Ybor City Tape

Wilson interview

 1 16

 with back then in those days was getting rid of the trustees

 which we did in '47.

M: Why?

W: Well, because they couldn't ...

M: Oh, the whole system?

W: Yeah. In '47 when we passed the minimum foundation law.

 We had one district whose boundaries were coexistent

 with the county boundaries. See, the trustees were consti-

 tutional officers back then. The school board wasn't.

M: That doesn't make sense to me.

W:, Well, it doesn't make sense but that was the way it was in

 those days. See, when we started as a typical rural state

 the trustees were set up in the 1848 constitution.

M: That's what you mean by co nstituitonal?

W: Yeah. They were set up to be elected in--.- the constitution.

 And they were constitutional officers. You couldn't remove

 them except by- election. So the only way we could do it in

 '47 when we made the minimum foundation law was to change

 the boundaries so that you had one district. you still had

 one district set of trustees and you had a county school

 board. But your district trustees gradually just didn't

 do as much and the district trustees hired the supervising

 principal of Tampa district and I guess later hired all the

 principals of these other schools out there prior to '47.