entitled to certain reserve funds, but no district was to be entitled to funds which had not kept its school open for six months during the previous year. The county superintendents were now allowed $250 per year for traveling expenses, while the office of the Territorial superintendent, hitherto peripatetic in accord with the convenience of the holder, was to be in the capitol and the salary increased to $2,000. No part of the school funds received from Territorial or county apportionments could be used for the payment of interest or principal of bonds or in the purchase of real estate for school purposes.
The institutes were now allowed for their support 5 per cent of the county funds assigned to education, in addition to the fee of $2 charged for the teachers’ examination for certificate. The institute session was not to exceed five days nor be less than three.
Districts having over 1,000 census children might now employ a supervising principal, and two or more contiguous districts might jointly employ such principal. Small schools with an average attendance of less than eight pupils were to be suspended and the district allowed to lapse.
The Territorial superintendent was under the impression that the compulsory school attendance law as amended in 1907 was responsible for the reduction in school absentees from 19 per cent in 1907 to 16 per cent in 1908. Since that date, if the figures of the superintendent’s report are to be relied on, there has been a still further reduction in the absentees. The figures for recent years are by no means complete or uniform, but they show a relative high record of enrollment and average attendance.
Of this situation in 1907–8 the superintendent said:
The bad showing that 5,463 children under 21 years of age were not in school last year is more apparent than real, however. It is well known that a large percentage of pupils, especially boys, leave school to earn a livelihood before they reach the age of 21. Indeed, the average age throughout the country is estimated at 14 years, when pupils quit the public schools. Those who complete the high-school course graduate at about the age of 18. Hence it is manifest that, as the census comprises all pupils between the ages of 6 and 21, it will include many who have not attended school that year but who nevertheless have completed the entire course of study of both the grammar and the high school.
Of the per cents of those out of the public schools during these years it should be said that for the purposes of this study those who were enrolled in private schools are treated the same as if they were not in school at all. The number who actually attended no school in 1906–7 was 6,505, or 19.6 per cent; in 1907–8 it had been reduced to 5,463, or 15.9 per cent; in 1912–13 and 1913–14 the corresponding figures were 8,743 and 10,833, being 18.5 and 20 per cent of the total
