Where can I get the Annual Reports of the Superintendent of Schools,
New York City Board of Education from the years 1945, 1955 or 1965?  I
must be able to get this from Boston, either at the library, online or
by requesting from somewhere will fax them to me.

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 13 Jun 2003 08:35 PDT

Elizabeth --

I can point you to a convenient source for news stories about the
annual reports.  Each of the annual reports are about 100 pages and
include photos.  If you need to see the full report, your best bet
would be to call reference librarians at Boston-area university
libraries to see if they have them archived.  The New York City
schools started the practice of issuing the annual reports in 1936.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Clarification of Question by elizabeth199-ga on 13 Jun 2003 10:08 PDT

What I actually need from the annual reports is the student population
for that year, ideally with ethnic percentages, although that is not
key.  If the news articles about the annual reports for the years I
requested (1945, 1955, 1965) refer to the population of the student
body for that year, then the articles are fine.  Otherwise, I
specifically need to know where I can get the reports.

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 13 Jun 2003 10:14 PDT

Elizabeth --

I printed out newspaper articles on a couple of years and they have
number of students, number of schools and number of teachers.  No
ethnic breakdown.

One never knows about the Internet, but the most-likely source for
archives of this sort is usually a good research library.  In this
case it will likely be the library associated with an Education
college/university.  Obviously, you have several in Boston.

Best suggestion: call the universities nearest you and ask the
reference librarian.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Elizabeth --

I initially had good success using the New York Times to find the
early annual reports of the Superintendent of Schools from the 1940s. 
The 1945 report, summarized in an article on June 8, 1945 mentions
that the district has:
733 schools
863,000 students
33,000 teachers

However, the 1955 and 1965 reports don't seem to be covered.

For this search, I used Proquest Historical Newspapers, which indexes
and archives the NY Times back to 1851.  The Proquest searches were
done two ways --
Superintendent of Schools AND annual report
Superintendent of Schools

Though Proquest's Historical Newspaper collection is a fee-based
service, it's readily available at most public libraries.

Good luck with finding what you need!

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA