RULES PAROCHIAL PUPILS CAN RIDE IN SCHOOL BUS
Rules Parochial Pupils Can Ride in School Bus District Can Pay Transportation, Wickham Decides CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis.—A decision which will affect many of the 112.000 Catholic parochial school...
...It is using money for the benefit of the children riding In that bus...
...Wickham said that the legislature had carefully distinguished between transportation and tuition payments, forbidding tuition payments to parochial schools and in effect authorizing payment of transportation...
...Cites U. S. Ruling The court held that payment for such transportation was not an appropriation of public money for a sectarian religious purpose because the children, and not the church, were the beneficiaries...
...Judge Wickham asked in his decision...
...Benefits Children" "Permitting parochial school children to ride in a school bus the same as other children of the district...
...He continued: "As a matter of economy, the extra cost of transporting children who attend a parochial school is small as compared with the profit the district makes by their failure to so attend...
...According to the evidence the extra cost of transportation varied from about nothing to about $4.50 per child per year...
...A copy of the decision has been si t. the state department of education, which in the past has taken the position that stale school aid should be denied districts furnishing transportation to parochial schools...
...The district closed its own schools 10 years ago...
...and now transports pupils to Ca-dott...
...The liability for tuition greatly exceeds the extra cost of transportation...
...He cited an opinion by Chief Justice Hughes of the U. 8. supreme court upholding Louisiana free textbooks which were distributed to parochial as well as public schools...
...Rules Parochial Pupils Can Ride in School Bus District Can Pay Transportation, Wickham Decides CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis.—A decision which will affect many of the 112.000 Catholic parochial school children in Wiseons'n was handed down here recetnly by Circuit Judge James Wickham, Eau Cinlre, in which he held that a school district may legally pay for trasportatio of children to a parochial school...
...This suggests the inquiry as to whether the statute was intended as a coersive measure to make if expensive and difficult for children to attend private or parochial schools," Judge Wickham's decision said...
...member of the school board of the Joint school district for the towns of Siegel and Goetz...
...Ingolf E. Rasmus, district attorney of Chippewa county, was counsel for the victorious school board members...
...Chippewa county, against the other two board members and the LaVlgne Auto Co., questioning legality of the contract on the ground that parochial school pupils were also carried...
...In the interests of education, is not using public money for the benefit of any particular school...
...Judge Wickham issued a declaratory judgment in an action brought by John Rutz...
...In this case the cost of( tuition was $36 per year per child...
...Judge Wickham held that recent legislative changes in the school trans-p rtation law clearly authorized transportation of children to parochial schools...
...When a school district has closed Its school and the school board has arranged for the attendance of the school children at another public school, do school children who fail to attend the other public school lose their right to be transported because when arriving at the end of the established route for all children Ihey elect to attend a parochial or private school...
Vol. 10 • April 1940 • No. 15
