TAXATION FOR SCHOOL PURPOSES IN PENNSYLVANIA In Pennsylvania, every township, borough, or city is a school district. Cities are divided into three classes. Philadelphia is the only city of the first class. Pittsburg, Allegheny, and Scranton are cities of the second class. All other cities belong to the third class. A city of the first class must have a population of a million or over. A city of the second class must have at least 100,000 inhabitants and less than a million inhabitants. In Philadelphia the amount of tax to be levied for school purposes is determined by councils. In all other districts the amount of tax to be levied is fixed by the board of education, generally known as the board of school directors or school controllers. The amount of school tax shall not exceed the amount of state and county taxes authorized by law to be assessed. At the time of the passage of this law, the amount authorized to be levied for state and county purposes was thirteen mills, ten mills for the latter and three for the former. The state tax has since been taken off real estate, but this does not affect the amount of school tax that can be levied, for the reason that it was the obvious intention of the law to fix that amount at thirteen mills on the dollar, and thus avoid the perplexing changes that would otherwise cripple the financial management of school affairs. This decision has been sustained by the supreme court. The board of directors, or controllers, may also levy at any time, not oftener than once in each school year, a special tax not exceeding the amount of the regular annual tax for such year. This special tax is usually spoken of as the building tax, and can be applied (a) for purchasing grounds; (b) for erecting and furnishing buildings; (c) for the accumulation of a fund for purchasing grounds and erecting buildings; (d) for the payment of a debt contracted in purchasing ground and erecting buildings; (e) for completing improvements in school buildings completed at the time of their erection; (f) for fencing and improving grounds in connection with the erection of buildings; (g) for the payment of fuel used in heating buildings; (h) for the payment of the expense of janitors employed in care of buildings. In this way it is possible to assess twenty-six mills for school purposes, half for maintenance and half for building. Careful provision is thus made for teachers' salaries, free textbooks and supplies, and other expenses incident to the running of the schools, whilst suitable sums can be raised for the erection and equipment of new buildings. A per capita tax of one dollar is levied and collected annually for school purposes for each and every male inhabitant of the age of twenty-one years and upward. School taxes are levied upon real estate and personal property. Burial grounds, churches, hospitals, universities, colleges, seminaries, academies, associations and institutions of learning, benevolence or charity, are exempt from taxation. Unsettled lands are required to pay school tax. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' PROGRESS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN NORTH CAROLINA: A COMPARATIVE STATISTICAL STUDY OF SCHOOL MAINTENANCE IN THE SOUTH AND SOME RESULTS* PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF CHARLES D. MCIVER, BY CHARLES L. COON, OF THE NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION PART I. - FİNANCIAL ABILITY TO LEVY SCHOOL TAXES The following tables show the present relative financial ability of North Carolina and other southern states to raise school funds by taxation, as compared with the country at large and with particular states; also the manner in which the South is making use of her ability in comparison with other parts of the country. PROPERTY VALUATION OF NORTH CAROLINA AND THE UNITED STATES, 1850-1900 In any discussion of educational progress, the financial ability of the people in question must be considered, especially in making comparisons. The following figures are taken from Compendium of Census, 1890, Part III, page 954, and following, except those for 1900, which are based on the Statistical Abstract of the Department of Commerce: Observe the following facts disclosed by the above table: I. 1. The losses of the Civil War account for the per capita wealth of North Carolina being the same in 1890 as in 1860. 2. The per capita wealth of the whole country in 1860 was only 42.3 per cent. more than that of North Carolina; in 1900, the per capita wealth of the country was 176.2 per cent. larger than that of North Carolina. 3. Notice that North Carolina, in 1900, was not yet as able financially to educate its children as was the country at large in 1860. *All the figures used in this study are taken from the census of the United States, the reports of the United States Commissioner of Education, the state reports of superintendents of public schools, and other official documents. The references, calculations, and deductions are my own.-C. L. C. *Not counting slaves as a part of the population but only as property. North Carolina had $391 per capita wealth of free population in 1850 and $542 in 1860, in comparison with $407 per capita for United States in 1850 and $588 in 1860. These figures for 1900 are based on an increase of 45 per cent. in the wealth of the country from 1890 to 1900, which is the estimate of the Department of Commerce. It should be remembered, however, that the per capita wealth of North Carolina for 1850 and 1860, as calculated above, includes the free and the slave population for those years. But slaves were then property and made up a considerable part of property values. For instance, the assessed personal property of North Carolina, according to the census of 1850, was $140,368,673. The real estate was assessed at $71,702,740; the whole at $212,071,413. It was estimated that the true valuation of all property was $226,800,472. Slaves were personal property; hence the large personal property values, not only in North Carolina, but in other southern states prior to 1865. But that fact and other facts of interest in the discussion of the subject being considered will appear from the next table. The following table shows the value of real and personal property in the eleven southern states, North Carolina included, from 1850-1870, also the decrease in the assessed value of property during the ten years between 1860 and 1870 and the increase in the debts of these states: The value of real property is given first in these tables; personal property second. 1. That, between 1860 and 1870, the assessed value of real estate in North Carolina decreased $33,044,560, while the personal property decreased $128,875,419; more than $161,000,000 in all and about eight-elevenths of the value of all the real and personal property of the State in 1850. 2. Observe that the state debt increased more than thirty-two times from 1850 to 1870; that the state debt in 1870 was about one-fifth of the assessed value of the whole property of the state. In this respect North Carolina fared much worse than any other southern state at the hands of the reconstruction state government. 3. Observe the striking decrease in personal property valuation between 1860 and 1870 for the whole South. The real estate valuation assessed decreased $401,809,941 and the assessed valuation of personal property decreased $1,912,333,149-a total decrease of $2,314,143,090. This amount hardly represents all the losses by war, but it does give some basis for calculating the fearful cost of that war to the South. 4. The Civil War added more than one-third more children to the school population to be educated, while that war took away millions of the financial ability of the state What was true of North Carolina was more than true, in 1870, of the whole South. These tables still further disclose the effect of the Civil War on southern property values as compared with other states. ESTIMATED TRUE VALUATION OF PROPERTY, 1850-1900-THE SOUTH * All the estimates are based on the figures compiled by United States Census Bureau and the Department of Commerce. PER CAPITA WEALTH BASED ON ABOVE FIGURES It will be observed that the per capita value of the property of North Carolina was the same in 1860 and in 1890. Many of the other southern states, in 1900, had not yet recovered from the effects of the Civil War. But it may be doubted whether the South increased its wealth 45 per cent., with the other sections of the country, between 1890 and 1900. † State reports. Income from permanent funds has been deducted before this amount has been ascertained. |