VI. INEQUALITIES IN TAXING POWER FOR SCHOOLS IN ILLINOIS [From an article by O. L. Manchester, on the proposed changes of the Illinois Educational Commission in relation to school revenues, published in the 28th Bien. Rept. Supt. Publ. Instr. Illinois, 1908-10, pp. 493-499.] No school revenue system is good enough for Illinois that does not tender every child eight months a year elementary instruction in an easily accessible and not over-crowded school taught by a teacher who not only earns but gets at least a legal minimum wage of $50.00 a month. No revenue system will be from now on quite good enough for the great State of Illinois unless it proffers every qualified boy and girl a free high school education. Illinois boys and girls are as good as those of Massachusetts, Connecticut, or Indiana, and there is no use in our hedging any longer upon this question. Any acceptable school revenue system must provide that this education be furnished and paid for by the local school unit if that be possible without excessive taxation if not, that the State stand good for what is wanting. And, finally, all this must be done with the least possible inequality and injustice in the distribution of the burden. Now, how far does the present scheme for school support fill the bill? acres. It takes $480.00 to run a rural school in fair shape for eight months- $400.00 for the teacher and the $80.00 for incidentals. The ordinary school district is four square miles. It contains 2,560 As the value of personalty runs for Illinois about one-fourth that of realty, we may neglect it in our calculations and count 3,200 acres. Now if land in the district is assessed at $6.00 an the assessed being one-fifth of the real value under the $2.50 tax limit for general purposes we can get just the $480.00 for our school. Such a district needs no aid if it taxes itself to the limit. acre The conditions of our school revenue problem were set for us 40,000 years ago. In the southern end of our State, covering largely seven counties, reappearing also in the elevated northwest corner in Jo Daviess, and in Pike and Calhoun to the west, is an area untouched by glaciation. Land in four of these ten counties is assessed and equalized at $2.50 an acre and in all but one of the others at $5.00 or less. South and east of the Kaskaskia river and so far north as to include Clark and Cumberland, with Bond and Monroe just across the river, is the lower Illinois glaciated area. The equalized values here vary from $3.50 to $5.50 per acre. In all the rest of the State the figures run from $6.00 to $16.50. There are then thirty-six counties in Illinois where land values are so low that rural districts of proper size, if without railroads, cannot expect without State aid to support in good shape their schools. Just what do such counties do? In Alexander, Clay, Effingham, Jefferson, and Wayne counties, land is assessed at $4.00, men's wages average $45.59, women's $35.58; school keeps 6.7 months, and the average enrollment is thirty-nine. The district varies from 4.4 square miles in Jefferson to 7.7 square miles in Alexander. The school tax averages $1.86. In Franklin, Hamilton, and Massac counties, land is valued at $3.50, the district averages five square miles, school runs seven months, the average enrollment is fifty-five, the tax rate $1.86, wages $39.00 for men, and $35.50 for women. In Hardin, Johnson, Pope, and Pulaski, land is $2.50, which would mean a maximum school tax of $200.00, did they not put 5.6 square miles into their districts. They run their schools six months, the enrollment averages forty-four, the school tax is $2.23. They pay men $40.00 and women $34.00. Now let us come to the best farming sections of the State. In McLean county land is assessed at $16.50, in Livingston and Logan at $16.00, in Champaign, Ford, Piatt, and Woodford, at $15.00. The maximum tax obtainable is from $1,320.00 to $1,200.00. The district is 4.4 square miles, the school year eight months, the average enrollment twenty-three, the tax rate $1.30. Men get $63.90, women $45.76. Comparing the twelve southern counties with these seven in central Illinois, we find that in the latter school runs one-fifth longer, the men's wages are one-half and women's wages one-third higher, but that in the southern schools the enrollment is twice as great, while the tax rate is fifty per cent higher. But it will not do to rely too implicitly upon averages. Mark Twain's watch averaged well, but never was right, and we have heard that a donkey got drowned once upon a time in a stream that averaged eight inches deep. And this comparison of tax rates, obtained by dividing aggregate county school levies by total county assessed values, under-states the inequality because of the greater number of villages and cities with their higher rates in central Illinois. Eliminate from the calculation for McLean county, for example, twenty-five city and village districts, whose rates average $2.19, then average the remaining 240 rates appearing on the county clerk's books, and we get a purely rural school rate of seventy-three cents. Indeed the average of all actual rates for McLean county last year was only eighty-six cents; in Livingston, ninety cents for general purposes, in Logan ninety-two, and in Piatt $1.18. Now as in Hardin, Pope, Johnson, and Pulaski counties there are only two cities and only three villages of 500 people or more, their rate of $2.23 is essentially a country school rate. It is safe to say that in that poorer Illinois, school rates are two or three times as high as here, although for their money they are getting shorter terms, crowded schools, poorer instruction, and almost no high schools. But poorer Illinois is not all in the southern end of the State; it is scattered all through the State. And again, neighboring districts anywhere vary much in size with consequent differences in tax rates. And, finally, the presence or absence of railroads and of cities and villages has an important bearing upon tax rates. When these things conspire in their operation the result is truly interesting. As samples of high rates, may be quoted these from Sangamon county for this year: $1.90, $2.00, $2.50, $2.45, $3.30, $2.00, $3.20, $3.20, $1.85, $5.00, $3.30. As samples of low rates may be quoted these from the same county: 65, 55, 66, 55, 64, 57, 64, 46, 62, 64, 40, 66 cents. In Morgan county last year one rate was below 25 cents; fourteen were between 26 and 50 cents; twenty-six between 51 and 75 cents; thirty-three between 76 and $1.00; eighteen between $1.01, and $1.25; ten between $1.26 and $1.50; four between $1.51 and $1.75; eight between $1.76 and $2.00; two between $2.01 and $2.25; and one between $2.26 and $2.50. The average was 98 cents. In Edwards county there was none below 25 cents, but for the next nine classes above the number of rates ran successively, 1, 5, 16, 11, 9, 3, 2, 1, 4; and one rate was $3.70; another $4.20. The average rate was $1.36. There is a little district in Macon county, District No. 32, Hickory Point Township, just north of Decatur, which is one-fourth regular size, one-half mile wide and two miles long, Its school rate last year was $2.58. In Mt. Hope township, McLean county, there are two big country districts, each containing nine or ten square miles. They levied $500.00 and $350.00 last year respectively, and their school tax rates were 38 and 26 cents. The adjoining township of Funk's Grove contains two more such excrescences; their rates last year were 32 and 17 cents. A few years ago I went into the county clerk's office at Clinton, DeWitt county, to look through the tax books. The first township I struck was Tunbridge and the first districts therein Nos. 75 and 76. No. 75 was of ordinary size and was blessed with a railroad that furnished onethird of the total valuation. It levied $400.00 last year and got off with a rate of $1.10. No. 76 was small and hilly and had no railroad. It levied $50.00 less, but got a rate of $2.46, or two and one-third times as great. Compare this rate of $2.46 in District 76, DeWitt county, with that of 26 cents in District 5, in the adjoining county of McLean, both rates producing the same sum, or $350.00, but the one rate nine and one-half times the other. The railroad situation as affecting school tax rates deserves a few complementary, or complimentary, remarks. The railroad assessment per mile of main track in Illinois averages $8,452. For purposes of our calculation this should be reduced somewhat. Suffice to say, that a stretch of railroad one and one-half miles long, in a school district where land is assessed at $2.50 an acre may easily double and more the total valuation and thus halve the tax rate. Where land is $4.00, a similar stretch would reduce the rate fifty per cent. In DeWitt county, where land is $11.00 an acre, the railroad valuations in such districts as have railroads average about one-sixth of the total valuations. Is it right that a school district should escape with a fraction of the rate its neighbors have to pay because it has a railroad and they have none? A strip of land, sixty-six and twothirds feet wide and one and one-half miles long, or 100 feet wide and one mile long contains twelve acres. At an average Illinois price its assessed valuation would be $114.00. As railroad right of way it may easily be $10,000.00 to $15,000.00 or even $20,000.00. There are 2,600 miles of railroad in those thirty-six counties of poorer Illinois and about 3,000 school districts, of which, perhaps, one district in four has any railroad in it. Probably of the 3,000 school districts about 750 are helped by the presence of railroad property beyond the point of serious need so far as elementary schools are concerned. The other 2,250 get no such help. Finally, the State's distribution of $1,056,971.31 annually among districts according to minor population means 50 cents perhaps per child, or possibly $1.00 per child actually enrolled, and may bring some southern Illinois districts $50.00-$60.00 annually. The benefits accruing from township and county funds and from fines and forfeitures are of some moment, but are so fortuitously scattered that it would be guess work to speculate about them. It seems probable, however, that of the 3,000 districts in poorer Illinois fully 2,000 in spite of all adventitious aids cannot get even by taxing to the limit the $480.00 apiece that the support of a good school demands. They still need help, from a little up to $280.00 each or in the aggregate - though it must be a guess about $300,000.00. So far we have been talking of the adaptation of the school district system to the financing of isolated elementary schools alone. Anything like adequate supervision is financially impracticable. It is when we come to the rural high school question, however, that the district system breaks down completely. In the |