the towns the question of taxation is annually submitted to the people
I have no doubt that much of our success is due to the fact that in all
the towns the question of taxation is annually submitted to the people.
It is quite certain that the sum of our municipal appropriations never
could have been increased from $387,124.17, in 1837, to $1,341,252.03,
in 1858, without the influence of the statistical tables that are
appended to the Annual Reports of the Board of Education; and it is also
true that the materials for these tables could not have been secured
without the agency of the school fund. Our experience as a state
confirms the wisdom of the reports of 1833 and 1834; and I unreservedly
concur in the opinion that a fund ought not to be sufficient for the
support of schools, but that such a fund is needed to give encouragement
to the towns, to stimulate the people to make adequate local
appropriations, to secure accurate and complete returns from the
committees, and finally to provide means for training teachers, and for
defraying the necessary expenses of the educational department. The law
of 1834, establishing the school fund, was reenacted in the Revised
Statutes (chap. 11, sects. 13 and 14). The Revised Statutes (chap. 23,
sects. 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, and 67) also required that returns should be
made, each year, from all the towns of the commonwealth, of the
condition of the schools in various important particulars. The income of
the fund was to be apportioned among the towns that had raised, the
preceding year, the sum of one dollar by taxation for each pupil, and
had complied with the laws in other respects; and it was to be
distributed according to the number of persons in each between the ages
of four and sixteen years. These provisions have since been frequently
and variously modified; but at all times the state has imposed similar
conditions upon the towns. By the statute of 1839, chapter 56, the
income of the school fund was to be apportioned among those towns that
had raised by taxation for the support of schools the sum of one dollar
and twenty-five cents for each person between the ages of four and
sixteen years; and, by the law of 1849, chapter 117, the income was to
be apportioned among those towns which had raised by taxation the sum of
one dollar and fifty cents for the education of each person between the
ages of five and fifteen years. This provision is now in force. By an
act of the Legislature, passed April 15th, 1846, it was provided that
all sums of money which should thereafter be drawn from the treasury,
for educational purposes, should be considered as a charge upon the
moiety of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands set apart for
the purpose of constituting a school fund. This provision continued in
force until the reoerganization of the fund, in 1854. By the law of that
year (chap. 300), it was provided that one half of the annual income of
the fund should be apportioned and distributed among the towns according
to the then existing provisions of law, and that the educational
expenses before referred to should be chargeable to and paid from the
other half of the income of said fund. These provisions are now in
force.
