Page:History of Public School Education in Arizona.djvu/100

94 objectives not yet attained. These include the question of a school accounting commission. The purpose of this proposal is to secure a higher degree of economy in the administration of State funds. It was urged that such a commission should be created by the assembly, and it should be its duty to unravel and straighten the “unsystematic and haphazard” method used in school accounting.

It was with this state of affairs in mind that the State tax commission took up for discussion in its report for 1914 (pp. 21–22) the question of State taxes for schools. It points out that there was appropriated for education in 1913, $1,026,407.50 and in 1914, $1,006,537.50, these sums representing practically 55 per cent of the entire tax levy of the State. The sum thus appropriated for schools in 1914 was $100,000 greater than the entire appropriations for all purposes in 1911. The primary object in creating this large school fund was said to be (1) to establish a fund for the purchase of free textbooks for all the common schools of the State and (2) for the creation of an additional fund “sufficient in amount so that such counties as Graham and Santa Cruz, having a large school population and at that time a small assessed valuation, could make it possible to maintain their schools for the entire school year.”

In other words the State of Arizona does what so many older States do—collects taxes on the basis of property valuation and immediately redistributes them on the basis of school population. The commission remarks that the intent of the law seems to have been that the county levy should decrease in proportion to the amount received from the State; that this has not always been the case; that the tendency has been to consider the sums derived from the State “in the nature of an additional or gratuitous amount to that which had formerly been received from the county,” and that in consequence the State money was in part at least lost sight of.

The commission suggests that inasmuch as the textbook fund is now provided for, better results would follow “if a larger proportion of these funds came to the schools direct through the regular county channels.”

In another connection the commission pertinently remarks (p. 32):

Other lines of improvement still to be striven for were, in the opinion and recommendation of the State superintendent: (1) Standardization of schools; (2) certification of teachers; (3) promotion of teachers’ and pupils’ reading circle work; (4) enlarge-