Educational System of OK.

WELCOME TO A CENSUS GUIDE TO OKLAHOMA 'S POOR FARMS, ORPHANAGES AND INSTITUTIONS

Below is information I found on the internet, that explains the education system for the State of Oklahoma when it was originally set up.

The common school system is administered by a state superintendent of public instruction, a state board of education, county superintendents and district board3. The state board is composed of the state superintendent, who is president of the board; the secretary of state, who is secretary of the board; the attorney general and the governor. Each district board is composed of three members elected for a term of three years, one each year. Each district school must be open at least three months each year, and children between the ages of eight and sixteen are required to attend either a public or a private school, unless excused because of physical or mental infirmity. There are separate schools for whites and negroes. In addition to instruction in the ordinary branches, the teaching in the district schools of the elementary principles of agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, stock-feeding, forestry, building country roads and domestic science is required. A law of 1908 requires that an agricultural school of secondary grade be established in each of the five supreme court judicial districts, and that an experimental farm be operated in connection with each; and in 1909 the number of these districts was increased to six. There is a state industrial school for girls, teaching domestic science and the fine arts. The higher institutions of learning established by the state are the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College, a land grant college with an agricultural experiment station at Stillwater; the Oklahoma School of Mines at Wilburton; the Colored Agricultural and Normal University at Langston; the Central Normal School at Edmond; the North-western Normal School at Alva; the South-western Normal School at Weatherford, Custer county; the South-eastern Normal School at Durant, Bryan county; the East Central Normal School at Ada; the Northeastern Normal School at Tahlequah, Cherokee county; and the University of Oklahoma at Norman. The State University (established in 1892, opened in 1893) embraces a college of arts and sciences, and schools of fine arts, applied science, medicine, mines and pharmacy. In 1907—1908 it had 40 instructors and 790 students. There is a University Preparatory School (1901) at Tonkawa in Kay county, and there are state schools of agriculture at Tisliomingo and at Warner. The common schools are in large part maintained out of the proceeds of the school lands (about 1,200,000 acres), which are sections 16 and 36 in each township of that portion of the state which formerly constituted Oklahoma Territory, and a Congressional appropriation of $5,000,000 in lieu of these sections in what was formerly Indian Territory. The university, agricultural and mechanical college and normal schools also are maintained to a considerable extent out of the proceeds of section 13 in several townships. The university owns land valued at $3,670,000.’ Among the institutions of learning, neither maintained nor controlled by the state, are Epworth University (Methodist Episcopal, 1901) at Oklahoma City, and Kingfisher College at Kingfisher. Charities and Correctional Institutions.—The state has a hospital for the insane at Fort Supply, the Whitaker Orphans’ Home at Pryor Creek, the Oklahoma School for the Blind at Fort Gibson and the Oklahoma School for the Deaf at Sulphur; and the legislature of 1908 appropriated money for the East Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane at Vinita, a School for the Feeble-Minded at Enid, a State Training School for Boys at Wynnewood and a State Reformatory (at Granite, Greer county) for first-time convicts between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. Under the constitution the supervision and inspection of charities and institutions of correction is in the hands of a State Commissioner of Charities and Corrections, elected by the people. The commissioner must inspect once each year all penal, correctional and eleemosynary institutions, including public hospitals, jails, poorhouses and corporations and organizations doing charitable work; and the commissioner appears as next friend in cases affecting the property of orphan minors, and has power to investigate complaints against public and private institutions whose charters may be revoked for cause by the commissioner. By act of legislature a State Board of Public Affairs was created; it is made of five members appointed by the governor, with charge of the fiscal affairs of all state institutions. Convicts were sent to the state penitentiary of Kansas until January 1909, when it was charged that they were treated cruelly there; in 1909 work was begun on a penitentiary at McAlester.