NOTE

The earliest notice the present witnesses had on the scope of these hearings was just this week (3 days ago) and therefore we find ourselves in a decided disadvantage in supplying pertinent testimony on the particular elements of a totally changed law.

We would very much like to address ourselves to outstanding issues such as definition of rights of employees under a revised P.L. 81-874 in careful detail.

We beg the indulgence of this committee and request that we be afforded the opportunity to submit our studied recommendations for the record at a slightly later date.

As such what follows represent some of our more immediate concerns.

The Antilles Consolidated Education Association is the exclusive representative of the professional staff of the Antilles Consolidated School System--the only section 6, P.L. 81-874 school system located outside the continental United States. Our organization is affiliated with the National Education Association and the Overseas Education Association. We welcome this opportunity to share with you some of our concerns on providing the best education possible for boys and girls of Federal employees stationed throughout Puerto Rico.

Our school system is unique as the model for our system was designated as the Washington, D. C. school system while the other section 6 schools are patterned after their nearest local school district. Our school system is definitely in an English not as a primary language situation hence our continuing singular treatment as the other section 6 schools throughout the U.S. and territories have been assimilated into local settings.

For many years this arrangement did not provoke problems. Washington, D.C. has had rising per pupil costs and a complimentary budget ceiling has adequately funded our program needs throughout the years. But unfortunately our school system has experienced a particular problem. We lack construction funds for the longest, pending construction project in the history of P.L. 81-815.

Our housing shortage has been apparent for 20 long years. Back in 1956 this school system had "borrowed" Navy buildings at then San Juan Naval Station which was at that time at full strength and operation. The schools were then administered entirely by the U.S. Army. The Navy closed down this borrowed school (K-6) in San Juan and shipped its pupils to Ft. Buchanan in 1965. The sudden squeeze left no alternative but to make up a new middle school housed in temporary buildings on Army property. This "new" school was to grow to

house upwards 1,200 students at the height of the Viet-Nam conflict.
While the conflict escalated and swelled our population, our schools came
under Navy control as the Army downgraded its mission in Ft. Buchanan
and the fort was taken over by the Navy. Recently we have had changes
effecting three of the four locations of the schools. Ft. Buchanan has
come back under the control of Army, Ramey School from Air Force to Navy
to Coast Guard, and Ft. Allen is being phased out.

Through all these long detailed changes the schools have been lacking construction funds to house the students that have received education through the worst of conditions. A new Jr.-Sr. High School at Fort Buchanan would have solved the problem in part but a Presidential freeze imposed in 1971 has this longest unfunded project of a section 10, P. L. 81-815 pending. The interim years has seen all manner of accomodations take place: namely students have been inadequately housed throughout the system and at times under conditions described by a knowledgeable Department of Defense Dependent School official "as the most deplorable he has ever seen."*

The "deplorable" conditions have been brought about by a chain of circumstances. When there was a big squeeze for space back in 1964, 56,000 sq. ft. of inadequate housing materialized out of the thin air and was gotten on the promise that it would be temporary housing pending the building of the new Jr.-Sr. High in 2 or 3 short years. Time has shown that collection of rotting unsafe wooden buildings ridden by termites, bats, roaches, rats, and other unsanitary conditions was in fact Antilles Middle School for the last 12 long years. Now, we add insult on injury. The Antilles Middle School has been dismantled and has been shipped into yet less safe buildings while the Army

*Memorandum for the Record, HEW, USOE, From: Actg Chief, School Construction Branch, DSAFA, undated

destroys the wooden buildings that were generously (or foolishly) lent
Health, Education and Welfare and the U.S. Navy for educating children.
The Middle School population has leveled out at 675 students for the
last few years. No changes at this level is anticipated. Now instead
of making a change for the better we have made a change for the worst.
The school is to be scattered in three different locations. The "new"
buildings are more of the same, and services thought to be traditional
in schools such as a complete Media-Library Center, vocational training,
and the same level of continuing health services have been eliminated as
these word are being read. Moreover, where the students enjoyed at least
a modicom of anemities such as physical space (large classrooms, extensive
sports facilities, a cafeterium, etc.) now they are reduced to classrooms
measuring 400 square feet or fully 50% below the minimum standards of
the Life Safety Code and in circumstances violating many other health and
safety rules such as egress from a building overloaded beyond any legal
capacity to house 300 students.

Construction and refurbishing is going on right now. Our school system is not authorized to build new buildings because lack of funds (P.L. 81-815) but nonetheless it insists on spending funds from programs (P.L. 81-874) to refurbish non-HEW property for sake of expediency and not resorting to the only logical but impossible conclusion--double session of the students in the affected schools.*

Here is is important to point out that the mixture of funds is a practice recognized illegal by HEW officials (Mr. Stormer among them) but HEW has elected to condone the current situation as it strangely gives our school system autonomy to best work itself out of a problem not of its choosing.

Impossible because our 40 buses are now starting at 6:00 A.M. and come in late.

These kinds of arrangements have been going on for 20 years and

and the equally faulty persons in not funding construction have been seemingly the persons that complain about this arrangement and suffer the terrible consequences (the parents, the teachers, and let us not forget--the students).

We the teachers cannot condone the latest "accomodation".

We cannot

sit idly by watching children, programs, and teachers suffer impossible learning and working conditions without expressing our concern and our outrage that federal education of federal dependents can hit such a low level.

It is through this means we urge Congress act immediately and issue the proper corrective measures to ameliorate our present situation and our immediate prospects of ruin. Up to now our calls have fallen on deaf ears, will Congress help us?