"Frick Teachers: A 25-Year-Old Institution Meets Its End, the Aftermath of the Mundy Tenure Bill." From The Bulletin Index, 1 July 1937.

Three months ago when the alumnae of Frick Training School for Teachers gathered in Hotel Schenley to commemorate their Alma Mater's 25th anniversary (BI, April 8), the majority of them little knew that they were participating as well in their school's obsequies. Well aware however, were able, quiet Dr. Dana Zug Eckert, principal since 1934, Vice Principal Dr. David Rialand Superintendent of Schools Ben Graham that the fate of Frick School hung at that moment on a precarious thread. Two days before, Governor George Howard Earle had received the Mundy Teacher Tenure Bill, automatically eliminating the Pittsburgh school system's contractual clause forcing marrying teachers to resign. Wiped out at a stroke were 90% of normal teacher vacancies. Since Frick graduates already had to wait three years before landing a job, this would lengthen unconscionably their period of unemployment, bring the school's usefulness into question. Well did schoolmen at Frick's anniversary know, too, that the Pittsburgh School Board eyed none too amiably a school whose per pupil cost had mounted during 1936 to $548, whose growing waiting list totaled 160 unemployed graduates.

But alumnae listening cheerfully to speeches were presumably unaware of their school's imminent demise. They did not, however, have long to wait. Two weeks later when Governor Earle squiggled his signature on the Mundy Act, Pittsburgh School Board President Marcus Aaron gloomily pronounced Frick School's practical usefulness at an end, asked at the next board meeting that it be closed forthwith. On June 30 Frick Training School will be closed, its 100 undergraduates transferred to the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education, its faculty of nine redistributed in the schools of the system from whence they came. The School Board must bear the tuition cost at Pitt, some $3,000. The move will accomplish an immediate saving of over $2,200 to the city, the salary of one teacher. Whether closing the school, No. 2 ranking city-maintained teacher training college, will make for the best long run educational efficiency is a point over which critics will disagree for some time.

Last updated: 22 June 1999.