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Chapter  The Gilmer-Aikin Laws Former Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives Claud Gilmer remembered the limitations of his high school education. He came from a family of Methodist ministers, “I had an uncle who was a Methodist minister [and] I had a grandfather that was a presiding elder, Methodist presiding elder.” His mother wanted him to follow their example: “So when I finished high school up here in Rocksprings, why, she immediately decided she wanted me to go to a Methodist school in Georgetown, Southwestern University.” When he looked into applying at Southwestern, “the first thing I learned was I couldn’t go. My [high] school wasn’t affiliated.” Administrators promised him that if he passed the entrance examinations he could sit for classes: “So I sit here all August taking the entrance examinations, and finally they handed me one I hadn’t even had the subject in, some kind of science. So I just quit.” This experience formed his later opinions about the state of Texas rural education: “I could realize that the small, isolated school districts, if they just kept going on like that, why, how could a kid from out here get an education?” Claud Gilmer understood from personal experience that rural children often had a difficult time completing their formal education—or they quit school. Like other legislators who recognized, some from personal experience , the limitation rural schoolchildren faced, Gilmer and other lawmakers planned to use the post–World War II wealth to fund rural public schools and provide salary increases to attract and retain qualified teachers. the legislature addresses teachers’ salaries Improving the state’s rural schools remained a priority for many Texas teachers as well, and TSTA president Elizabeth Koch argued that increased teachers’ 78 chapter 5 salaries and funding benefited the rural children of Texas. “Much progress has been made,” she allowed, “but there remains much still to be done,” including raising teachers’ salaries. Higher wages would help keep qualified teachers in rural areas because they would not have to seek better pay in urban areas. “The boys and girls at the cross-roads, on the farms, in the small towns are entitled to good teachers,” she wrote, “to enough teachers, and to all other facilities that will give them a full, broad education worthy of a citizen of the United States.” It is important to point out, however, that the low pay was not necessarily due to poorly qualified teachers in rural areas, as some thought. In 1947–48, well over half of Texas teachers had at least a bachelor’s degree and 13 percent had a master’s degree; only 18 percent had not completed a degree. If critics wondered whether teachers really deserved a pay raise, Sarah Gaskill in the Texas Outlook encouraged educators to stand firm in their demands: Teachers should make no apology for requesting improved salary schedules. They should not apologize for seeking to improve their economic status but should unblushingly insist upon fair compensation. Teachers should not forget, nor allow the public to forget, that no work is more important than teaching. In January 1947, as the Fiftieth Legislature convened, state representative Dallas Blankenship introduced two bills supported by the Texas State Teachers Association to the House docket to address the teacher pay issue. First, House Bill 300 proposed to raise schoolteachers’ salaries to a minimum of $2,000 per school year, with additional compensation based upon experience and level of education—a bachelor’s degree or higher. Next, House Bill 301 was an appropriations bill to fund his proposed salary increase. In the past, the moneys to support educational financing, including teachers’ salaries, came from the school fund. The apportionment had increased to $46 per child in 1946, and Blankenship’s funding bill called for a per pupil apportionment of $55. His proposal would have supplemented the available school fund by allocating money from the state’s general fund. On February 25, 1947, the House passed the bills, but the proposed burden on the state’s general fund aroused the interest of Senate Finance Committee Chair James E. Taylor from Navarro County. On March 4, 1947, Senator Taylor introduced an alternate bill to counter Blankenship’s funding proposal, and Rep. Claud Gilmer introduced a companion bill in the House. Senator Taylor’s bill sought to protect the general fund by suggesting that only needy school districts should receive additional funds above the previ- [18.224.59.231...

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