The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11
W|[LINGHAM DEFINES
 EDUCATIONAL NEEDS
Superintendent Elect of Educa-
 tion Gives Some Pointers
WANTS LOCAL TAXATION
Gives Comparisons on Educational Data of Alabama and Other States. Compulsory Attendance and
 Better Teachers

Alabamais S greatest education needs at tn present time according to H. J. Willing ham, state superintendent-ele of tn department of education, are told in si, sentences, in none of which is containe' and superhuman effort for realization As enumerated by the superintendent elect, the needs are local taxation, bet ter supervision of schools, compulsor. attendance, state aid for the building and the repairing of schoolhouses, teach CTS institutes, and a legislative com
 mission. Without meeting the require ments. the uperintendent-elect says, thu state cannot well come up to the full measure of it's expectations
 MT. Willingham agrees with presen Superintendent of Education Harry c Gunnels in all of these points, and an nouneed that he will endeavor to hav' necessary measures passed at the nex session of the legislature which vii tend to allow the changes desired. In { paper prepared by the Incoming superin :endent he says that the absence of leg islat ation with the above purpose has served the purpose of materially retarding the states progress along all education lines and as a consequence he urges that i'm mediate attention should be paid to the wants The statement of MT. Willingham is as follows
 The subjects which ought to receive leg islative attention in Alabama at the earliest possible moment are:
 l. Local taxation.
 2. Better supervision of schools.
 & Compulsory attendance.
 f. State aid for building and repairing schoolhouses.
 D. Teachers institutes.
 6. The appointment of a legislative com mission to codify and simplify the school laws of the state.
 Local Taxation
 By local taxation we mean the privilege of levying a reasonable tax on the prop erty in a school district for the purpose of supplementlng the state appropriation. Local taxation, in a sense, is now pro- vided in more than half the counties in Alabama by the levy of a county tax, 10 cents on S100.
 The entire state appropriation for the support of the common public schools is now about s2,0000o0 annually This money, under our constitution, is apportioned to the several counties on a per capita basis, all children within the school age, [ to 21 years (whte and colored alike), receiving this year s2.59 Approximately one-third of these educables do not at- tend any school. Thus the state is ap- slightly less than A for each child actually enrolled in the public schools. A county, as above stated, Is not allowed to levy a tax of more than 10 cents on each s1OO of taxable property. ct ba nf by the several counties and expended was S445s0 being about one-fourth of the amount of the state appropriation. The only remaining funds available for use in the public schools came from volun- tary payments by patrons of the schools in the form of tuition and incidental charges and from appropriations by towns and cities. The sum total of appropria- tions by towns and cities, together with the amounts raised as tuition and incl dental charges, was s2s4.000 during the year closed September 30, last.
 From these facts any thinking man can easily see our chief difficulty. The people, themselves, raised for local use in maintaining their public schools $780, tO0 annually, while the state raises the people out of s2,O0O000 for the purpose of sending it back to them as a gratuity, a bonus. There is no objection to the raising of s2,000,0o0 by the state for the support of the public schools, but 1t is absolutely necessary for the people them selves locally to take hold of their own educational affairs to the extent of sup porting directly, with their own tax money, their own schools to a larger ex- tent and thus cease to depend upon the state as the chief factor in the educa- ton of their children.
 Il is wholly impractical to depend upon voluntary contributions in the form of tuition charges to supplement adequately the public school funds. The schools are too short in the rural districts to expect good results and therefore there seems absolutely no other way of securing the necessary educational revenue except by means of local taxation. Alabama and Tennessee are the only two states in the American union, so far as I know, wAich do not permit the people to levy a dis trict tax to support their own schools. It should be said for Tennessee, how ever that her people are allowed, under Inc constitution of that state, to levy a county tax of 90 cents on the slo0, while Alabamaians are not entrusted with the privilege of voting a county tax upon themselves greater than 10 cents on each s1oO worth of property. Now, I am not one of those who believe that Ala bama is below the bottom of all the states" in anything. even educationally but I do believe that we, as Alabamians have neglected some of our opportunities in the development of our natural re. sources and In providing revenues for the proper education and training of our chil- dren.
 The last official report issued by the commission of education at Washing. ton, covering the school year 19oS shows that Alabama holds the third place from the bottom in the list of states arranged in the order which their taxes raised To- cally bears to the whole revenue of tn, state for school purposes Only Louisiana and Mississippi are shown to have raised smaller percentage of their school in come locally than Alabama and Louis ianna Is only 1e of l per cent less. In the percentage of illiterates (unabl, 10 read and write) among the native whit, adult males, only five states make poorer showing than Alabama Thes, states are New Mexico, North Carolina Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, tn, difference between Alabama and Tennes see being only three-tenths of one pe cent. About "A white men, white mel born in Alabama, out of every 100 car not read and write.
 Quoting from the same authority an, referring to the same year, 1997-0S, tn, average number of days attendance fo every child within school age in Alabam; was fraction less than fl days Thi
 was the lowest of all the states in tn | union, next to it being South Carolin;
 with 42 and S-10th days. The averag
 number of days attended by each per
 sen enrolled during the same year wa
 8. In this respect, Alabama made a bet ter showing than the six states of Ney
 Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Mis-
 sissippi, North Carolina and Arkansas | the lowest