Still on the subject of school budget, in advance of its submission to the voters in December 1927, it was pointed out (November 30):
After all, it is the children of Eugene who will be punished if there is an adverse vote on this budget. It is the children who will suffer if the school year is cut short, if classes are consolidated in an ill-timed, ill-advised movement for retrenchment. The teachers will suffer with them. The community will suffer damage it will take years to make up. The school board is making no idle threat when it says it will interpret an adverse vote as a mandate to curtail service. If the referendum means anything in Eugene, Oregon, there is no other choice.
The most the school district can save by voting down the budget is a little less than $60,000 on a taxable valuation of close to $14,000,000. This is four-tenths of a cent on each dollar of property for which you are assessed. What price "economy"? we ask!
The budget was approved in the election that followed this editorial expression.
The election was followed by a reminder that there was a big job to be done in getting the Eugene schools back to a sound operating basis:
It is ridiculous to have a school board with no money in the bank between tax collections and the school clerk trotting to the bank with six per cent notes whenever there is a plumbing bill or a payroll coming up. Portland has achieved the pay-as-you-go policy as we can do it by cutting out the tong wars, the street-corner lobbying, and getting down to work. If we can do this, it will be the first big step toward real economies in school management.
As a further step in the improvement of the Eugene school situation the newspaper worked with the school board in its plan to dispense with the services of the school clerk, acting as fiscal officer, and the city superintendent, who for some time had been feuding. "Everyone," said the newspaper, "has seen similar situations in private business. Attempts to adjudicate between two individually meritorious but inharmonious employees are almost always futile. The only remedy is a major operation, which removes both. It is not a pleasant task, but we commend the school board for having the nerve to face it."
In the clearing up of the bad school situation the campaign was not confined to editorials. A total of 21 front-page stories on the situation gave the public an intelligent presentation of the facts in the situation on which its opinion, as well as that of the newspaper, could be based.
