143 So. 407 | Miss. | 1932
Lead Opinion
The question in this case is whether the superintendent of a five-trustee consolidated school may be employed under a valid contract for three years. Appellant, the former superintendent, contends for the affirmative of this issue and relies principally on sections 6648 and 6665, Code 1930. The first of these sections provides as its concluding sentence that "consolidated schools shall have all the privileges granted to separate school districts." Under the second section, above mentioned, it is enacted that the trustees of separate school districts shall have, among many others, the following powers and duties: "(10) To contract with superintendents, principals and teachers, for a term of . . . three years. . . ." It is therefore argued that the word "privileges" as used in the first of the quoted statutes is synonymous with powers and duties in the other. *582
Appellees contend that a consolidated school is simply a common school where two or more existing schools of that character have been consolidated into a single common school, citing Walton v. Covington County,
We have carefully considered all the statutes cited to us by counsel and have reviewed the entire chapter on schools. No section definitely deals with the subject here in hand, and we must pronounce the question, like so many others in respect to the details of school administration, as doubtful. In such a case we will follow the interpretation adopted by the attorney-general, and generally observed by the department of education in accordance with his opinions. Peets v. Martin,
Where the construction of a statute is doubtful, the interpretation placed thereon and followed for a considerable course of time by the administrative departments should be followed.
Affirmed.
Addendum
Contemporary construction as a rule of construing statutes is as old as the common law, and has, throughout the history of the state, been recognized as the proper course in doubtful cases. 25 Mississippi and Southern Digest, Annotated, title "Statutes," 218; Chrisman v. City of Brookhaven,
The briefs in the case cited the opinion of the attorney-general referred to in the opinion, and this court, in the case of Peets v. Martin,
The court will take such judicial notice and resort to every proper method of ascertaining from the departments whatever it is required judicially to know, but does not actually know. This is fully discussed in Witherspoon v. West,
Suggestion of error overruled. *584