school districts in proportion to children 6 to 21, provided the schools had been kept open for three months;[1] he was to visit the schools; distribute blanks; and make reports. In case he failed to make reports he was to be fined.
In each school district a board of three public-school trustees was to be elected, in whose hands, when organized, was placed the direct management of the schools and the granting of teaching certificates. They were to take the school census every year; were to provide and furnish schoolhouses; and when Territorial and county money was not sufficient to keep the schools open “for at least three months in each year” they might levy a district tax sufficient to make up the shortage; by a two-thirds vote also the district might levy a further tax to extend the term beyond three months and to erect schoolhouses. New school districts might be set off on petition of 10 families. A uniform series of textbooks was adopted, and indigent pupils might be supplied, but the books were not otherwise furnished free. The subjects taught in the schools covered spelling, reading, grammar, arithmetic, geography, physiology, “and such other studies as may be by said board deemed necessary.”
This law furnished the Territory for the first time a complete system—a Territorial center in the Territorial board and superintendent; county organization and supervision; district or local supervision, with a tax levied by each of the three divisions and all contributing to the support of the system. Its vital weakness was that all the supervision was to be done by ex officios, who, engaged in other lines of administrative work, had often little time and possibly less inclination to see the duties of school administration carried out. The acme of this folly is seen in the section which ordered the probate judges to make certain school reports and fined them for failure, but did not pay them for performance.[2]
Under date of November 3, 1871 (the law was passed Feb. 18, 1871), Gov. Safford writes to the United States Bureau of Education that “every effort has been made to place a free school system in operation with as little expense as possible. It is now confidently expected that by January 1, 1872, a free school will be established
- ↑ The Weekly Miner (Prescott) complains in its issues of Nov. 25 and Dec. 2, 1871, that the school law was defective. It said the school system, when once under way, might go on indefinitely, but there was no way to start it, for the law provided that no school should have any public money unless it had had a school for three months in the previous year, or before the first distribution. The trustees must conduct the school for three months at their own expense or ignore sec. 33 of the law. It urged that it would be only by utmost and immediate attention that they could hope to establish a school by Jan. 1, 1872. They seem to have risen to the occasion, however, for on Jan. 2 the Miner announces that the board was to lease a building and open a school as soon as the textbooks ordered from San Francisco arrived.
- ↑ The act of 1873 allowed the probate judges $100 per year for their services. See Sess. Acts, 1873, sec. 15, p. 66.
