The most important legislative action in 1883 was the school law, which should be considered rather a revision than a new law. McCrea thinks the new provisions were due to Supt. Horton and that they were borrowed from the California law. They are summarized as follows:
The presidency of the Territorial board of education. was transferred from the superintendent to the governor; the superintendent was given $500 for traveling and $500 for printing and office expenses, and was to visit each county; the salary of the county superintendents was increased. They were started on a basis of $300 pay for 10 districts, and to this as a basis $25 was added for each additional district, but the office was not yet made distinct from that of probate judge. Particular efforts were made to guard and hedge about the spending of school funds. It was provided that in counties where the school districts numbered 20 or more the superintendent might, in his discretion, hold a teachers’ institute of three to five days each year at a total cost of not over $50. All public-school teachers were required to attend, and if school was in session their absence was not counted as time lost. Every county, city, or incorporated town, unless subdivided, formed a school district, but none might be organized with less than 10 pupils or until school had actually commenced in the new district. The local district school trustees were elected annually, and no person was ineligible either to vote or hold the office because of sex. The census marshal took the census every odd year. Unless otherwise provided, all schools were to be divided into primary and grammar schools and were to give instruction in English, in reading, writing, orthography, arithmetic, geography, grammar, history of the United States, elements of physiology and of bookkeeping, vocal music, industrial drawing, “and such other studies as the Territorial board of education may prescribe,” and in manners and morals during the entire course. The school day was fixed at six hours, but no pupil under 8 was to be kept in school more than four hours.
The sections on district libraries were new. They provided that 10 per cent of the Territorial school fund up to $200 be apportioned to each district and constitute “a library fund.” This fund and “such moneys as may be added thereto by donation” should be spent “in the purchase of school apparatus and books for school libraries.” The latter were kept in the schoolhouses and were open to pupils and residents of the district.
The rate of taxation for schools was unchanged, but funds were increased by giving the proceeds of escheats to the Territorial school fund, and the proceeds from fines, forfeitures, and gambling licenses, except in incorporated places, to the county school fund. The right
