Expected to be completed for the opening of school next fall will be the new Herbert Hoover Elementary School.

The new $595,000 modern building is being built in the northwest part of Mason City in an area where there previously was no school.

Seven regular classrooms and five classrooms for special education are included in the new building. The classrooms for special education will give the physically and mentally handicapped the advantage of attending a regular school and at the same time of getting special help.

Modern throughout, the Herbert Hoover School is a clerestory, single story structure with double loaded corridors. A cafeteria also is provided.

In addition to serving the children in the immediate area, the new school will provide classroom facilities for children from West Haven, who will be transported by bus.

The Wilson Kindergarten Building was ready for occupancy last fall. Construction of a separate building enabled school officials to convert the former kindergarten room at Wilson School into classrooms needed for increased enrollment.

Driver training is offered to all students in the Mason City Public Schools just before they reach their 16th birthday.

The course consists of three weeks of classroom and three weeks of behind-the-wheel training. All students receive a week of classroom training before they begin to drive.

The remaining two weeks of classroom instruction is taken during the three weeks of behind-the-wheel training.

All students must have a learner's permit or a driver's license before starting to drive. Behind-the wheel training is given an hour a day for three weeks with two students in the car.

At the end of the third week of driving, the student is given the opportunity to take a driver's examination.

Driver training instructors are William Burnett and Julius H. Tesch.

When first built in 1882, Garfield School was a 4-room structure and was named for the President who was killed by an assassin's bullett the year before. Herbert Quick, who was studying law at the time in the office of John Cliggitt, was persuaded to take the principalship of the new school, where some problems in discipline had developed. "In actual good," Quick wrote later, "I don't believe I ever accomplished more than in those four years as principal of the southside school." Garfield School is located at 320 6th S.E.