These instructions, provided to teachers for the 1932-1933 school year, detail important information related to the effective functioning of the schools within the Louisa County Public Schools system. On the third page of this outline, a section called “Scarcity of School Funds” notes the “inadequate budget” that “every agency in the country” was dealing with at the time.
Facing the hardships of the Great Depression, many children were required to forego their high school education and look for employment to help support their families. This photograph of the Apple Grove High School graduating class of 1937 shows that finishing school during the depression was not uncommon, however. The ratio of boys to girls graduating from this school in 1937 does suggest that boys, who could find work doing manual labor, were more often required to leave school than girls during this time.
