(Editor’s note: This year, the Bradford Branch of American Association of University Women (AAUW) will celebrate the 100th Anniversary of its founding in April 1921. On the national level, AAUW’s story began in 1881 when a small group of female graduates banded together to promote the importance of education for girls and women. In keeping with our goal to celebrate and honor those extraordinary women whose contributions to the community, the state, and our nation encourages all women to succeed, the AAUW and Bradford Landmark Society will place a spotlight on women who have made a difference by featuring their stories throughout 2021.)
Today we celebrate Ella Boyce Kirk, the first female School Superintendent in the United States.
When the Bradford School Board (then called the Board of School Control) hired 36 year old Ella M. Boyce as the new School Superintendent in May 1887, they were not aware that they were making history — but they were. Chosen for a job normally held by a man, Boyce became the first woman in the United States to hold the position of city superintendent of schools.
Perhaps it was not so surprising, though, because in 1887 Bradford was also the only city in Pennsylvania to have an all-female teaching staff with no male teachers!
Her older brother, James C. Boyce, a respected attorney in McKean County and Oil City and president of the Bradford school board, possibly had an influence on their choice of superintendent but in truth, Ella was the perfect candidate.
She was born on June 6, 1851 in Bangor, Maine to Michael and Ruth Boyce. Educated in Bangor schools, she eventually went on to teach every grade in that city, later moving to Meadville, PA where she taught elocution at Allegheny College. She came to Bradford in 1886 and taught for a year before being hired as the new superintendent.
Ella Boyce was a formidable woman with a fierce devotion to education and a strong advocate for better teaching conditions.
In 1887, five public schools in the city including the high school located on Congress Street taught 1,577 students in small and overcrowded classrooms. One teacher, Miss Hamer, had 79 students in her classroom; another teacher, Miss Harris, had 69. As the new superintendent, Ella Boyce protested these conditions and campaigned vigorously for more classroom space, better books and supplies, and increased salaries for teachers.
She introduced a new method of vocal music instruction called Tonic-So-Fa, began a small dramatic club for students, purchased more books for the school library, and encouraged parents to take an interest in their children’s education. She also believed that excessive homework — more than an hour each night — was detrimental to a child’s well-being.
“No amount of education would compensate a boy or girl for the loss of physical strength and impaired health,” she said.
She was also the first president of the Women’s Literary Club of Bradford.
She so openly encouraged teachers to ask for better wages that in July 1888 she was accused of disloyalty to the schools. Angered, she wrote to the Board “as I read in the Era of today that I have been charged with disloyalty to the schools of Bradford in advising teachers to ask higher salaries elsewhere and thus oblige the Bradford board to increase them…I ask the Board to release me from my engagements for another year. A superintendent may be found whose desire for a position may be so great that he will be willing to keep silent when he is unjustly accused.” The Board refused her resignation and raised teachers’ salaries.
Ella Boyce remained as superintendent for another two years, but tired of being at loggerheads with the Board of School Control — and engaged to be married — she declined another term as superintendent in May 1890.
Bradford school teachers had high praise for the departing superintendent: “Her presence has been inspiring to us as teachers by the excellence of her scholarship, her careful instruction, beneficial other to ourselves and our schools; that her standard of excellence has been high, her counsel judicious and freely bestowed, her tact and judgement always to be relied on. As a woman, we appreciate her generous nature, her genial manner, her continued acts of thoughtful kindness, her conscientious discharge of her duties and her high standard of life.”
Ella Boyce married David Kirk, a prominent oil and gas producer, on June 26,1890, in Manhattan, New York. Kirk, born in Scotland, was a widower with seven grown children and was twenty years her senior. He owned a home on School Street in Bradford for a time and was active in local politics as well as operating the McCalmont Oil Company.
The Kirks made their home in Pittsburgh and New York City, where Ella was active in women organizations and social philanthropy. They had no children. David Kirk died in 1907. Ella Boyce Kirk died of tuberculosis in 1930, at the home of her niece in Pittsburgh. Shortly before her death, she was nominated as one of Good Housekeeping Magazine’s “Greatest Women of America.”
