Opinion
No. 31224.
April 3, 1934.
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS.
Petitions of electors of contiguous school districts for consolidation into special consolidated district, which described boundaries of existing districts and stated name of proposed district, but failed to describe territory to be embraced in proposed district, held fatally defective, and school board was not authorized to take separate petitions, lay them on map, and obtain description for new special district by tracing outside boundaries of entire territory thus combined (Code 1930, section 6584(b)).
APPEAL from Chancery Court of Tishomingo County.
T.A. Clark, of Iuka, for appellants.
We take the position that jurisdictional facts do not have to appear in the petition, but only in the order of the school board and if the order of the school board shows all the jurisdictional facts, that is all that is necessary.
Section 6584, par. (b), Code of 1930.
The school board could take all the petitions and ascertain exactly what territory was asked to be created into the special school district.
The law does not require any certain kind of description of territory in a petition, but all that is necessary if the description in the petition is such that the board can determine what territory is sought to be created into the special district this is sufficient.
Town of North Carrollton et al. v. Town of Carrollton, 73 So. 812.
W.C. Sweat, of Corinth, for appellees.
The territory to be embraced in the proposed school district must be described in the petition.
The order of the school board attempting to create the district is an absolute nullity.
In the case of Yeager v. Merritt, 153 Miss. 64, 120 So. 832, the court held that the recitals in a petition of necessary facts to create a consolidated school district between two or more counties, so as to embrace a consolidated county line school, are jurisdictional, and that the board of supervisors had no power to add territory to a district until a petition has been presented to them, reciting the essential jurisdictional facts.
Lee v. Bassett, 153 Miss. 854, 121 So. 842; Board of Supervisors v. Young, 156 Miss. 644, 126 So. 469; Bryant v. Board of Supervisors of Yalobusha County, 133 Miss. 714, 98 So. 148; Yarbrough v. Wilson, 159 Miss. 97, 131 So. 228; Gilbert v. Scarborough, 159 Miss. 679, 131 So. 876; Belden Consolidated School District et al. v. Lee County et al., 160 Miss. 157, 133 So. 225; Borroum v. Purdy Road District, 131 Miss. 778, 95 So. 677; Boles v. Leflore County, 85 Miss. 390, 37 So. 707; Word v. Sunflower County, 114 Miss. 446, 75 So. 259; Evans v. Wright, 126 Miss. 703, 89 So. 226; DeSoto Co. v. Weatherford, 114 Miss. 259, 75 So. 114; Craft v. DeSoto Co., 79 Miss. 618, 31 So. 205.
Argued orally by T.A. Clark, for appellant, and by W.C. Sweat, for appellee.
The majority of the qualified electors of each of eight existing school districts of contiguous territory petitioned the county school board to create the Tishomingo special consolidated school district; one of the petitions being as follows: "To the County School Board of said county: As provided under section 6584, paragraph (b), Code 1930, we the undersigned, a majority of the qualified electors of Dennis Consolidated School District do hereby petition your honorable body to include the Dennis Consolidated School District in the proposed Tishomingo Special Consolidated School District. Dennis Consolidated School District is bounded as follows, to-wit (here reciting the boundaries of the Dennis district)."
Each of the other seven petitions were in the same form, naming the particular existing school district and giving its existing boundaries.
It will be noted that no description was given of the territory to be embraced in the proposed new district, and of that it was said in the petitions only that the new district was a "proposed" district. The school board took the eight separate petitions and laid them upon the map, and thereby obtained the description for the new special district by tracing the outside boundaries of the entire territory thus combined, including therein all the combined territory, no more and no less; and appellants insist that this was according to the intention and understanding of the petitioners.
The county school board having entered an order attempting to combine the contiguous territory covered by the eight separate petitions into the Tishomingo special consolidated school district, and the board of supervisors having recognized the order and levied taxes, appellees attacked the attempted creation by a suit in chancery, and prevailed before the chancellor, on the ground that there was no description in the petitions, or in any of them, of the territory to be embraced in the proposed special consolidated district.
The controlling section of the Code, section 6584 (b), requires that petitions of this nature shall, among other things, describe the territory to be embraced in the proposed new district. As already mentioned, the only description of the new district given in the petitions is "the proposed Tishomingo Special Consolidated School District," which is no description; at most it imports a reference to a new district which has been in some manner proposed. There is no showing either in the petitions or in the entire record that the proposed description, as such, was at that time anywhere of authentic record. The reference is therefore to something which rested wholly in parol.
In every phase in which these questions, relating to the creation of new school districts, have been presented, this court has uniformly held that the proper written petition containing the material statutory recitals is jurisdictional. Yeager v. Merritt, 153 Miss. 64, 120 So. 832; Lee v. Bassett, 153 Miss. 854, 121 So. 842; Board of Sup'rs v. Young, 156 Miss. 644, 126 So. 469; Yarbrough v. Wilson, 159 Miss. 97, 131 So. 828; Gilbert v. Scarborough, 159 Miss. 679, 131 So. 876. A description of the property to be embraced in the proposed district is one of the most important elements in the petition. If this element could be omitted, or left to rest, in whole or in part, in parol, other elements could with equal reason be omitted, and the rule requiring the written petition as a jurisdictional foundation would be frittered away. It is the purpose of the law that, when a petition of this sort is presented for signature, the elector may see from the petition itself what territory is proposed to be embraced, and that this important and determinative question shall not be left open to parol and to the uncertainties and misunderstanding so often incident to parol representations.
Affirmed.