Limits of Authority and Responsibility not Clear
The various officials who are created in the process of developing a representative system of school control often find themselves unable to determine the limits of their authority or responsibility. For example, it is almost impossible to determine where the duties of a business manager end and the functions of the superintendent begin. Thus, when it comes to the employment of teachers and the determination of salaries, the question arises whether these matters should be settled on educational grounds or on financial grounds, or on both.
Especially acute is the problem of determining the proper relation of the board of inspectors to the teachers and superintendent. The inspectors, or the board of education as they have come to be called, are chosen as the immediate representatives of the community. They are citizens in whom the community has general confidence, but they are not charged, as was pointed out above, with the daily tasks of teaching. The board must accordingly appoint teachers and a superintendent. These latter are selected because they have training and technical qualifications which the community needs in the schools. The technical officers have in an important sense an independent place in the educational system. It will be remembered that the teacher was the first one to whom the community delegated responsibility for the schools. Not infrequently the community finds its board of representative citizens on one side of a school issue and its technical officers on the other side.
Take a commonplace example. In the development of the course of study it has come to pass that many new subjects have been introduced which cost a great deal. Manual training and domestic science, as was shown in the last chapter, are expensive. Superintendents and teachers are enthusiastic about the educational value of these subjects. Sometimes the board of education has to curtail the expenditures involved because the community does not seem to be prepared to pay the price. If the board is supreme and the superintendent is its servant, how can a campaign of explanation be organized which will show the community what is needed? On the other hand, if the superintendent is at liberty to go directly to the community without the consent or sympathy of the board, complications arise which are not difficult to imagine.