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Show ys A PBOFLIGATE BOARD. Probably because the board of education educa-tion has no money to spare it is so lavish with its expenditures. Perhaps because the public school system is on trial in this city the board of education is doing all it can to discredit it. Perhaps Per-haps because the children are packed like sardines in some schools the board of education seeks accommodations for sinecure substitute teachers. Thero will be a day of reckoning with the profligate and reckless board of education. There will be a time when you, Superintendent Millspaugh, will have to suffer for the extravagance that runs riot in your department. When Trustee Nelson suggested to fix the salary of the lowest grade teachers teach-ers at 180 a month The Times objected on the ground that a competent teacher could not be had for any such salary. We do not believe in pauper wages. But neither do we believe in the other extreme that is rampant in the school board now. When the people come to foot the bills and realize just how much of their money has been wasted they will hold mental indignation meetings with themselves and resolve sundry things distasteful to the school board. Yesterday, in accordance with the settled policy of the board, another do-re-me professor was engaged to draw a regular stipend from the city, vice Edwards resigned. Now The Times does not object to music iu the public schools. It is an inspiration and mental men-tal recreatiou for the pupils and should be encouraged, but until we have an abundance of means a regular teacher could lead in the singing, just as well as a special teacher, without additional expense. Nobody- expects to get a musical education in the common schools, and our board of education has not yet deoreed to run a conservatory conserva-tory of music. However, It is not that, but the appointment ap-pointment last night of a substitute teacher at 875 a month that The Times raises protest against. How will the substitute while away her tedious monotony mo-notony at $75 a month? If she be vivacious and sparkling, she might entertain en-tertain Superintendent Millspaugh during his weary moments. Otherwise she will be idle until some regular teacher accommodates her by taking sick. And it is just as liable as not to happen that at the auspicious moment two or three school ma'ams may become be-come ill at the same time, and the board will then be required to appoint several more substitutes. We wonder It did not provide for an emergency of the kind while it was about it. The fact is that this substitute business busi-ness is a fraud on the taxpayer. It is in imitation of tho large cities, where out of a big corps of teachers some are constantly absent; and even then provision pro-vision is made in most cases for each school to arrange its work with a view to a temporary vacancy occurring at any time. Why a city of the size of Salt Lake, pressed hard as it is any way for school funds, should not be able to get along with some suoh arrangement at present, the people will demand to know by and by. |