1705

153

the houses have fallen into a state of decay and neglect;
little interest has been felt by either teacher or pupils, and
the schools have thus been poorly attended and poorly
taught. There has been more reluctance to pay district
taxes for the building and repairs of houses than to pay the
County taxes for the payment of salaries. I therefore think
that, in any modification of the law towards making pro-
vision for the erection of new or the restoration of old houses
a tax should be levied upon the whole County, to pay for one-
half the cost of snch work, leaving with each district to
raise the other half, by district taxation. This I think
would afford a salutary check upon the demands for new
houses, which would be almost universal if the whole cost
should be derived from a County fund. Our people, I should
add, have not yet learned to know the value of handsome,
cheerful, well appointed school houses as educational agen-
cie's of themselves, apart from books, apparatus and teachers.

V. " The action of your Board relative to Teachers' sal-
aries—the rule adopted for the distribution of Text
Books—the number of boys and girls who attended
school during the term ending November 15, 1865—
the aggregate amount paid for salaries and the amount
paid for incidental expenses."

As the tabular statement of the condition of the schools
rendered with this report will give all statistical information
I need not make any reply to the latter portion of your in-
quiry. When this Board came into office it found the schools
in operation under teachers with fixed salaries. These
ranged from $350 to $500 a year. No change was made
during the first year. We deemed it inexpedient, if not
impracticable, to adopt the system recommended by the
State Board, that of a sliding scale, graduating the pay by
the number of pupils in the school. The geographical for-
mation of this County is such that there must necessarily be
many small schools in the necks of land, bounded by wide
water; and we reflected that in such districts no amount of
labor, diligence or ability on the part of the teacher whose
lot was cast in these neighborhoods could raise his number
of pupils above that required for the minimum salary. We
know also that some of our most capable and deserving
teachers were in the occupancy of these necessarily small
schools. We therefore determined to assign specific salaries
to the different schools, having regard to the grade of
the teacher, the gize and the location of his school. Our
maximum and minimum remain $500 and $350. Our vil-
lage teachers of the same grade and size of school receive the
larger salaries.

Our system of distributing Text-Books, during the year
ending June 30th, 1866, was to allow the teacher to make a