department. Well, of course, that is just an abuse of the intent of the law. I am just surprised that the people responsible for that school district would be a party to that kind of a shakedown. Now, you weaken a good law that way, and we are going to find out and get ready for it. We are going to find out when this investigation study is conducted and completed that there is going to have to be some elimination of this kind of waste. But when you have the kind of project you are talking about where you have a great military base, your tax base has been weakened by it, you do not have, as you point out here, you do not have an assessed valuation that makes it possible to support a decent school, then the Federal Government has a clear obligation and I am all for that. I am also for extending, however, the general aid beyond the impacted area legislation for the benefit of the other two-thirds of the children of this country who need the benefits, too, because I am critical of some of the abuses of Public Laws 874 and 815. That does not mean I am against the program. I am one of its most ardent defenders here in Congress. I was interested in what the Senator from Texas said about us being somewhat of an educational medium, too, on this whole subject of greater assumption of responsibility on the part of the Federal Government for aid to education. As an old teacher, I have done everything I could to teach that lesson. It has been interesting over the years to find some of my colleagues changing their attitude as they come to understand that their own State or district in their own State are the beneficiaries of a Federal aid program under these two laws, that it might not be so bad to extend it to the other two-thirds. I have not any doubt that when we passed the legislation last session initiating a Federal aid program that the experience of heretofore critics of Federal aid, the experience under Public Laws 815 and 874 had won them over to the program. I did not mean to take so much time, but I was so glad that you made this point in this statement. Go ahead. Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you. I might say, Mr. Chairman, that any surveys that should be conducted, we who are in the Federal impacted aid program now would certainly be most happy to work with and help clean up, if necessary, to do this. We do feel this has been a forerunner to general aid and if it were to go, perhaps, so would the rest of the educational programs. The extension of the existing Public Laws 815 and 874 at this time. would be to the benefit of youngsters in all parts of the Nation as regards their future education. I would like to say the subcommittee is to be commended on their past and present efforts to meet the obligations of the Federal Government in the matter of finances to provide adequate education for the federally connected public school children. Senator MORSE. Thank you very much, Mr. Taylor. Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Chairman, how many square miles are there in the district? Mr. TAYLOR. In my district it is 75 square miles. Senator YARBOROUGH. I visited two of these installations mentioned here in June of 1963 with the late President Kennedy when he made the commencement address at the Air Force Academy and visited the North American Air Defense Command. I was in the cavalcade with him. Mr. TAYLOR. I remember you getting off the plane, sir. I met President Kennedy that day. Senator YARBOROUGH. You have a good memory if you remember I was in that party. I was en route to stop in Texas and at the missile base at the Missile Firing Range at White Sands, N. Mex., and I realized then what you are now saying about the taxable value of the square mile per acre of that land. May we go off the record? Senator YARBOROUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator MORSE. Go ahead, Mr. Rose. Mr. ROSE. Mr. Steinhouser, do you want to make some comments? STATEMENT OF BENNIE STEINHOUSER, SUBURBAN SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, SAN ANTONIO, TEX. Mr. STEINHOUSER. I am Bennie Steinhouser, superintendent of schools, San Antonio. I have a couple of oral comments I would like to make. First, we are very pleased that the extension of this law is being considered now and certainly the chairman knows the stituation well when he expressed something to the effect that we were in somewhat of a dilemma the last school year. The extension would mean long-range planning and orderly budgeting, and so forth. We are very pleased about that. Certainly the law can stand strengthening, improving, and certainly these considerations have real merit. In Englewood we have 14 square miles, and instead of 5,000 children, we have approximately 20,000. The district has approximately 28 percent of its students federally connected and to further aggravate the problem of support for an adequate school program is the fact that 12 percent of our students come from low-cost housing projects with no appreciable tax structure and many welfare cases from these low-cost housing projects. The philosophy of low-cost housing, of course, is in keeping with the philosophy of the proposed amendment to Senate bill-Public Law 874. We could not operate an adequate program with the yearly extension of 874. While 28 percent of our students are federally connected, about 32 percent of our operating budget is Public Law 874. The changing nature or the changing situation predicated by federally connected students and certain welfare cases, of course, makes it almost impossible to adapt our local tax structure overnight to meet these cases. This law and the change would certainly help. In closing, I would like to emphasize the point made by my coworker here. We welcome and certainly urge a complete study of Public Law 874 and its administration. I believe that only one result would come therefrom and that is the strengthening of the law. No doubt there are abuses. No doubt there are areas of improvement. But whatever else may come out of such a study, I know that it would strengthen the law for those of us who have found it to adequately serve our local needs. Thank you. Senator MORSE. Thank you very much. It is difficult for me to sit here and think of a school district that has that many square miles. How many students do you have? Mr. STEINHOUSER. A few over 20,000 in 14 square miles and about 4 square miles of that is the approach to the Kelly Air Force Base runway with no housing. So that cuts that down to about 10 square miles. Senator MORSE. Thank you very much. Mr. Rose? Mr. ROSE. All right. Mr. Minor will take over now. STATEMENT OF B. F. MINOR, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, SAN DIEGO, CALIF. Mr. MINOR. Senator Morse, Senator Yarborough, before starting the record, may I point out that after 22 years of working with these impact problems in school districts, I am reminded that in each of your States I have had two unusual school experiences. For instance, at Waldport, I was there when the floods hurt. I knew Rex Button very well and worked with him. I served in schools in Levelland, Tex., for a while. So in some respects, representing San Diego in California, it is most interesting to hear that there is a continuation, Senator Morse, of your efforts over these years to do something for education and you, Senator, as you have in the past. And the purpose of my statement representing our superintendent of schools, Dr. Dailard, and our board of education, is to point out that continuation of the impact legislation is urgently required insofar as we are concerned. And may I with your permission pick a few points out of the written statement and request that the statement be filed in the record and not take too much time to read it word for word. Senator MORSE. Take all the time you want. Mr. MINOR. San Diego has been mentioned this morning in previous testimony as relating somewhat to proposed amendments, and I should like to cover that later on, but again from the standpoint of emphasis, we feel that this law, Public Law 874, of course, and 815, that these laws have stood the test of time. As you know, you have conducted hearings, you have had studies since at least 1950, and we feel that what has just been said is so important that if further study can be made as you have indicated, and if the law can be made permanent, that there are improvements needed, there are certain amendments up now that would improve it, and we feel that all of those tie in to this one basic point; namely, that the need for improvement of the laws is but a test of the fact that they have served a very good purpose in the past. To illustrate that, San Diego city schools has the second largest pupil enrollment on the Pacific coast. We are next to Los Angeles. We are the largest single impacted district as such in terms of numbers of pupils in the United States. We have 27,000 federally connected pupils within our district. However, our board, our taxpayers, are not looking to the Federal Government to finance the program there. They have just voted an override again, and the fact of the business is that a majority of the school districts within our county, and many of the impact districts in California, have voted override taxes. They want and do pay their way. In summary, we get about 51 percent of our income from local property taxes, about 40 from the State, about 8 from the Federal, mostly from Public Law 874, and about 1 from miscellaneous sources. However, that 8 percent is so vital for these 27,000 youngsters that although our board makes no distinction between a federally connected child and one who is not, it is a real burden to have tax exempt property back of 27,000 pupils in your district when you are voting an override and you have to look very carefully at keeping that tax rate down. So the 8 percent with us is just as important as if we reversed these figures and said it is 40 or 50 or whatever. It is a matter of relatively. Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Chairman, may I interrupt Mr. Minor for a moment? I have had an urgent call from another committee. I want to express my appreciation to you gentlemen for coming here, and I will read your other statements, yours in full, that I have not heard. I am very much interested in this, but I have another committee meeting. They are short of manpower there. Not that I have greater interest in the other subject, but it is one of these cases of necessity. I am very much interested in education. Senator MORSE. Thank you very much. Senator YARBOROUGH. I have been on this subcommittee since 1958, and I intend to stay here. I hope to help to do something about education. I hope the members of this panel that I have visited with in the past will continue to work. We have this bill out now for 2-year extensions of the impacted areas law. I hope we can get the 3-year extension before it is all over at this time. And thank you for your interest in coming here and for the contribution you are making, not only to education in your own district, but nationally, in coming here and helping with the national leadership in this problem. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your continued leadership. Mr. ROSE. Thank you, Senator Yarborough. We are always pleased to have your comments. Mr. MINOR. Senator Morse, going back to the point, our local citizens there do not object to carrying their fair share of the load and thereby contributing substantially to national defense and related problems. Neither will they object to taking care of the youngsters who are of the dependent class. The fact of the business is it has been mentioned here for the record that San Diego is one of the areas mentioned within the report. We would like to point out as food for thought and as a question, wouldn't it be a very good idea to consider seriously, perhaps eliminating the use of the words "depressed area" as such, and thinking in terms of some other qualification for the reason— we are not objecting to it at all, but the fact that we may have some 16,000 of these youngsters in our area, the district is taking care of them and will continue to do so, but that is but another evidence with us of the problem of Federal impact. Employment out there as it goes down is largely related to some aspect of national defense because we are a national defense town, what with the Navy and airplane industry we have had and all of the others that you are familiar with, and we continue to be an important military and defense center. So at any time there is a connection between the dependent child and San Diego, there is also a connection between the basic impact of the Federal Government. I could take time-I won't do it here and give you exactly the number of properties and ships and show you that if we could get a small part of the assessed valuation involved, there would be no problem on this 8 percent, but this law has stood the test of time. It is solving the problem, and we think as you improve it by these additions, perhaps including criteria for the larger cities where they, too, can help take care of the problem, there will be real improvements made. So we do not know what to suggest on how to do that. We know that you will know how. We want to point out again, though, that this law that has stood the test of time is taking care of the basic problem for us and in terms of 27.000 federally connected pupils and about 8 percent of our some $60 million-plus budget. Now, the testimony that has been presented since 1950 to the committees, many of whom you have handled, Senator Morse, point out that these are payments for services for burdens imposed. We agree with that. And the stress again with us is that the district will take care of the children, that we feel that whenever this much of tax exemption is granted creating a burden that there is an impact that we cannot handle by ourselves and our citizenry, our taxpayers. really appreciate what the Federal Government is doing here. We have never had any control of anything except the dollar. It has been good accounting control. We have had very good administration from the Office of Education, and we feel that any time the Budget Bureau, the General Accounting Office, or anyone else, as they have in the past, can look at the records and find that this is a clear-cut case of impact which will stand on its own feet. So we would say, and may I close briefly here, that for our board of education out there and the taxpayers, in addition to appreciating what you have done, there is serious need for enactment of the law into a permanent form because we are unable to plan an adequate educational budget when the Federal Government may not pay for services rendered, although we feel that it will. So as these 16,000 dependent children, or whatever the figure will be when it is determined, are being planned for, we are going to use Public Law 874 money that is already written into the law to take care of those children. However, we know that large cities unable to qualify due to certain eligibility requirements are not in the same shape and their problems are as great if not greater. So since this presents a problem to us and all the other districts each 2 years, we are urgently requesting your consideration of a study that will make it possible to budget at least a year in advance so that we can plan for some of these problems. I want to thank vou, and I want to express appreciation of my superintendent, Dr. Dailard, and the board for this opportunity. (Mr. Minor's prepared statement follows:) PREPARED STATEMENT OF B. F. MINOR, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, SAN DIEGO, CALIF. Located in one of the most rapidly growing metropolitan areas of the Nation, the San Diego Unified School District has the second largest pupil enrollment on the Pacific coast. Significantly, Public Law 874 helps to finance the cost |