School Attendance. . . J.R. McQueen Gives Facts and Figures on Moore County Schools
There is nothing connected with the Government of our County that is as important or as expensive as our schools. All our people are interested in the amount of taxes we pay, but as a business proposition what we get for what we pay is more important that what we pay. Everyone interested in the progress of our County should be interested in our schools, because we believe that intelligence makes for progress.
Now, what we get from the taxes we pay for schools depends on two things—efficiency of the schools and the attendance of the children of the County on these schools. The most of us, by showing our interest and helping wherever it is possible, can improve the efficiency of the schools of the County, and we can certainly improve the attendance, and we are writing this because we want to appeal to those interested in the advancement of the County and interested in getting value received for the money we spend for schools to use their influence improving the attendance.
There are 5,172 white children and 2,950 colored children, according to the census for the school year 1923-24, entitled to attend the public schools of Moore County. Because of the fact that some of these are in other schools or colleges, some have quit school for good, and others because the children themselves or their parents are not sufficiently interested to see that they even started to school, we had only 3,053 white children and 1,923 colored children enrolled. As stated above, there were quite a number of these children who were in school elsewhere, some of them married, and some of them because of their health unable to attend, but we are forced to believe that of this number, 3,147, that did not even attend school for one day, there were a good many that should have been and might have been in school regularly.
But this condition is hardly as bad as the one we want to call to your attention next, for while there were 3,053 white children enrolled, the average daily attendance was only 2,148, or about 70 percent of the enrollment, and with 1,922 colored children enrolled in our schools, the average daily attendance was only 1,229, or about 64 percent of the enrollment. We think it is fair to call attention to the fact that there was an unusual amount of sickness in our County last year, which made these figures worse than an average, but we know that there is not a big difference in the percentage averaged for last year and for years in the past. In comparison with the 100 counties of the State, Moore stands 61st as to the attendance of her white children and 67th as to the attendance of her colored children, and when a small, water-logged county like Dare can have an attendance of 87.8 percent for her white children and 80 percent for her colored children, this is not a very enviable position for the County to occupy.
This is the reason we have employed an attendance officer, and this is the reason that we would appeal to our intelligent citizenship to take an interest in improving these conditions. An old philosopher once said that it did not make so much difference where we stood as which way we were going—and let’s everybody help—the children, parents, teachers and welfare officer, in the year 1925 to place Moore County nearer the top in the school attendance reports.
The above refers to all the schools in the County, but the State Superintendent of Schools gives the figures for the 15 smallest special charter schools in our State—and it happens that our County has three out of the 15 small special charter schools—and in this list we fare almost as badly as we do in the County as a whole, for Vass comes eighth, Southern Pines comes 11th and Carmon comes 13th—with only two small mountain schools to save us from standing at the bottom.
--J.R. McQueen
From the front page of The Sandhill Citizen, Friday, January 2, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92061634/1925-01-02/ed-1/seq-1/#words=JANUARY+2%2C+1925
