Gerald W. Smith Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Gerald W. mth 89
1
A. Yes, well in the two or three county area there, we knew one other
pretty well, we knew the schools well enough . . . we superinten ts and
principals attended enough of one another's activities that they ew who
we were and they heard reports of what was go* on, you know, (la s)
where we were. Well, at any rate beginning in the 1930's and, we1 ,
particularly in the 1930's there were moves on the part of educati al'
leaders and moves on the p& of the mmbers of the legislature to place
this non-high school territory in high school districts. One of t e pieces
of legislation that occuwred In the late 1930's was a provision thqt made
it relatively easy for area outside a high school district to annex to the
district. It was a procedure that did not call for a referendum. Any
portion of a territory outside the district could petition the hi& school
board for authority to annex to their district. Those petitions went to the
County Superintendant of Schools and were addressed to the Board of Education;
and if the requisite number of voters signed the petition and if the local
school board, the receiving district, adopted a resolution that they were
willing to accept them, on the basis of that resolution and the petition the
County Superintendant of Schools was authorized to simply issue an order of
annexation.
In the late 1930's quite a movement developed in that direction and I
was involved in that at Alexis. When the Alexis high school district was
established in 1923, another one of those post World War I things about which
I spoke earlier, the fifty-two square miles, or fifty-two sections, of land
joined the school district, so we had fifty-two square miles in the district,
but surrounding it were another fifty-one square miles that did not cone in,
again for the usual reasons -- the fmrs felt that the taxes were cheaper
to pay the non-high school tuition than to be involved in the bond issue for
the sdmol district. So, in Alexis over a period of about a gear and a
half, all of those fifty-one sqm miles of territory did in- fact join our
district, but in several separate parcel. I thlnk we probably had at least
eight or nine sepwate resolutions or petitions and resolutions by our board,
so we did in my the then almost double the area of the district. Now it
did mctically nothing to the enrollment, because those people weE already
coming, but it did strengthen the land base of the district and, of course,
strenghtened the tax base of the district, and it gave the people in those
fifty-one square miles a voice in the managemnt and govemnt of the district
because up until that tiirne the young people attended the school but they
had absolutely no voice in the govemnt, so it was possible then for people
to serve on the Board of mucation, to vote at the elections, and to vote
on the referenda and this kind of thing. So this was one of the pnincipal
enterp~ises.
Q. Well, I1m sum that- must have posed all kinds of new demands oq the
superintendant-principal's tb~
and energies . . .
A. Yes, yes, it was a period of t-, of course, when you were ouq almost
every evening of the week meting with one corrarmnity p u p or anotl-@-, or
actually working with the petitioners because the people interested in petition-
ing tended to come down to the school office and ask for help with the &&-
ing of their petition and so forth. Yes, we attended m y meetings in the
evening, and then on the fringe meas there was always that matter of do we
go to Alexis or Aledo, do we go to Alexis or Seaton, do we go to Alexis or
Momuth. There was always that fringe te&toxy where decisions had to be