The Pilot presents some figures from the report of the Lee county board of education concerning the cost and value of truck service in bringing the children to school. It is seen that the average daily cost of conveying the children is just above 7 cents a day, and that the whole cost of operation for the school year fell below $4,000. This report is instructive for any county to study at any time, but it is more pertinent in Moore county just now because the school board has been arguing the cause of trucks in use in our own schools, while some opponents of the trucks have been asking for their abandonment.
The school truck by this statement is showing thatit is not an expense, for its small costs are far overcome by the saving in the more economical operation of the bigger schools, which dispense with a number of the inefficient one-teacher schools, which are more costly in proportion to the work done, and less efficient because of their lack of facilities. Moore county has been consolidating its schools, and in doing that has been able to secure far better buildings for the children, with far better equipment, and with the possibility of organizing the teaching forces so the schools can be better graded, better taught, better disciplined, and a far better contact of teacher and child and of children with each other maintained all along the line.
In the last 10 years Moore county schools have made a degree of progress that is a practical revolution. Children are brought into a far broader field of instruction, and of thinking and investigating for themselves. Boys and girls in the ordinary grades are much further advanced in many things that go for intelligent and wholesome education than their fathers and mothers. The schools are far more practical in the application of the things taught, and every Moore county school is opening a new world for every child, and it is safe to say, for the parents at home, for the children are carrying home much learned at school for the benefit of the parents.
The county authorities made a wise move when they stood by the school trucks, for the truck is giving service of the highest value, and its call for money is so small in comparison with what it is doing that it is evidently a saving even if it did not give better schooling, for trucks cost no more than cheap and ineffective school houses and more teachers.
From the editorial page of The Pilot, Vass, N.C., Friday, August 21, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073968/1925-08-21/ed-1/seq-4/. To see the table breaking down the costs for the six trucks transporting students in Lee County, go to newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073968/1925-08-21/ed-1/seq-2/. Miles per gallon of gasoline were 13.2 for both the old Ford and the new Ford trucks, 13.1 miles per gallon for the G.M.C., 9.5 for the Dodge-Graham; 10.4 for a third Ford; and 11 miles per gallon for the International truck.
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