Excerpt from Annual Report of the School Committee: Of the City of Boston 1878 If these considerations were better understood by the public, they would materially aid the School Com mittee in the discharge of their official duties, and would result in a better conception of their powers and duties by the City Council. It is said, sometimes, that the Common Council of the city is the direct and legitimate successor of the people assembled in town meeting, and that the action of the Council is the action of the people; that, by the change from the town government to the city government, the people of the city have delegated to the Council all the powers they themselves exercised in town-meet ings. This may be so in most instances, but certainly is not so in the case of the management of the schools. This Board is the creation of a special law enacted by the Legislature of the State. We have certain powers and duties defined by the act, which cannot be increased or diminished by the action of the City Council. By their votes the citizens of Boston have elected us to exercise the powers in the management of the schools delegated to school committees by the Legislature; we are responsible to the citizens of this municipality, and not to the Council, for our action; we are elected by the people to represent them and to exercise their powers in school affairs, and neither branch of the City Council has supervisory powers delegated to it, directly or indirectly, by law or by usage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.