There was a shortage of teachers in cities and towns in Pima County in 1937, but not in rural areas. The county superintendent placed the blame on Cupid's shoulders and not on the qualifications required that the teachers be single.
From the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday, September 5, 1937:
CUPID HAMPERING WORK IN SCHOOLS
It may be Dan Cupid, or it may be the strictures of Arizona's qualifications for rural school teachers, but there's a shortage. Yesterday Marvin L. Burton, county school superintendent, repeated his statement of a few days ago, to the effect that a scarcity of teachers, especially in primary teaching grades exists.
Not in the Pima county rural school system, Burton said, but in city and town school systems in the state. The call is for teachers qualified to teach primary grades, and, further, teachers who are single.
And here seems to be the rub, for available qualified teachers for primary grades are married; and cities and towns in Arizona appear not to espouse the cause of the married teacher. The rural county school systems make no such distinction, Burton said, and, thus, have not felt the dearth in teaching talent.
We suspect that the rule for unmarried teachers was only applied to women. We assume married men were permitted to teach as long as they were qualified.
