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both offices, and although there is no specific provision of law declaring the incumbent of either ineligible to the other, yet it is believed that the public interests would be best promoted by the separation of the two offices.

Under the authority conferred by § 31, above quoted, the Superintendent has, by a general order, required the several town clerks, within ten days after every annual town meeting, to forward to the County Superintendents of their respective counties the names of the persons elected to the office of Town Superintendent of their respective towns: and also to transmit to such County Superintendents the names of the clerks of the several school districts in their town from time to time as they shall be received from the districts respectively; instead of forwarding the same to the state Superintendent, as required by the section referred to.

CONSENT OF TRUSTEES, AND NOTICE OF ALTERATION.

By the 22d section of the school act (No. 26) it is pro vided that "no alteration of any school district made without the consent of the trustees thereof, shall take effect until three months after notice in writing shall be given, by the Town Superintendent, to some one or more of such trustees." As the principal portion of the inhabited territory of the state has already been subdivided into school districts, every formation of a new district, will, to a greater or less extent, involve some alteration in districts previously existing. The consent of a majority of the trustees, therefore, of each district affected by such alteration, or a written notice thereof, to some one of such trustees, is in all cases indispensable to the validity of the proceeding. In the absence of such consent the order of the Town Superintendent is, to use a legal phrase, inchoate, or in abeyance, until the expiration of three months after service of the notice required by law : and the districts to be affected by the proposed alteration, remain for all district purposes, in their original condition, the same as though no action whatever had been had. The law has not prescribed any specific time within which the notice of the alteration must be given, where the consent of trustees has been withheld; but it is obviously

proper that such notice should be given at the time of the alteration, or as soon thereafter as may be practicable. A notice at any subsequent period would undoubtedly however be valid, and would amount to a republication of the order of the Town Superintendent; and at the expiration of three months from the service of such notice, the alteration would take effect. The consent of the trustees, when given, would appear from the record of the alteration; but in the absence of such proof it may be established by other testimony.

Whenever any portion of the inhabitants or territory of one district is annexed to another existing district, the consent of a majority of the trustees of each district must be procured, or the notice required by law must be given.

The consent of trustees to a proposed alteration in their district may be given either verbally or in writing: and it has even been held that their presence at the time of alteration, with full knowledge of the fact of such alteration, amounts, in the absence of any objection on their part, to a consent.-Com. School, Dec. 59.

Persons attached to a district without the consent of trustees, may be transferred to another district, at any time prior to the expiration of three months; and such new transfer amounts to a virtual abandonment of the original order.

The consent of trustees to an alteration in their district must in all cases have reference to the specific alteration proposed, and cannot be general and unlimited.-Com School, Dec. 30.

The provision requiring the consent of trustees to detach persons from their district, and holding them three months without such consent, was made for the benefit and protection of the trustees, to whose injury the alteration might operate. For instance, trustees might have made contracts and incurred responsibilities, which would operate oppressively, if some of the most wealthy were detached before they had time to collect the tax. And to carry this intention into effect, the act should be benignly and favorably construed for the protection of the trustees.-Id. 30.

NOTICE FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF A NEW DISTRICT.

Whenever any school district is formed in any town, it is the duty of the Town Superintendent, within twenty days thereafter, to prepare a notice in writing, describing such district, and appointing a time and place for the first district meeting, and to deliver such notice to a taxable inhabitant of the district, who is bound to notify every other inhabitant of the district, qualified to vote at district meetings, by reading the notice in the hearing of each. such inhabitant, or in case of his absence from home, by leaving a copy thereof, or of so much thereof as relates to the time and place of such meeting, at the place of his abode, at least six days before the time of the meeting. In case such notice shall not be given, or the inhabitants of a district shall refuse or neglect to assemble, or form a district meeting, when so notified; or in case any such district, having been formed and organized in pursuance of such notice, shall afterwards be dissolved, so that no competent authority shall exist therein, to call a special district meeting in the manner hereinafter provided; such notice must be renewed by the Town Superintendent, and served in the manner above described.—§ 55–57. (Nos. 66-68.)

The notice here required to be served on each voter in the district by the inhabitant to whom the Town Superintendent delivers the notice prepared by him, need not contain the description of the district referred to in the 55th section. It is sufficient if it specify the time, place, and general object of the meeting. "It is necessary for the person notifying the inhabitants to have the district described, that he may know whom to notify. The inhabitant notified has no necessity for knowing who else is notified. The notice is to him as an individual. The same section defines the extent of this notice to individuals by saying, when the person is absent from home, he is to be warned by leaving at his place of abode a copy of the notice, or of so much thereof as relates to the time and place of the meeting. This is clear and conclusive. It could not be necessary that a personal notice should be more full and particular than is required of a notice left

in the absence of the person notified."-Per FLAGG, Sup't, Com. School Dec. 18.

If in consequence of the refusal of the trustees of the district or districts, from which a new district is formed, to consent to the proposed alteration, such new district cannot go into operation until after the expiration of three months from the service of notice of such alteration, the notice for the first meeting must be deferred until the expiration of such time; or at least must specify a day subsequent thereto for the holding of such meeting. Where a meeting has been held and officers chosen under a notice given by the Town Superintendent, in the mode prescribed by law, a second notice for such organi zation cannot be given under the pretence that the proceedings of such first meeting were invalid or irregular.Com. School Dec. 176.

On the formation of a new district, if notice for the first district meeting is not given within twenty days, it may be given subsequent to the expiration of that period: the provision requiring the notice to be given within that time being directory merely.-Id. 358.

APPRAISAL AND APPORTIONMENT OF DISTRICT PROPERTY.

Whenever a new district is formed from one or more districts, possessed of a school-house; and in cases where any district from which such new district may be in whole or in part formed, shall be entitled to other property than its school-house, it is made the duty of the Town Superintendent of common schools, at the time of forming such new district, to ascertain and determine the amount justly due to such new district, from any district out of which it may have been in whole or in part formed, as the proportion of such new district of the value of the school-house and other property belonging to the former district, at the time of such division. Such proportion is required to be ascertained, according to the taxable property of the inhabitants of the respective parts of such former district, at the time of the division, by the best evidence in the power of the Town Superintendent; and deduction to be made therein for any debts due from the former district. Such proportion, when ascertained, is to

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be levied, raised and collected, with the fees for collection, by the trustees of the district retaining the schoolhouse or other property of the former district, upon the taxable inhabitants of their district in the same manner as if the same had been authorized by a vote of their district for the building of a school-house; and when collected, to be paid to the trustees of the new district, to be applied by them towards procuring a school-house for their district; and the moneys so paid to the new district are to be allowed to the credit of the inhabitants who were taken from the former district, in reduction of any tax that may be imposed for erecting a school-house.67-69. (Nos. 92-94.)

When two or more districts are consolidated into one, the new districts succeed to all the rights of property possessed by the districts of which they may be composed; and when a district is annulled, and portions of it are annexed to other districts, that district into which the school-house, or its site, or any other property of such dissolved district may fall, succeeds to all the rights of the annulled district in respect to such property, and whenever two or more districts or parts of districts shall be united, and there shall be more than one school-house in such new or altered district, the trustees of such district may sell the site and buildings thereon, of either or both the school-houses situated in such new district.—§ 3 of chap. 260, Laws of 1841, (No. 95.)

In cases where by the dissolving a district, its schoolhouse, or other property, is annexed to or included in another district, the Town Superintendent of common schools, by whose orders such dissolution is effected, is required to appraise such property in the manner provided by law in cases of the creation of new districts; and the proportions assigned to the inhabitants of such dissolved district who are not annexed to the district which includes the school-house or other property, are to be raised by the trustees of such last mentioned district and paid over to the trustees of the district to which such inhabitants are annexed, in the same manner as in case of the crea tion of a new district, and to be applied to the same purpose. Id. 4, No. 96.

When there are any moneys in the hands of the offi

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