Ford County IL Archives Court.....School, Directors Of District No 7 1900
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Deb Haines http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00003.html#0000719 May 1, 2008, 9:44 pm

Source: Reports Of Cases At Law And In Chancery
Written: 1900

The School Directors of District No. 7, etc.

v.

The People ex rel. Henry Heinreichs.

Opinion filed June 21, 1900.

Schools—defeat of proposition to build school house does not excuse 
establishing school. School directors have power to lease a suitable room or 
rooms for establishing a school without submitting the question to the 
electors, and they are not discharged from their duty in that regard by the 
failure of a proposition to build a school house, at an election held for that 
purpose.

Appeal from the Circuit Court of Ford county; the Hon. John H. Moffett, Judge, 
presiding.

Tipton & Tipton, S. P. Rady, and Cloud & Moffett, for appellants.

Schneider & Schneider, and A. L. Phillips, for appellee.

Mr. Justice Carter delivered the opinion of the court: 

The court below overruled appellants' demurrer to the relator's petition, and, 
appellants refusing to plead further, entered final judgment awarding a 
peremptory writ of mandamus, commanding the appellants, as school directors of 
district No. 7, township 24, range 7, in said county of Ford, to take the 
necessary legal steps at once to establish a free school in said district out 
of moneys in the hands of the treasurer to the credit of said district, and to 
maintain the same during the school year as long as such funds will permit, 
and to that end to procure any suitable room or building in the district, and 
if no other room or building more suitable can be procured than the room 
offered by relator, Henry Heinreichs, that they accept, equip and use the same 
for such school according to his, said Heinreichs', offer mentioned in the 
bill, without rent or charge, if they elect not to allow any rental therefor; 
that they employ a competent teacher, to be paid out of such fund, to teach 
said school; that as soon as the law will permit they proceed to take proper 
steps to secure a levy and extension of taxes upon the taxable property in the 
district to maintain a school in the district for at least one hundred and ten 
days of the ensuing school year. The appellants, who are the school directors 
commanded by the said judgment of the court below to perform the duties, as 
such directors, enjoined upon them by the statute, have appealed, and assigned 
for error that the petition was not sufficient in law and that the demurrer 
should have been sustained.

We are of the opinion that the petition is sufficient in its averments to show 
a clear right to the writ, and that the court below decided correctly in 
overruling the various technical objections urged by appellants in support of 
their demurrer. It seems to have been supposed by them that because the 
proposition to build a school house failed to carry, they were excused from 
the duty of establishing any school in the district. In this they were 
mistaken. The petition shows that this district was formed and the directors 
elected in June, 1898; that they organized by electing one of their number 
president and another secretary or clerk of the board, but that, 
notwithstanding there was sufficient money in the treasury for the purpose and 
that they have been requested by the relator and others, who are tax-payers 
and legal voters of the district, to establish a school in the district and to 
provide a suitable room and employ a competent teacher therefor, they have 
neglected and refused to do so. The petition shows that sufficient children of 
proper school age reside in the district for such a school, and that by the 
neglect and omission of duty by the directors they are denied school 
privileges; that no school tax has been levied since the district was created; 
that the relator, Heinreichs, built a sufficient and suitable room for a 
school room near the center of the district and easy of access from all parts 
of the district, and tendered the same to the directors for a school room with 
or without the payment of rent, at the option of the directors, but that they 
refused to accept the same although they acknowledged its suitability. The 
petition shows that one-half of the lands in the district are owned by one 
man; that the election upon the proposition to build a school house was held 
at his house, and that he had previously given notice to some of the legal 
voters not to trespass on his lands, and that as a result such voters remained 
away from the polls, and that in this and other improper ways he had caused 
the defeat of the proposition to build. But whatever may have been the cause 
of the refusal of the legal voters to sanction the proposition to build a 
school house, the directors were not discharged from their duty to establish 
and maintain a school in the district. They have power to obtain, by lease, a 
suitable room or rooms for the purpose without submitting that question to the 
electors, and the petition shows that they can obtain such a room at small 
cost, and even without any charge whatever.

We deem it unnecessary to follow counsel in their argument in support of their 
special grounds of demurrer. We regard the petition as sufficiently certain 
and specific, and as showing a clear case of neglect and disregard of official 
duty by these directors.

The judgment of the court below is right, and it will be affirmed. 

Judgment affirmed.

Additional Comments:
Reports of Cases at Law and in Chancery Argued and Determined in the Supreme 
Court of Illinois, Volume 186, Containing Cases in which Opinions were filed 
in June and October, 1900, and Cases in which Rehearings were denied at the 
October term, 1900. Isaac Newton Phillips, Reporter. Springfield: 1900.

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