It was further ordered that the county commissioners “shall be trustees of public schools and may appoint a suitable person to examine the course of instruction, discipline, and attendance of said schools, and the qualifications of the teachers, and report the same to them at their stated general meeting”; neither commissioners nor inspectors were to receive any pay for their work.[1]
From these statements it will be noted that the church school was devoted to the instruction of Mexican and Indian children, and that some of such private schools as existed were not taught in English.
To meet the requirements of these appropriations the sum of $1,500 was voted,[2] but it does not appear that the conditions of the grants were complied with by the towns or that the money made available was used, for in his message to the legislature of 1867 Gov. R. C. McCormick says:
If I am correctly informed, none of the towns have complied with this requirement, and the funds of the Territory have not been used. The sums, however, are insufficient to be of more than a temporary benefit, and sufficient funds have not yet accumulated.[3]
By 1865 interest in the schools had begun to wane. Although practically nothing had been done, Gov. McCormick then thought that “the existing provisions for schools” in the various parts of the Territory were sufficient;[4] and, as usual, like governor, like legislature, no bill looking to the advancement of education was passed or even considered. Nor was anything done educationally in 1866. In 1867 Gov. McCormick had concluded that “in the opinion of many of the people the time has come for some definite and liberal provision for the establishment and maintenance of public schools in the Territory,” and an act on schools was passed in October, 1867.[5]
The law of 1867 provided that the county board of supervisors[6] should have power to establish school districts. Any settlement with a resident population of 100 persons might be set apart as a school district, and any number of legal voters might make application for a school in such district. The board of supervisors were then to levy a tax of not more than 5 mills on the assessed value of all taxable property within the limits of the district “as shown by the
- ↑ Approved Nov. 7, 1864.
- ↑ Act of Nov. 10, 1864.
- ↑ Jours. of Fourth Legislative Assembly, 1867, p. 42. In his message to the assembly of 1865 (Jours., 1865, p. 47) Gov. McCormick had said that Prescott had availed itself of the opportunity and that “a school has been well sustained during part of the year.”
- ↑ Message in Jour., 1865, p. 47.
- ↑ The first bills to establish schools in Arizona were introduced by Hon. Solomon W. Chambers, of Tubac, and Hon. John B. Allen, later a resident of the same place. The Chambers bill was defeated, and the Allen bill became the law of 1867. See Historical Sketch of Public Schools of Arizona in Report Tucson Public Schools, 1893–94, p. 25.
- ↑ These are presumably the same officers as those called county commissioners in the act of 1864.
