Bay View School District v. Linscott

Temple, C. In August, 1865, there were in Santa Cruz County two adjacent school districts, one known as the Santa Cruz school district and the other as the Bay View school district. Since that time both have maintained their autonomy, electing trustees at the proper times, and have kept up schools within the original boundaries of their respective districts.

The Bay View district, the plaintiff here, in 1868 purchased a lot for its school-house and has since expended five thousand dollars in building a school-house upon it. In this house its school has been since maintained where there has been an average attendance of one hundred pupils. At every apportionment of school moneys by the superintendent of said county, up to December 15, 1891, its share has been apportioned to plaintiff and has been expended by it by orders drawn upon the treasury in the usual mode.

At the last-named date the defendant, as superintendent of schools, refused to make any apportionment to plaintiff and has [27]since refused to recognize plaintiff or its right to the public moneys on the grounds: 1. That said Bay View school district has no legal existence. 2. That the persons claiming to act as trustees of said alleged school district are not trustees thereof; and 3.. That no public school has been maintained within the exterior boundaries of said alleged Bay View school district as defined and fixed by the order creating said district, except the public school hereinbefore referred to, which school since March, 1866, has been maintained in a school-house situate within the exterior boundaries of the town (now city) of Santa Cruz.

. The contention is, that the portion of Bay View school district within the exterior boundaries of the city of Santa Cruz has ceased to be a portion of such school district, and therefore no school has been maintained within the district. The question to be determined, therefore, is whether by the incorporation of the town or city of Santa Cruz, all that portion of the school district within the exterior boundaries of the city has been withdrawn from the district.

It was said by this court in Hughes v. Ewing, 93 Cal. 414: “The power to change the boundaries of the district, as well as to define them in the first instance, is of legislative origin, and whether exercised immediately by the legislature or mediately by a board of supervisors—the local legislature—is, whenever exercised, a legislative act. It is well settled that the legislature has the power to make such changes, aud that in the exercise of this power it may make such provision respecting the property and obligations of the corporation as it may deem equitable or proper, and that its action in this respect is conclusive.”