and experience, the county tax rate required for participation in the
Equalization Fund became 51 cents in 1940. Equalization of salaries
of colored and white teachers took effect in January, 1942, as a result
of legislation in 1941.

Because of the tremendous loss of teachers due in part to low salaries
and in order to attract qualified teachers, the legislature in 1943 and
in the special session of 1944 provided for teachers receiving salaries
of less than $3,000, nineteen payments of $20 per month for July
and August 1943 and during 17 of the 20 school months between Sep-
tember 1943 and June 1946. In addition as provided in the 1943 law,
the State made available $27 additional to any local unit paying its
teachers $140 above the State minimum salary schedule. In most
units this payment was used to augment teachers' salaries. In addition
most of the counites gave teachers additional emergency payments
varying from $5 to $20 a month. The recognition on the part of the
public of the need for a higher permanent salary schedule for teachers
culminated in the 1945 legislation fixing the minimum salary for
county teachers with degrees at $1,600 and the maximum after six-
teen years of experience at $2,260. Teachers without degrees receive
$200 less. A number of counties are adding to this schedule amounts
varying from $60 to over $200.

The cost of the 1945 salary schedule, of the introduction of a twelve
year program in the twenty counties which have had only eleven
years, and of reduction in the size of elementary school classes is
being borne in part (1) through increasing to 66 cents the levy which
counties must provide towards the cost of the State minimum pro-
gram, (2) through a new State fund allotting basic aid of $160 per
classroom unit, (3) through allowing high school aid for junior high
schools, and (4) through additional State aid in the Equalization
Fund.

During the school year ending in June 1944, there was at least one
supervising or helping teacher in every county in Maryland. This
is the twenty-second year that this satisfactory situation has existed.
The State pays two-thirds of the salaries according to the minimum
schedule of the county supervising and helping teachers and of
county superintendents. The 1946 legislature provided for increases
in salaries of superintendents and supervisors and for equalization of
salaries of colored and white supervisors.

In the fall of 1943 there were 46 county supervising teachers em-
ployed for the 2,714 white elementary teachers scattered over the
9,870 square miles in the Maryland counties, an average of 60 teach-
ers for each supervising teacher. Since there are very few non-
teaching principals in the Maryland county elementary schools, the
counties are helping teachers to improve instruction with a relatively
small corps of supervisory officials.

The average surrent expense cost in 1944 of educating a day public
school pupil in the twenty-three counties was $93.74. Graded schools
having three or more teachers, with better trained teachers, more
equipment and expenditures for transportation, cost less per pupil
than rural schools having one or two teachers, chiefly because the
classes are larger. Transportation was provided at public expense
for nearly 76,000 county pupils at a cost of $1,662,000.00.

Nearly 71 per cent of the white county schools, and nearly 90 per
cent of the colored schools in the counties reported that they had
active parent-teacher associations organized in 1944.

The vocational rehabilitation service has been offering an extended
program since the increase in the amount and character of Federal aid