GEOGRAPHY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA 249 



mal, and the passage of a compulsory attendance law in 19 19 dis- 

 turbed the equilibrium again, at least as regards enrollment. It 

 would be very interesting to present comparative statistics for 

 periods several years apart, but that would necessitate making al- 

 lowance for the great changes in the value of money in recent 

 years, and would take more time and space than can be spared at 

 present. Another advantage of using the figures for 19 15- 16 in- 

 stead of 1917-18 is that they can be compared closely with the 

 population figures of the State census of 191 5. The figures for 

 1919-20 would be equally interesting, but neither they nor the 

 government figures for race, sex, age, etc., in 1920 have been pub- 

 lished yet. 



The State reports unfortunately do not give separate statistics 

 for city and country schools. And although they tell how many 

 teachers in each county have homes in other counties or states, 

 there is no indication of how many were born in Florida or any 

 other state, which would be equally interesting. Information 

 about the marital condition of the teachers is likewise lacking 

 But very likely there are few^ if any other states that give a greater 

 variety of information about schools than Florida does. 



Of the many kinds, of school statistics available only a few can 

 be safely used for computing regional statistics, for when only one 

 or two counties are considered some of the numbers (e.g., of male 

 teachers) are so small that a slight change in them would make a 

 considerable difference in some of the ratios or averages. But 

 some statistics of the value and size of school buildings, school ex- 

 penditures, enrollment and attendance, for the two races sepa- 

 rately, are given in Table 25 for each region treated statistically* . 

 and for the whole area and State; and Table 26 gives some addi- 

 tional details about schools, teachers and pupils for central Flor- 

 ida, the whole State, and the whole United States at the same 

 period. 



In preparing these tables a few errors in figures have been de- 

 tected, but checked up pretty satisfactorily by comparison with 

 other data in the same biennial report or corresponding figures 



*There are so few negro schools in Osceola and Brevard Counties that 

 averages based on them might be misleading; which explains the four blank 

 spaces in Table 25. 



