Top: Paxton Community Unit DUtrlct Supt. t. H. Schroth (right) 



and Atsl. Supt. J. H. Quick (Mt) discuss their school program vrlth 



John K. Cox, lAA director of rural scliooi reiafions. Second from 



fop: Children get advantage of school's hof lunch program. 



attention of Asst. Supt. J. H. Quick, a teacher skilled in 

 conducting aptitude, intelligence, and readiness tests. From 

 these tests he tries to adjust Johnny to his playmates and his 

 studies. If the child is difficult to handle he will call in a 

 state psychiatrist for further examination but only with the 

 consent of the parents. 



Before we go any further perhaps we should have a 

 little more background information on the Paxton area 

 schools. When farmers in the surrounding area started the 

 move for consolidation the original area comprised 13 school 

 districts. In 1947 the 13 districts were reduced to five and in 

 the same year these were reduced to three districts which 

 formed a doughnut-shaped area surrounding Paxton as the 

 hole. In 1948 Paxton became part of the consolidated 

 district which surrounded it. 



Paxton had much to offer. It was centrally located with 

 paved roads leading to it from four directions. It had a 

 modern high school plant and grade schools which could 

 take care of part of the overflow from the country. 



In its first stages, with still a number of kinks to iron 

 out, here is how the district physical plant is organized: 

 Three primary schools are centrally located to take care of 

 rural children in grades one to four inclusive; the two-room 

 grade school at Clarence takes children up to seventh grade: 

 from the seventh through the 12th grades the rural children 

 attend school in Paxton. Another primary school, grades 

 1-4, is in Paxton for city children and some rural children. 



The district comprises about 120 square miles. Accord- 

 ing to Superintendent E. H. Schroth the school population of 

 the area is about 800. Of this number about 270 are in the 

 rural areas and 530 in town. High school enrollment is 

 about 250. 



It might appear to the reader that these programs, which 

 include so many things the rural child never had before, 

 must be costly. Such things as music, woodworking, metal- 

 working, vocational agriculture, field trips, hot lunches, 

 health supervision, speech correction, personality adjustment 

 supervision, intelligence and aptitude tests, home economics, 

 glee club, athletics and physical education programs, movies, 

 etc., cost money. But the wonderful thing about consolida- 

 tion is that the added efficiency makes these things cost far 

 less than you might imagine. In other words, under the 

 old one-room school district the taxpayer was paying for a 

 lot of these services as far as tax payments were concerned. 

 Yet his children never got the benefits. 



How do we figure that? Well, let's take the tax rate. 

 Before the start of the unit district, it was 96 cents for rural 

 schools and $1.11 per $100 assessed valuation for city 

 schools. Today after consolidation it is 96 cents in both 

 town and country. Farm children will have the advantage 

 of numerous modem educational programs at no increase 

 in the tax rate ! 



Ass't Supt. Quick estimates that the per student cost 

 of the unit district before final consolidation was about $130 

 for 1948-49, and that the per capita cost for 1949-50 will 

 be $133. This latter figure includes about $20,000 in back 

 bills assumed by the new unit district. 



Quick pointed out that the Blake school east of Paxton. 

 a typical one-room rural school, had a per pupil cost of 



(Continued on page }4) 



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Boffom: Olrit learn the fundamentals of homemoking In home 



economics class. Second from bottom: Speech correction teacher 



iMrs. Janet Parker drills Bobble Werling and Barbara Jensen before 



a mirror with the words In view. 



NOVEMBEIL 1949 



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