The first principal of the Preparatory High School was Miss Emma J. Hutchins, a native of New Hampshire. Like many white men and women who came from the North at that time, Miss Hutchins was fired with zeal to do everything in her power to educate and uplift the youth of the newly emancipated race. She served as principal of the O Street, now the John F. Cook, School and was then placed in charge of the Preparatory High School in 1870. After teaching here one year, Miss Hutchins resigned to accept a position in Oswego County, New York. There was no dissatisfaction on the part of either Miss Hutchins or of the people whom she served, but she resigned, because, as she said, there were among the Negroes themselves teachers thoroughly equipped to take up the work and carry it on and she could find employment elsewhere. From one who knew her personally comes the statement, "Miss Hutchins' term of service in the Washington public schools was brief, but the impress she made upon those with whom she came into contact has remained indelibly fixed through the years that have followed. High ideals, conscientious performance of duty under adverse conditions and loyalty to the interest of her pupils--hers was indeed the spirit of the true teacher." In the third report of the Board of Trustees the Public Schools Superintendent, George F. T. Cook, tells us: "The pupils first transferred to this Preparatory High School, as well as those for two or three subsequent years, had completed only the sixth year of the seven required for the completion of the school course at that time--hence the name Preparatory High School." But the superintendent recommended that the transfer of small classes of pupils in the first grade of the grammar course from the several school districts be discontinued, and that in lieu thereof there be two central grammar schools for the accommodation of all pupils in the last year of the grammar course--one to be located in the Summer or Stevens building and the other in the Lincoln building. This was intended to bring into the high school only those pupils pursuing advanced studies. The object of this Preparatory High School, according to Mr. Cook, was twofold: "to economize teaching force by concentrating under one teacher several small classes of the same grade of attainment, located in different parts of the city, and to present to the pupils of the schools incentives to higher aim in education. In both respects," says he, "it has been eminently successful, perhaps more so in the latter, since it has furnished to the teacherships of these schools and those of the surrounding country many teachers."[352]