County Board of Education v. Boehm
County Board of Education v. Boehm
Opinion of the Court
An inspection of the case of Shearer v. Board of Education of Stark County, the case with which the court of appeals of the Third Appellate District found its judgment to be in con
We conclude from an inspection of the journal entry of the court of common pleas in this case, and of the journal entry of the court of appeals in connection with its certificate of conflict, that the only question raised and decided in the courts below was as to the scope and effect of Section 4736, General Code, and the extent, if at all, in which the construction of that section is controlled by Sections 4692, 4735-1 and 4735-2, General Code, with reference to the power of a county board of education, in the proper exercise of its discretion, to create a new district out of one entire existing district and a part of another existing district, and the limitations upon that power by a remonstrance of the electors. We will, therefore, confine our consideration to that subject. Board of Commissioners of Mercer County v. Deitsch, 94 Ohio St., 1; State v. Wirick, 81 Ohio St., 343; Springfield, Jackson & Pomeroy Rd. Co. v. Western Ry. Construction Co., 49 Ohio St., 681; Pollock v. Cohen, 32 Ohio St., 514; 3 Corpus Juris, 694, 727, 794.
A review of the extensive and ever.changing legislation of this state upon the subject of its public schools, their management by the various boards, the various means of selecting such boards, and the various modes of creating and changing districts and apportioning territory and pupils among the districts, is interesting only as illustrative of the
The fact that almost each succeeding general assembly has seen fit to revise or repeal the school legislation of its predecessor is instructive only in its emphasis of the fact that any system thus far discovered and adopted has failed to give general satisfaction. The whole structure having been built piecemeal by different legislators living at different times under different conditions and having in view different standards of attainment, the usual result has followed, to-wit, an inconsistent, inharmonious, and in some respects unintelligible code governing the powers and duties of boards of education ; and it is this situation which gives rise to the conflict between the conclusion arrived at by the lower courts in the instant case and the conclusion reached in the case of Shearer v. Board of Education, above referred to.
Before the creation of the county board of education, provision was made for township boards, special district boards, and the various other varieties of school boards then by law existing, to agree among themselves upon the distribution of territory, and provision was made for an appeal to. the probate court. The operation of that system resulted in much litigation, for.it was early discovered that each district was ambitious to hold all the taxable territory it had, and seldom were the boards able to agree upon the transfer of territory from a large and well-financed district to a small and poorly-financed district. In consequence the juris
The provision then having served its purpose, the school districts of the state having been arranged according to topography and population with
It will not be presumed that the legislature by the repeal of an existing statute and the enactment of a different statute upon the same subject did not intend to change the effect of the law as it existed prior to the repeal, but on the contrary it will be presumed that it was the intention and purpose of the legislature by the repeal of the old and the enactment of the new to change the effect and operation of the statute to the extent of the change in the language thereof, and that, having taken out of the statute the requirement that the district should be arranged according to topography and population, the legislature no longer intended to require such arrangement, but relied upon the sound judgment of the county board of education, having in mind the improved facilities of transportation, to make such arrangement of the territory of the respective districts as would best serve the comfort, health and education of the pupils. Having left out of the new enactment the provision that adjoining
Coming now to the consideration of the construction of Section 4736, General Code, with reference to Section 4692, General Code, while it is difficult to distinguish between the creation, as in the instant
Nor are we able to find that Sections 4735-1 and 4735-2, General Code, enacted in 1914, qualify Section 4736, General Code, enacted in 1919, and are of opinion that even though they were of concurrent enactment Sections 4735-1 and 4735-2 are only effective to dissolve and transfer an entire existing district to another existing district upon the initiative of the electors of the district seeking dissolution and union with another district, or upon the initiative of the board of such district seeking dissolution and union with another district, thereby enabling such district to accomplish such a union with an existing district without the aid of and probably in spite of the county board of education, and in no way limit the power or the discretion
Having reached this conclusion it follows that a remonstrance signed by less than a majority of the qualified electors residing in the territory affected by the order creating the school district is not effective to defeat the action of the county board in the creation of such district.
The judgment of the court of appeals, affirming the judgment of the common pleas court overruling the demurrer to the petition, is reversed.
Judgment reversed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.