In 1915 St. Louis had a Negro school population of 7,233 and an enrollment of 5,811. Nine grade schools and a high school were maintained by the city to accommodate these children.[98] In 1916 a Negro industrial[99] school was opened for delinquent youth, and $40,000 was appropriated to build two cottages on the city farms at Bellefountaine for delinquent Negro children. The Negro schools are modern and well equipped. Kindergarten classes are provided, manual training courses are open to the boys and domestic science classes are provided for the girls. In the year of 1915-16 three elementary night schools were in session with an enrollment of 759.
The Negro school population of Kansas City is also well provided for. In 1880 this city had a Negro school population of 2,035[100] and there was an enrollment of 623 or of 30.5 per cent of the school population. In 1911 the Negro school population was 6,500 and the number of pupils enrolled reached 3,251. 54.1 per cent of the Negro school population and 47 per cent of the white school population were enrolled in the public schools. The school property[101] devoted to the use of the Negroes was valued at $465,565 and the value of the property devoted to the white people was $5,792,468. The Negro population which comprised 9.7 per cent of the total population had public school property valued at 7.4 of the total. The average cost for each white pupil enrolled was $42.20 a year and the average cost for each Negro child was $35.02. In 1910-11, there were 86 Negro teachers in the system. There was one teacher for every 37 children enrolled in the white schools and one teacher for every 41 Negro pupils. In the same year the Negro night schools had an enrollment of 472. In 1915 there were ten elementary and one high school[102] devoted to the use of the Negroes. The Negro school population had increased to 7,637 and the enrollment was 3,654.
In 1915 there were fifteen colored schools in the State doing work of a high school grade. Two of these, Sumner High School of St. Louis and Lincoln High School of Kansas City are first class high schools.[103] The Negro high schools of Hannibal and of Springfield are ranked second class and the high schools of Chillicothe and St. Joseph are rated third class. The other nine high schools are unclassified.