FEDERAL ASSISTANCE FOR CONSTRUCTION OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS MONDAY, JUNE 6, 1949 UNITED STATES SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE, The subcommittee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 a. m., in room G-16, United States Capitol, Senator George D. Aiken presiding. Present: Senator AIKEN. Senator AIKEN. The hearing this morning is to be a continuation of the hearings on the various bills now before the Senate relative to Federal aid by way of grants and loans to the States in providing for expanding school facilities. I understand you are the first and only witness this morning, Mr. Dawson. You may proceed. STATEMENT OF HOWARD A. DAWSON, DIRECTOR OF RURAL SERVICE, NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, AND EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF COUNTY SUPERINTENDENTS Mr. DAWSON. Thank you, Senator. In the first place for the sake of the record, I will say that I am Howard A. Dawson, the director of rural service for the National Education Association, and I am the executive secretary of the National Conference of County and Rural Areas Superintendent of Schools. I am authorized to speak officially for the National Education Association. I do not speak officially for the county superintendents by authorization, but I think you can consider it virtually so. In the first place I would like to explain, Senator, that when I was first invited to appear before the committee it was to be next Monday, and because of the need for arranging the schedule for people from out of the city, they asked me if I would not testify this morning, and I have not had an opportunity to prepare a statement. With your permission, if after my testimony is completed there is a need to supplement the record with factual information, I should like to have the privilege of submitting it later. Senator AIKEN. Yes; you may have that privilege of submitting anything which you feel is desirable to complete the oral testimony that you give this morning. Mr. DAWSON. Thank you. The subject before us, as you explained, is Federal assistance to the States for the construction of school buildings or the provision of physical facilities for public schools. Now it is the policy of the National Education Association and others associated with us to support in the first instance the program for general Federal aid for education, such as S. 246, already passed by the Senate, and as soon as that is in the clear we expect to give the same kind of support to aid for school buildings that we did to that bill. Now one reason for adopting that program is: We know full well that it is impossible to have a modern educational program to meet the needs of children and youth and service community needs without adequate physical facilities for schools. Some 23 or 24 years ago when I began my professional career on the State level as director of research in the State department of education, I observed that most of the experts in school finance and school administration took the position that the paying for school buildings was a job which should be left entirely to the local community, that even the State was not justified in giving aid. The argument was that if the community itself did not pay for the buildings, there would not be a proper appreciation of them and they would not be properly cared for. I can dispose of that by saying that there never was any more. complete and utter nonsense uttered by professional people or anybody else. As a matter of fact, if you used that kind of an argument, you would not have many public buildings paid for by the State and Federal Government. Senator AIKEN. You would not have any good highways, either. Mr. DAWSON. No; you would not. Senator AIKEN. Or any other kind of public highways. Mr. DAWSON. So I think you can dispose of that observation. Most reasonable people would accept it, but the fundamental reason is this: There are the same inequalities in the ability of local governmental units to pay for school buildings that there are in ability to pay for teachers' salaries or any other current operating expense. I have a table here which I may put into the record later, just published by the National Council of State Governments, showing that among the States within the rural elementary districts the richest district has some four or five times as much assessed valuation of property as the poorest district. In the rural 12-grade districts usually centered around a village you have got about the same differences in ability, and contrary to what most people would guess, there are equal differences among the cities. There are poor cities and there are rich cities, so that we do not have any equality of ability to pay for buildings any more than we do for any other kind of school services. I do not know how much money ought to be required or would be required to give the proper kind of physical facilities for schools in the United States. If any of us knew that, it would not be necessary to propose this $5,000,000 to make a survey under the auspices of the Office of Education and the 48 State departments of education. There is not anybody who knows the answer to that. We do not even know how many children are in varying degrees of need for additional school facilities. I can, however, give you some indication of what the situation is. What I shall say will also indicate the need for the kind of study that is proposed in this bill S. 287 which, by the way, in my opinion is the best bill before you. You will remember that in the first days of the onslought of the depression the schools found themselves in dire circumstances about the year 1932-33, and especially in 1933-34. It took about 2 or 3 years for the full effect of the depression to strike the schools. Well, about that time the Public Works Administration, which at that time was under the Department of the Interior, conducted a survey as to the need of additional school-building facilities throughout the United States. At that time they were interested not only in building schools, but they were interested in works projects which gave employment to people in need of employment. Now at that time they found that there was a deficiency in school construction between 1911 and 1934 amounting to somewhat more than $1,000,000,000. No doubt you will recall, Senator, as I do, that back in the twenties we thought we were building a lot of school buildings, and we were, but the point is by actual survey by the best experts in the country we fell behind $1,000,000,000 then. There were in 1934, 2,745,000 children who did not have any schoolhouses at all. There were 2,745,000 that were in school buildings entirely inadequate. They were obsolete because of age or they never had been very good or they had become fire hazards and so on. Then it was estimated that in order to consolidate rural schools there was a great need. The needs for those two purposes were about $1,370,000,000 for children who did not have any school buildings, and another $1,370,000,000 for children improperly housed, and $2,100,000,000 for school consolidations, which gave a total deficit at that time of $4,843,000,000. I would like to have permission to correct this figure later. I think it was about $500,000,000 that they put into school dollars, which was not anything like would enable us to catch up. No one need have any facts cited as to what happened during the war because we neither had the labor nor the materials, and the school-building construction got further and further behind so that on the basis of what I call an educated guess, I would say we are 11 or 12 billion dollars behind in school-building construction in this country right now. As I told you, I am the executive secretary of the National Organization of County and Rural Area Superintendents. In several respects the need for additional school-building construction is greatest in these areas, although I think it is hardly as well recognized because it is not now where people see it so well. The need is greatest for two or three reasons. Most of us know what happened to the birth rate during the war and the postwar period. In urban areas between 1945 and 1947 there was a 41-percent increase in the birth rate. That is the first time in several decades the cities became self-sustaining as far as the production of children is concerned. It is true that in the rural areas the increase is only about 12 percent, but after all the rural areas were about 55 percent ahead of the urban areas to start with. Down South there is a ratio of about 2 to 1 in the rural farm areas. I mean by 2 to 1, twice as many children as is necessary to replace the population. The urban areas were not replacing their population, so it was even more than 2 to 1 as compared to urban, but observe this: In 1945 to 1947 the increase in the number of children 6 years oldthat is one very good measure-in rural nonfarm areas that is, places of 2,500 population and under-was 12 percent. In the cities it was only about three and a half. Now, what evidence we have shows that that ratio is still holding good; that is, the place in the country that is growing most rapidly is the rural nonfarm area. The soldiers who came back have gone into these villages or often suburban areas in the vicinity of cities, but they are what we call these rural nonfarm areas. Senator AIKEN. Mr. Dawson, one reason for that is those are about the only areas where there were any places available for them to go. Mr. DAWSON. Well, that is right. A great many of them did want to get enough land, you know, to raise a garden or do a little subsistence farming while having a job, and they came back wanting to raise families. They had been in the Army. They started raising families and that was a better place than in crowded tenements in the cities. Well, you can see readily that that affects the farm population. Roughly it is 25 percent of school children, and over the country 25 percent in the rural nonfarm and 50 percent in urban. That is roughly what it is. Now, the people in the open country, in order to have high schools, almost invariably must do so in cooperation with their village neighbors, so that in this market increase in rural nonfarm population, it affects the farm population as far as school building needs are concerned. Now, the next reason that the need is so great in rural areas is for a long time there has been a great need for the reorganization of school districts. The number of one-room schools during the war increased very materially. Senator AIKEN. Of one-room schools? Mr. DAWSON. Yes; about 96,000 in 1942. Senator AIKEN. And they increased in the rural areas during the war? You say the number of one-room rural schools increased? Mr. DAWSON. No. I mean decreased very materially. Senator AIKEN. That is right. Mr. DAWSON. If I said increased, I beg your pardon. Senator AIKEN. I know in my own State they decreased. They simply could not get teachers for them. Mr. DAWSON. That is right. About 1942 there were about 96,000. If you run back to 1910 there were 250,000 or more. At the present time we do not know the exact number, but it is very probably not more than 70,000. In the State of Illinois, for example, they had 12,000 districts 3 years. At the present time they have about 5,000, and they are disappearing at the rate of about 25 or 30 a week. Just hundreds upon hundreds of one-room schools have closed. For the most part the children go into these centers, these little crossroad villages and sometimes into the larger places, especially for high schools. Senator AIKEN. I might mention, Mr. Dawson, that one very interesting byproduct of closing the one-room rural school has been better rural roads. Mr. DAWSON. I am glad you called attention to that, Senator. Senator AIKEN. And year-round roads, because when they closed the rural schools they had to keep the roads open, and they have since been building better roads over which to transport the students to the inadequate facilities of the consolidated school. Mr. DAWSON. Just to digress a minute, I found out 25 years ago that whether the roads were available at a given time did not have anything to do with whether you ought to consolidate schools or not, because if you consolidate the schools you have the roads. The mothers go to work on the county judge and State highway officials. Senator AIKEN. That has been the case, and rural roads have improved very rapidly since rural schools have been closed. Mr. DAWSON. Correct. Now there are about 15 States that by law have a very definite program of reorganization of school districts. The number is increasing. For example, just about 3 weeks ago Colorado enacted one of the best school-reorganization laws that I have seen anywhere, and the rate at which the rural people are reorganizing their schools is far beyond anything we have ever seen in this country before. As you said while ago, one reason has been that they had to do it to get adequate teachers. These youngsters who graduate from teachers colleges are not going to live in the isolated situations that they have had to live in in some of these rural communities, but that is not the only thing. The rural people by conference, study, observation, and experience have found. that they can get more nearly the kind of education they want in the somewhat larger schools in cooperation with their neighbors, but you cannot have the kind of program they want and need unless you have the physical facilities, school buildings, and equipment properly planned and arranged for carrying a modern educational program. That brings me to one important provision in a bill that this committee ought to report out. Senator AIKEN. When you refer to S. 287 as the most workable bill before the committee, are you referring to it as amended and reintroduced? Mr. DAWSON. Well, yes. Senator AIKEN. Rather than the original bill as introduced on January 10? Mr. DAWSON. The amendment of May 6, by several Senators. Do not understand me to say I think that is a perfect bill, but I do not think there is anything in it that we could not work out in conference and after hearings. Senator AIKEN. No perfect bill is going to be enacted. Mr. DAWSON. Well, we have to be practical-minded. As a whole I think it is the best bill before the committee. Now, the provision I especially wanted to call attention to is the provision for the making of school-building plans by the State departments of education with advisory assistance from the Office of Education. Unless an integral part of any aid program is the planning of buildings, we are almost certain to get school buildings put where they ought not to be, and that will result in unnecessary expense for transportation that ought not to be incurred, and we are also most certain to get buildings that are not flexible, not properly arranged for a modern program, and for from 25 to 30 years we will have the educational opportunity of children obstructed by the mere physical arrangements under which the school program has to take place. Now it has been my privilege to be in every State in this Union, and in a great many of them several times. Especially in small communities in rural areas just day after day you can go from village to village, city to city, and see well-trained school people working in a school plant where it is absolutely impossible to do the best thing they 92679-49 |