Middletown transcript., 1916-07-22
BOARD OF EDUCATION
Several Important Changes Should
be Made in This Board
PRESENT SYSTEM COMPLICATED

Since the state has created such an
Office, it should now after trial treat
the office as permanent, and assign to
the official all the duties and responsi
bilities that properly belong to it. At
present a number of duties that should
be performed by the Commissioner of
Education are performed by the State
Treasurer or by the State Auditor, be-
cause there was no Commissioner of
Education when the respective duties
had to be assigned to some official.
Thus, the computations and allot-
ments of School Dividends is now made
by the State Treasurer. Very little
thinking is needed to see that the Com
missioner of Education should be
charged with this duty; he keeps the
record Of teachers qualified and appoint
ed, and it is on the basis of the num-
Der of teachers employed that the SchOo
Dividend is paid Therefore, the Com
missioner's office should make the COM
putations and allotments and instruct
the State Treasurer as to the amount of
Dividend to be paid to each district
The State Treasurer would still handle
all the money. Similarly with the ac-
counts with the school districts for book
purchases Now the State Treasurer
has to keep all the accounts and handle
all the routine of book orders and book
payments, charging the payments to the
districts and deducting the book pay
ments from the annual school dividend.
For obvious reasons, the book orders
should be handled by the Office of the
Commissioner of Education. The pay
ments should continue to be made by
the State Treasurer, upon the order of
the Commissioner of Education.
The payments to school districts for
nonresident pupils too are computed by
the State Treasurer. These computa
tions and accounts too should be the re-
sponsibility Of the Commissioner to COM
pute and keep.
Before assigning these several addi-
tiOnal duties to the Office of the Com
missioner, a permanent office and office
rooms should be provided. Moving
about from one set Of rooms to another,
sometimes twice in year, is not con-
ducive to the development of systematic
keeping of records and documents. To
an Office such as the Commissioner of
Education such frequent migrations are
especially disadvantageous. If the office
cannot find and produce documents and
information when they are wanted,
there is small value in the records or in
the documents.
To take care of this mass of detailed
record keeping and of computing, the
Commissioner should have an assistant
who can handle all the office work and
all statistical tabulations and studies
under the direction of the Commissioner,
and who can also be State High School
Inspector. The Commissioner would
still have enough to do in being the field
agent of the State Board of Education
and Secretary to the Board. The office
of Commissioner of Education is i'm
pv- ant if there is to be general and
constant growth and development in the
system, but to make the official of most
value he must be given place to work
and the necessary equipment, just as
the school must have books and furni-
tlre. The assignments of duty as pro-
posed could not have been made before
the office had been created, but they can
and should be made now, regardless of
who is Commissioner; these are duties
proper to the Office. Who may be the
official to discharge them is not involved
at all. CHARLES A. WAGNER,
Secretary of State Board of Education