In not a few cases the problem of financing schools has in recent years become especially acute. Communities are in many cases at the limit now permitted by state laws controlling the levying of taxes. The maintenance of schools even at their present level is very difficult, and all the time there is the urgent push within the system for enlargements and improvements. Other communities which see the rapid increase in school expenditures, even while they are willing to tax themselves more for schools, are asking for clear evidence that school work is being done efficiently.
Such an attitude appears, for example, in a resolution passed by the citizens of Portland, Oregon, at a regular annual meeting of the voters held December 27, 1912:
Whereas, the average daily attendance at the public schools of this district has increased from 10,387 in 1902 to 23,712 in 1912, and the annual disbursements have increased during the same period from $420,879.61 to $2,490,477.28; and whereas, it is of the utmost importance that the public schools should be kept at the highest point of efficiency.
It is hereby declared to be the sense of this meeting that a full and complete survey be made of the public school system of this district.[19]
Many other examples could be given of school inquiries which have grown out of the demand for either better administration of finances or more efficient training. In 1910 the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of New York ordered a survey of the schools of that city because the Board did not believe itself to be in possession of adequate information on which to base appropriations for education and because, to use the words of the resolution,
It is the sense of this Board that efficient and progressive administration of the schools ... is indispensable to the welfare and progress of the city and that generous appropriations ... are desirable in so far as assurance and evidence can be given that such appropriations will be expended for purposes and in a manner to promote the efficiency and welfare of the schools and to increase the value and effect of the instruction given therein.[20]
Such quotations show the intimate relation between finance and teaching, between the attitude of the community toward expenditures and the modern demand for a scientifically conducted school system.
Expenditures in Relation to Wealth
Returning to the detailed study of school finance, it may be laid down as a fundamental principle that in general school expenditures are related to the ability of a community to pay taxes. Taking for purposes of illustration the three largest cities, we find that they have different degrees of wealth. New York City has an average wealth of $1765.28 per inhabitant; Chicago has only $1604.20; Philadelphia, $953.65. Evidently the capacity of these cities for supporting schools is very different. The differences in wealth correspond roughly to the varying scale of expenditures for elementary schools in these three cities. New York expends $45.67 per pupil; Chicago, $37.58; and Philadelphia, $32.22. The less wealthy cities commonly spend less on schools.
There is a certain equity in the variation in expenditures above noted. But there are conditions under which the variations in wealth are so great that if expenditure depended on the ability of a community to pay for schools, the children would suffer. In such cases the state must take a share of the costs and must, in the interests of the general community, pay for better schools than the city or district can itself afford.
If one thinks of a mining town, for example, where the population is made up entirely of laborers with large families and where the homes are crowded together in a small area, it will be recognized at once that the ability to support schools is very different from that of a well-to-do manufacturing city or of a sparsely settled, fertile farming region where the children are few and the taxable wealth is comparatively great. In the case of the mining town the state must step in to equalize in some degree the educational opportunities of the children. It is not to the advantage of the state as a whole that the many children of that town should be seriously limited in their schooling, because they will in due time scatter to other communities, and the safety and progress of these other communities require that there shall be adequate educational opportunities in the mining town.