 The "American Baptist Mission Union" had received a grant from American industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller to begin educational work in the Philippines, and the "Philippine Baptist Conference" voted in December 1904 to establish two schools, an industrial school for boys and a Bible school to train ministers and other Christian workers under the administration of Valentine.In the fall of 1905 the Jaro Industrial School was opened as a free vocational boarding school for boys at Jaro, in Iloilo City.The first class consisted of 20 boys who worked four hours a day to pay their tuition, room and board, and spent four hours in the classroom.