Page:History of Public School Education in Arizona.djvu/101

Rh ment and improvement of school library districts; (5) securing an annual meeting of school boards; (6) other amendments for improving school laws.

Certain other phases of public-school development demanding more attention in this study than they have as yet received include the following subjects:

Since the organization of the State the question of the office and pay of the county superintendent has been definitely fixed.

It will be recalled that in the early days the duties of the county superintendent were performed by the county judge of probate. For the performance of these duties he received $100 per year, serving ostensibly as an expense account, but in reality as payment for the supposed performance of the educational duties of the office. Various efforts were made to increase this salary, and other efforts sought to separate the duties of the office of judge of probate from those of county school superintendent. Finally, in 1897, the counties which had attained a valuation of more than $3,000,000 each—Maricopa, Yavapai, Pima, and Cochise—were erected into what was known as class 1; the offices of probate judge and county superintendent were separated; and the county school superintendent was allowed a salary of $1,000 per year. Out of this sum he paid his own expenses, and the State superintendent complained that when this had been done he had only $250 left as salary. The Territory then allowed an extra $150 for expenses, and in 1907 this was raised to $250 and the county superintendent was required to visit each school twice during the year under penalty of losing $10 from his salary for each failure; he was, however, at liberty to deputize as a visitor “some competent person” residing in the neighborhood when the school in question was more than 75 miles from the county seat.

In 1909 the salary of the probate judge and ex officio county school superintendent (the offices not being separated in counties of the second class) was fixed at $1,200, with fees. In counties of the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth classes, this officer as county school superintendent received a salary of $300 and in addition thereto as probate judge he received fees and such salary as might be fixed by the board of supervisors, not less than $300 nor more than $600.

In 1910 the committee on the revisal of the school law purposed that the law be so amended that the counties be divided into three classes with salaries for the county superintendents of $2,400, $1,500, and $1,000 attached. Under this proposed law county superintend-