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Minneapolis and St. Paul followed in 1919. Seattle opened a class in 1920 following the cooperative plan. Later it adopted the plan of segregating its blind, and largely as a result of this the children forsook the Seattle classes and went to the state institution. Since the public schools lacked much of the special equipment to be found at the state school at Vancouver, the parents decided that when the coeducational plan was abandoned much of the advantages of having the children attend the public schools had been forfeited.

In 1917 Los Angeles opened classes for blind children but soon segregated its pupils in a day school where they had little or no contact with seeing boys and girls except in their own homes.

In most cities where provision for the education of blind children has been made, sightless pupils in the high school grades attend the regular high school with no special room set aside for their use. Readers and special tutors are usually provided to read aloud books that are not available in braille or as Talking Books, and also to assist the students in such subjects as foreign languages and mathematics. The day school plan where there is not close cooperation with the residential schools of the state has certain shortcomings. Many day schools do not provide special musical instruction or adequate manual or prevocational training.

The city of Cleveland has gone further than any other city to make good these lacks. The musical instruction is comparable to that afforded in a residential school. Pupils are assisted to take part in the manual training and prevocational training classes offered in the junior and senior high schools for the benefit of other boys and girls. At one time Cleveland conducted a training cottage for its boys and another for its girls where the pupils lived three or four days out of every week for a year or more so that they might receive training in table manners and other social niceties, and where the boys might learn to hold up their end of the household responsibilities such as shoveling snow from the sidewalks, stoking the furnace, etc., and where the girls might learn to make beds, cook their meals, set and serve the dining room table, sweep the floors, and the like.

Unfortunately, Cleveland discontinued these cottages a good many years ago on grounds of economy. This curtailment of the department for the blind was carried out by the Board of Education in spite of the fact that even with the training cottages the average per capita cost to the taxpayer of educating blind children was substantially less than educating them in the state residential school. However, the training cottages were in operation for several years, a sufficient period to demonstrate their value and the practicability of the plan.

There was once operated in Detroit at private expense a training cottage for blind girls but the Board of Education never saw its way clear to assume the entire cost of this adjunct to the department of the blind. Accordingly, the cottage was eventually closed.

The danger inherent in day schools for the blind is lack of special supervision. Their success will not be insured unless they are in the charge of a specialist who can give his full time to supervising the teachers and planning for the training of each individual blind pupil. Too often the department for the blind, because it cares for only a small number, is made the responsibility of the supervisor of special classes in general and this supervisor seldom has much knowledge or special interest in the education of the blind.

Few cities have attempted to provide educational facilities for all of their blind children because it is felt that where the home doesn't afford wise parental cooperation it is better for the pupils to attend the residential school of the state. In the early years of the day school movement residential school managers were much perturbed over the spread of the day school program. It was feared that the plan might in some way actually supplant the residential school. However, this has never happened and in Oregon, Washington and California the superintendents of the schools for the blind have taken the initiative in placing blind children in the public schools for part of their work.

Nearly a third of the institutions for the blind make some use of public school classes. The plan is still in its formative stages but it is becoming obvious that ultimately most states will evolve some plan by which there will be close cooperation between the residential schools for the blind and the public school system. In such a program the state school becomes the center of an educational service for the state rather than the sole instrumentality for the instruction of blind children. In such a program the superintendent of the school for the blind inspires and supervises the training of blind children of preschool age in their homes, and arranges for the instruction of the blind children of the state under conditions most advantageous to each individual.