at least $33,265 spent on the same. It was still unfinished in 1897, when it was given a special tax of 3 cents on the hundred for a building fund. But by this time the people of Flagstaff had come to the conclusion that a reform institution in their midst would be a drawback to their community; so with this idea in mind they set out to persuade the Territorial authorities that it would be cheaper to keep such incorrigible bodys in the proper institutions in California rather than at home. They won their point. Then it became necessary to find use for the unfinished building, and it was determined to make it a branch insane asylum. This was done by chapter 25, acts of 1897, but the people of Flagstaff disliked this plan also, and its use was again changed.
Finally, it was suggested that the building would serve a good purpose as a normal school for the northern half of the Territory, which was at a distance from and inconvenient to the normal school at Tempe. This suggestion was accepted; the act for the asylum passed in 1897 was repealed, and the effort was now begun to develop this new school into an institution of the same grade in all respects as the older one at Tempe, with its diplomas of the same force and effect. Teaching began in 1899, and the committee which visited the school in June, 1900, reported it as in “most excellent condition” and recommended that since there were no high schools in northern Arizona an “academic course” should be added to the more technical and professional work, for “this seems only justice to the boys and girls of northern Arizona.” It was not considered wise, however, to introduce manual training into the schools and colleges of the Territory at that time. From the organization and formal opening of the Northern Arizona Normal School at Flagstaff in 1899, the history of the institution and of the Tempe Normal must be told in connection with each other.
The report of the board of visitors on these schools for 1906 is highly satisfactory. The Tempe school was then 20 years of age; it had fortunately passed through most of the period of confusion and political upheaval. It had acquired in 1901 the principal whom it has ever since retained, and in 1906 had reached an enrollment of 243 in the normal school and 177 in the training school, to which an eighth grade was then being added.[1] The legislature of 1905 had given Tempe a 5½ cent building fund, producing $45,000, of which $44,274.01 was expended for permanent improvements during the year. The growth of the institution had been “rapid and constant,” and while in former years there had been a shortage of books, the library was now said to occupy “a large part of the study room,” and was reported to the United States Bureau of Education in 1909
- ↑ The training departments of the normal schools were made a part of the public school system by ch. 87, acts of 1909.
