It seems a simple thing. The registry, in a flowing hand, lists all students enrolled in Lawrence’s Quincy School on Dec. 13, 1858.

But it’s a miracle, of sorts.

“It’s amazing this survived Quantrill’s raid,” said Sheryl Williams, curator of the Kansas Collection at Kansas University’s Spencer Research Library.

A raid by guerrillas led by William Quantrill on Aug. 21, 1863, left much of Lawrence in ruins. Few official Douglas County records at the library precede that date. But this paper — the oldest Lawrence schools document in the collection — and others offer a unique look at how Lawrence schools have changed over the decades and how they’ve stayed the same.

Irreplaceable slices of Lawrence school history at the Spencer show that anxiety about some education issues — curriculum, enrollment, facilities — has been around for nearly 150 years.

“These aren’t really different from what today’s board would be concerned about,” Williams said.

An example comes from an annual report of the 1872-1873 school year outlining student discipline. In those days, teachers could spank students. But they were prohibited from striking a “pupil on the head or chest.” Rules also blocked students and teachers from bringing guns to school and chewing tobacco in the building.

In another part of the collection, a 1969 article glued into a scrapbook records the Lawrence superintendent’s opinion on when policy allowed school administrators to discipline students and when that task should be left to law enforcement.

A document from Spencer's collection describes enrollment for Lawrence schools, categorized by gender and race.

“What gets me is that it’s the same issues being discussed,” Williams said.

But the collection also illustrates how the public schools have changed.

The literary skill, or lack thereof, of Lawrence teachers on a 20-word spelling test is contained in a ledger of school board action covering May 6, 1867, to Dec. 2, 1878.

All 18 teachers were assembled by the Committee of Examination at the Central School building for the test. They were asked to spell and define words including calendar, obedience, wheelwright, foreigner and annihilate.

The journal recorded grades of each teacher by name. The best score was 90 percent correct, with the worst at 10 percent.

Signs of the times

The collection also documents the evolution of race relations in Lawrence.

¢Spencer Research Library Kansas Collection

At one time, enrollment in Lawrence schools was tallied by counting the number of students who were male and female — and those who were “white” and “colored.”

Salaries paid teachers at schools for the white and black students are recorded.

“Was there equity?” Williams asked. “That’s one of the things these kinds of records can be used for.”

Then there’s the petition submitted to the school board in 1875 by C.C. Bowes and 22 others. The petitioners wanted to continue to “amuse ourselves by playing ball” during recess. If they retained that privilege, the petitioners pledged not to harm property and stick to healthy sport.

“What I really thought was funny was that they sort of referred it to a committee,” Williams said.

Lawrence Manual Training School in 1911 is featured on postcards in the collection at Watkins Community Museum of History. The image also is a part of the Kansas Collection at Spencer Research Library.

There’s no record of how the Committee on Regulation and Discipline ruled.

No e-mail

The collection of public school artifacts is the result of an agreement signed by KU and Lawrence school officials in 1982 that made Spencer the official repository of archive materials from the district.

Since then, Williams has carried to KU box after box of bound school board meeting minutes, scrapbooks, annual reports, yearbooks and other documents. The collection covers more than 100 linear feet of shelf space.

“The district has been great,” Williams said. “We’ve found things in boiler rooms, everywhere.”

Sadly, though, she said, preservation of contemporary materials suitable for the collection will become more difficult because of the proliferation of computers, networks, electronic memos and e-mail.

So far, the collection doesn’t contain a single e-mail message about school affairs. Even if those were stored on a computer, there’s no guarantee there would be software at the Spencer capable of reading the information in 50 years or 100 years.

“It causes all kinds of problems,” she said. “It’s a really big issue.”