Total Number of School Boards

Province	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
British Columbia	65118	849	2129	$9250000	$337663	2174	14	575
Alberta	107727	2471	3497	14165097[1]	7243415	4265	34	2736
Saskatchewan	127590	4675	4987	1195764	1035219	5876	4	4087
Manitoba	106588			365090	4136495	2972	25	890
Ontario	564992	6795	13386	50677398			119	5700
Quebec	490718	7288	17284	35256055	2500000	17284	54	1646
New Brunswick	71782					2255	8
Nova Scotia	111981	1857	2856	4294751	1361457	3045		1803
Pr' Edward Isle	18190	473	600	11000	34000	600	8	470
Newfoundland

[1]	INCLUDES SCHOOL BUILDINGS AND SCHOOL GROUNDS

ASAT. 1919.

1. Site.—The first consideration in selecting a site for a school building is its accessibility. It should be located where the largest number of pupils can reach it most conveniently, and where the adults of the community may make the largest use of it. It is a small matter and of little moment that a few of the children be compelled to walk a little further than others if a better and larger school ground can be secured. No part of a school site should be within five hundred feet of steam railways or manufacturing plants, livery stables or other buildings which may be a source of unhealthy conditions. There is a reasonableness in the demand for central location, but only when more important demands are not in conflict with it. It is far more important, for example, to have well-drained school grounds, where the opportunity for securing a sanitary water supply and toilet system is good, than it is to give the preference to a location nearer the center of a district where these sanitary necessities are not readily procurable.

2. Size of Grounds.—No fixed rule can be made for fixing the proper size of school grounds. Rural schools should have not less than one acre of ground, while High Schools require at least three acres. To-day, by reason of the increased number of boys indulging in baseball, football, basketball, track meets and all the open air games that growing boys long for, the school grounds should not be skimped. Athletics in the rural school has had a marked tendency to check the flow of the human tide toward the cities.

The country boys are beginning to realize that home offers every advantage known to the city youth and gives as well, as added capital, the wonderful effects of a life in the open. Boyhood is not the only athletic beneficiary in rural school life. The girls, too, go in for basketball and for gymnastic exercises that may be enjoyed in the school. The country schools will never be able to do their work properly unless the amount of ground assigned to them is increased. Play grounds, agricultural work, fruit growing, and forestry—all legitimate demands upon the rural school require more land than is usually given rural schools.

3. Dimensions.—The best form for the school grounds, considering shrubbery, grass, walks, play grounds and gardens is an oblong.

One acre tracts are ten rods front by sixteen rods deep.

Two-acre tracts, sixteen rods front by twenty rods deep.

Three-acre tracts, sixteen rods front by thirty rods deep.

Four-acre tracts, twenty rods front by thirty rods deep.

4. Ground Air.—In selecting a site for a rural schoolhouse the following factors should be considered: No site should be selected that will not offer a good outlet for tile drains set well below the walls of the building to keep the basement and garden in good condition. A wet, swampy piece of land is not only a muddy, dirty place, but it also introduces dangers from ground air and moisture that will always prove troublesome and unwholesome. The air, on account of its great weight, presses into the ground to a much greater depth than is ordinarily supposed. When the air above the ground becomes colder than that in the ground, and this is true at night during warm weather and even during the day during cold weather, the heavy air above the ground will displace that in the ground, and will drive it out at the least point of resistance. Since the ground underneath and about a schoolhouse is drier than that not covered, the ground air is driven from all directions towards the schoolhouse and by reason of the fact that heat escaping from the building will cause an upward draft, this ground air is easily drawn into the rooms. Ground air contains a far greater percentage of carbon dioxide and other noxious gases than is ordinarily found in air above the ground, these being produced through the agency of the bacteria acting upon decaying animal and vegetable matter in the soil. Moreover, ground air is generally saturated with moisture, and as it rises in the school room, especially at night when the building is cold, this will be deposited on the walls, blackboards, and floors, so that all wooden parts of the building are rendered liable to decay and the air in the building will be stuffy and cellar-like.

5. Aspect.—The point toward which the school should face should of course be determined by the position of the class rooms, whether placed in front or back of the building, in order to obtain the most suitable aspect for their windows. During school hours it is essential that every class room should have an abundance of light, and that sunlight should have direct access to every room, at least during some part of the day.

6. Sunlight.—The sun in the early morning and the late afternoon, being then lower in the sky, will naturally shine much further into the rooms than during the middle of the day. It is of course hardly possible to plan that every class room in a large building should have an equally good aspect, but as far as possible it should be arranged that none of the regular class rooms should face the North, excepting in the case of the studio and art rooms, which require steady and diffused light. The advantages of the sun from the point of view of health, are so great that they should outweigh a small amount of discomfort on a few days of the year.

7. North and Northwest Aspect.—The North and West—These aspects should never be used for class rooms, as they practically get no sun until late in the day. If it is necessary that any of the rooms should have this aspect, let it be those which are occupied seldom or for a short time only. This side of the building could be taken up by the windows of the hall, studio, chemical laboratory, committee rooms, staircases, or corridor.

8. West and Southwest Aspect.—The West and Southwest—These aspects have an advantage in cases where it is preferred to have the direct sunlight into the class rooms at a time when the rooms are not being used, since it is not until the afternoon that the sun will come into these rooms, and these rooms will get hot in summer while missing the early sun in winter.

9. East and Southeast Aspect.—East and Southeast—Rooms looking to these points get the best light all morning. The sun shines into the room, making it cheerful, bright and comfortable in cold weather, while in summer the sun is off before the hot part of the day. The early sun, too, has not the same power in the morning as later in the afternoon when everything has been heated. In rooms looking due East the level rays of the sun, except in mid-summer, shine right into the farthest corners of the room. For small children, kindergartens especially, this aspect is very valuable. On the whole, perhaps the best aspect a school can have is that from East to Southeast.

10. Northeast and East.—For schools where teaching is carried on both morning and afternoon, the sun is off in the morning and in the late hours will shine a very short way into the room. It is always well, especially in arranging exits of a school building, to take careful note of the prevailing wind in the locality, so that the doors should be screened from it.

11. Play Grounds.—The grounds should, as far as possible, be exposed to the direct sunshine during the school year, to prevent a damp or muddy surface. For this reason it is best to put the building on the West or North side of the school site.