The Cordele Dispatch

VALUE RECEIVED?

Bibb county has approximately $300 in wealth to every person in the county. Crisp has practically the same amount of wealth to each person. If you investigate for yourself, you will find this true. We are told that Crisp's rural schools spend three mills in school taxes and the city of Cordele five mills. This total of eight mills averaged up will show four mills. Our school boss got Superintendent Bruce's word that if Bibb's funds were lumped in the same way into a school tax, it would be four mills,—the same taxation as prevails in Crisp. We are spending each year now in Crisp almost the same money on each child that is being spent in Bibb.

The Cordele schools up to now have been getting the services of good teachers and a session of nine months in a well planned, graded system. But listen! the country boy and the country girl, for whom we have entered a plea, are getting only seven months of a haphazard, catch-as-catch-can school where is no uniform graded system. The little fellow never knows what it is to complete a year's work in school. There is no year's work laid out for him. These are facts and the crying shame of the day is the claim of our school boss that we have the best rural schools in the state.

The country boy and the country girl in Bibb get their nine months in schools that are laid out carefully and maintained exactly in same manner as are the city schools. Bibb gets nine months for the country children as well as the city children out of an expenditure of four mills in taxes. The people of Crisp inside and outside of Cordele averaged up, spend four mills on the schools and only provide seven slip shod months for the country boy and the country girl. And our country children, besides, have no year's work laid out for them. Are we right when we say Bibb gets the most for the least money?