100 Chapel Hill Pupils Quit Public School Rather Than Pay Tuition, April 24, 1926

100 Pupils Quit School Because Funds Run Short. . . County Did Not Vote Money for Children Outside Local Tax District. . . 150 Are Paying Tuition

About 100 of the Chapel Hill school children who live outside the local district have dropped out of school because of the lack of funds to provide for their education beyond the statutory six-months term and because their parents are not willing to pay tuition for them.

Within the Chapel Hill school district there is levied a special tax sufficient to provide the children of the district with nine months of schooling. For several years now with the help of an appropriation from the county, the school has been able to serve families which, dwelling outside the district, have paid no special tax. But this year the county voted no money in addition to what it was required to vote by the six-months-term law.

So, after the first of March, the parents outside the district were notified that if they sent their children to the Chapel Hill school, the tuition fee would be $5 a month for each child. Approximately 150 children are now attending on this basis. The attendance from within the district is now around 300, and the 150 who pay the tuition for the extra three months bring the total to 450. The attendance before March 1 was 550.

The proposal has been made that the limits of the school district be extended. As it is ow the Odums, the Poutys and a number of other families who have built homes out to the southwest of the village are not in the district and so are paying tuition for the period from March 1 to June 1. The enlarging of the district may require an election.

Since the present district was established, people living out in the country, some of them from 10 to 15 miles away, have been getting the benefit without paying for it, of the nine-months term for which the people in Chapel Hill pay the special tax.

School officials who have given careful study to the problem think that Chapel Hill township should be created a school district absorbing Chapel Hill and Carrboro and all the other schools in te township, with a uniform township school tax. This would equalize the benefits and the tax burden.

From the front page of The Chapel Hill Weekly, Friday, April 24, 1926

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