The immediate years before the Minimum Foundation Program’s introduction were pretty dire in Georgia, for both white and especially for black schools.
Few school systems had funds to keep up with growing school enrollments, which were combined with the rapidly deteriorating conditions of the buildings the students occupied. Statewide, the problem was so bad that The Atlanta Journal had a series of articles from around the state highlighting the conditions of some of the worst school buildings in the state.
Individual system reports show up now and again in their local newspapers and though most focus on white schools alone, what they reveal are interesting.
Toombs County described its woes in February 1950 in The Lyons Progress.
Ernest Taylor, one of the trustees for the Lyons district, described Lyons as a “fire hazard.”
“Parts are now rotting away,” he said. The student-teacher ratio was not terrible at 1/33, but the restroom ratio was considerably worse: Three restrooms and 16 commodes for 815 students.
Taylor also served Johnson Corner.
“We need everything in the book, including a lunch room, deep well and the building repaired,” he said.
Wells had gone dry at Center and Normantown.
It is not known if any relief came immediately for the more easily fixable issues, but Lyons was not expecting anything to be quickly accomplished for its overcrowding issues in 1951.
Sources: The Lyons Progress – Feb. 25, 1950, March 15, 1951.
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