STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE OSER, MEMBER, HOUSTON BOARD OF EDUCATION, HOUSTON INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT

To the members of the committee: For many months, nay, years, you have heard in presentation after presentation the details of the financial crisis faced by public education in the United States. This crisis, current and future, is well documented, and it seems as you look across the nation today that many forces are being brought to bear on the solution of this crisis from the State Supreme Court of California to the Fleishman Committee Reports of New York to the Governor's Committee on Educational Reform in the State of Texas. I am not here today to expand upon the information that you already have at hand or to dwell in more depth on those particulars. Instead, I would like to deal with a more pervasive problem, a problem whose fingers reach into all of the areas of school finance, school problems, the problem of control-local and otherwise. In order that my comments not remain in the philosophical realm, I would like to particularize them by a discussion of the Title I Program-what has been expected, what it has done, and what I see as its future requirements.

First of all, Title I has been expected, very simply, to perform miracles. It's somewhat akin to the hope that ten cents for a cup of coffee given to a person with no other financial resources will turn that person into a corporation executive three hours hence. Title I has had a hope of providing adequate education financial support for youngsters who need that support, but it has attempted to do a tremendous task with miniscule funds.

Across the nation and in Texas, we have something like $150 per year per student in Title I funds. In Houston, Texas, this $150 brings our per-pupil expenditures for youngsters in the Houston Independent School District in the Title I target schools approximately up to the national average of per-pupil expenditures throughout the nation. In New York City, the Title I addition in funds does not even bring the total per-pupil expenditures up to the state average. In addition to the small absolute amount of funds available for Title I youngsters, the Title I Program must bear an additional burden of providing survival services-food, clothing, medical and dental care. So on this pittance dedicated to youngsters of great need we have put the combined burdens of educational excellence and survival services, a burden which it is impossible for Title I funds to bear as they are currently funded.

Let's look for a moment and see what Title I has done. In Houston, Texas, just a few years ago, members of the Board of Education were publicly saying that there were no hungry children in Houston. Today, nearly 50,000 are fed hot lunches daily from the combined funds of Title I and the Department of Agriculture. Medical and dental care is provided to youngsters numbering approximately 30,000 in twenty-seven schools in Houston. We are currently exploring the possibility of providing clothing for the youngsters who have that need. One can talk about educational need, but until the youngster is in school, clothed and fed, one may as well forget the educational need because the edu cational system is not going to reach that youngster. So we in Houston feel a basic commitment to provide these kinds of survival services. We provide them from Title I funds because currently those are the only funds available to us for providing these services. In addition, part of our Title I funds are used for what are nominally called "cultural enrichment programs." These programs provide the experiences for youngsters they would not otherwise have because of the parents' inability to pay for transportation to areas of interest throughout the city-the museums, zoos, theatres. We feel this is an important part of our program but, again, these are programs that drain resources from the hard, substantive educational programs. These monies should be available from other sources beyond the Title I sources. Our heaviest emphasis in Houston in Title I funding is in the area of substantive, what I call hard, educational programs. Our administrative staff and the Board of Education is dedicated to the principle that our job, first and foremost, is providing excellence in education for every youngster in Houston. Consequently, all funds, be they local funds, state or federal funds, are funneled into programs of substantial educational impact. In Houston, for example, approximately $2,000,000 of our Title I funds, or about half the total Title I allocation, is used in experimental reading programs. In nine elementary schools we have the exciting LEIR Program: in nine schools. the productive BRL Program: in nine schools, the Harcourt-Brace-Jovanovich Series, which attempts to bridge the cultural gap that previous reading programs have not. We think this is where the emphasis should be in the use of

Title I funds, but it is very difficult for us to proivde the necessary survival services, the necessary cultural enrichment programs, and these substantive educational programs in a way that fits the need of the youngsters of our community at the current level of funding. I would strongly oppose any efforts on the part of Congress or the administration in diminishing the dollars available in the Title Programs. In fact, I would press strongly for great expansion of these programs so that these necessary services could be provided in a more meaningful way to youngsters across the nation.

Educators today are agreed that educational funding, in order to have an impact, must reach what they have termed "a critical mass." It takes a certain amount of money before one can overcome the inertia of the situation, before one can make progress in bettering the educational environment. I don't believe the Title I funds in the amount they are currently distributed has much of a chance of overcoming this inertia, of making an impact, because it does not reach a critical mass.

To those critics who say Title I has failed, I say hogwash. Title I has barely been tried. Whatever alternative funding patterns are devised by Congress or the administration, I would urge that protection be given to the categorical programs currently in force and that more dollars be directed to supporting these programs.

Let me move now from a cursory discussion of Title I into some comments concerning control. One of the most overworked terms by members of boards of education, Congressmen, members of the administration are the words "local control." For the most part, these words are merely a demogogic artifice for saying something else. There are no federal strings on education programs, such as the Title programs, that we in Houston cannot live with. There are no strings that we find so burdensome that we would desire to have those strings removed. In fact, we urge the Congress to maintain the kinds of controls that guarantee accountability, that guarantee that federal funds which are our tax dollars be spent in a constitutional fashion. We demand that the national priorities be fulfilled in the guidelines for expenditure of these funds.

Local control should not mean the boards of education have the freedom to violate Constitutional dictates. Last year, Senator Mondale documented enummerable cases of the results of weak controls in the federal program of Emergency School Assistance. We do not want to see those sorts of things repeated.

It is strange that those who speak so strongly for local control often violate that very principle in the same breath. Recently, Vice President Agnew on the second of three televised interviews with the press spoke about the administration's opposition to the Child Develoment Act. President Agnew, I would suppose, is one who could be put in the camp of strong supporters of local control. Yet, when queried about the administration's opposition to day care centers, he said that he felt that mothers would take advantage of these centers if they were available. And, he didn't feel that it was proper that mothers would be able to take advantage of these centers and not fulfill their motherly duties. That is the kind of stance that has beclouded the issue of control. On the one hand, the proponents say, "We want local control"; on the other hand, they formulate legislation which disallows any kind of local control.

Similarly, on the issue of federal funding of transportation. The loudest proponents for local control are the first to say there shall be no federal moneys available for the transportation of youngsters. Local districts, under court order, are currently out of local funds providing that transportation, and local districts would like to have the flexibility to search for federal or local funds at their own discretion and not be boxed in by those so-called proponents of local control who in fact attempt to make decisions for the local boards at the national level.

Let me move to the areas of control that I think are less clouded, the practical areas of control, the areas that we face in the day-to-day operations of school districts in this nation. There has recently been in the case of Model Cities and in proposed legislation to do with the general revenue sharing a movement toward the funneling of federal funds to local agencies other than school districts, funds which ultimately are used in the educational system. There have been serious practical problems, mind you, not basic differences in philosophy between administrative units, but practical difficulties in dealing with funding. The problem is particularly acute where the local education agencies are independent, fiscal entities. Of the fifty large school districts, thirty-seven of those

districts, like my own district in Houston, are fiscally independent school districts. By State status, and State Constitutional mandate, these districts have been created as independent bodies and, as such, are responsible for the expenditures of funds. Whenever we receive funds from a local agency, such as a municipality, and expend those funds for educational programs, we have to pass those funds through our normal accounting procedures. For districts our size and phase lag, the system lag, the time it takes for processing, Board approval, administrative review, is approximately thirty days. When that time is coupled with the time for municipality's approval processes, he total time is approximately doubled to two months. If there are any problems along the way, if for example the City Council or the School Board have some questions that require modification of the proposal, the process can take many months.

Let me cite a particular instance. A program proposed by the Houston Independent School District to be funded by Model Cities was with the Ongoing Education of Pregnant Girls-a program of critical need in the Houston School District. We made the proposal in July of 1970 and did not receive from the City of Houston a letter to proceed until April 23, 1971, when there was only a five-week period of the school remaining for implementation of this program. There was no particular problem with the City's approval of this program nor the School District's, but needed modifications in the program, location sites, funding levels, etc., took three-quarters of a year to obtain final approval processing. The control that is involved is of utmost necessity, but the very fact that it must pass through all these control agencies limits the speed with which we can implement programs. The problem in this process is that controllers whose duty it is to approve payment of bills only if they meet their interpretation of the mandates of the law, local, state and federal, is that there are always variations in interpretation and, hence, considerable amounts of time are used in resolving these differences in interpretation. If we want systems that efficiently deliver education to youngsters, then we must do so through a single controlling agency. Hence, I would urge this committee, when it is considering alternative funding procedures to those currently adopted, to seriously consider the practical problems and that these funds be given directly to school districts for their use in the design of educational programs that meet the local needs.

There is a facet of control, a sensitive area, one that is probably as politically landmined as the discussion of local control and that is the role of decision making with respect to program funding.

Unfortunately, many school districts throughout this nation have excluded meaningful involvement of parents in decisions concerning the educational programs of their youngsters. In order to correct this imbalance, federal programs have encouraged considerable involvement of parents in that decision making. I stand strongly for parental involvement in the operation of the schools that provide services to the youngsters of those parents, but I believe that we must carefully assess the role that parents, professional administrators, and elected trustees must play in order that we bring about the result that we jointly desire. Parents are not skilled in designing educational programs. They are skilled and in fact are the only people skilled in assessing the needs of their youngsters. Board of Trustees are elected officials representing the public in making educational and financial decisions and are accountable to that public for those decisions. They are also constrained by the requirements of State and Federal Constitutions, and State and Federal statutes as well as local ordinances.

Parents, professional educators, and school trustees must maintain these areas of expertise if we are to produce a product which meets the needs of the youngsters. We must carefully distinguish between educational programs which require expertise in program design and development from welfare programs which are designed to meet the needs of unemployment. In welfare programs, involvement at the decisionmaking level is an important component of the overall program goals, but in education we must make such that the parental involvement is specific to defining the needs of the youngsters, allowing room for the professional administrators to design the program and delivery system to meet those needs. If, in fact, the system is designed and implemented in this fashion, we bring to bear community support for change, for educational innovation which is much needed in our schools. This combined effort of parents, school administrators and elected trustees will not only devise better plans, but will be able to in fact implement those plans, because of the broad base of support established by joint decisionmaking.

Lastly, I would like to touch upon another kind of control. It is a control that comes from our knowledge of what is effective. Most of the real control that exists in educational decision making is control based upon constraints, legal constraints, financial constraints, constraints of our knowledge about how youngsters learn and grow. We need to make sure that in our national program of educational funding that there be a flexibility in that programming which allows for modifications to meet the needs as the constraints change.

Let me specifically talk about what has been talked about much in the last few years, cultural enrichment programs. As I mentioned earlier, we in Houston engage in cultural enrichment programs, but believe that it is much more difficult to see benefit from these sorts of soft educational programs than it is from the harder more specific educational programs such as the reading programs we are currently funding under Title I. I would like to recount for you an instance that happened in Houston about a year ago when for the first time a number of youngsters in a cultural enrichment program were transported across the city to a music theater to watch a performance of a local group and then to respond to that performance. The youngsters had just returned from the theater and their responses were being taped for further analysis by the teachers in order to make the program even more meaningful the next go-round.

One of the youngsters was asked what impressed him most about this program and, mind you, he had just gotten back from seeing an entertaining theater production of a program content that would have been interesting to youngsters. His comment was that the most impressive thing that day was a five-story parking garage that he happened to notice as he was being transported along one of the freeways in Houston to the Music Theater. This little anecdote exemplifies what educators are finding out about "cultural enrichment." They are finding that cultural enrichment is not necessarily a specific experience such as a museum trip, a theater trip, but it is relating, observing, dealing with all of the stimuli that stream into a youngster's consciousness. It is very difficult to structure experiences so that they are, by their very nature, enriching experiences. Explicitly then as educators' ideas change as to what is beneficial for youngsters' education, which of course in the broadest terms is his enrichment, we should make certain that there are no immovable federal constraints upon shifting educational dollars from what were previously termed cultural enrichment programs to hard substantive educational programs. That is what I mean by local control.

In summation, I urge this committee to give serious consideration to the maintenance and expansion of the Title programs which have served this nation's children so well. I, secondly, urge this committee, if it is to consider other funding means to offset the serious financial crisis that faces our schools, that they do so in a manner that provides for efficient delivery of educational services directly to the recipients, the youngsters, and that in those funding techniques that there be no immovable constraints that would prevent local education agencies from using those funds to the maximum educational benefit of the youngsters involved. In your deliberations, I plead that you give careful examination to the cries of no strings and the cries of local control, to look behind those words for what they really mean so that the legislation that results will truly meet the needs of youngsters throughout our great country whose future depends so intimately upon your decisions. Thank you.

Chairman PERKINS. You may proceed.

Mr. BUHRMASTER. Thank you. I would like to summarize the statement that you say will be in the record, and of course both Dr. Oser and Dr. Steinhilber will be able to assist in answering any questions that you may present to me after we conclude.

I just want you to know that the National School Boards Association is really the only major organization that represents school board members, and we represent some 84,000 members in the country who have under their charge some 95 percent of the public-school children of the United States.

Most of our school board members, like yourselves, are elected officials. Accordingly, we are politically accountable to our constituents

for not only educational policy but for the fiscal management of our school district.

As unsalaried individuals, as lay members of the community, I think we are well able to judge the legislative programs that are presented, and particularly a program such as revenue sharing, purely from the standpoint of education; particularly we want you to understand that we have no personal professional interest in this and look upon it much in the same light as you do.

At the recent national convention our organization voted to support the revenue-sharing concept again as it has in the years past.

Before I address myself to the specifics of H.R. 7796, I would like to explore with you the merits of two major functions which the special revenue-sharing concept serves for school districts in their efforts to make the Federal programs work more effectively.

The first of these functions is to relieve school boards and their superintendents of some of the administrative effort which is currently required of them in the management of these educational programs. Special revenue sharing sets out to accomplish this function through the consolidation of existing programs.

Today the delivery system of Federal education programs is far from simple. Indeed, any school board which desires to take full advantage of the Federal effort in education must be in touch with some two dozen agencies that administer some 200 programs.

As you know, some programs channel Federal money directly to local school districts while others rely on the State education agency as an administrative intermediary.

Since most State boards of education are not directly involved in the direct Federal-local type of program, each school district must be its own grantsmanship watchdog. Accordingly, just to stay abreast of new opportunities-let alone to make the commitment of resources to apply for and follow up on programs-many districts find that they must employ personnel to especially service this task.

As expected, only the larger and wealthier districts can afford such liaison services and hence fully participate in the Federal program. By so procedurally precluding most of the smaller and less wealthy school districts from realistic access to the direct Federal-local type of grant, the Federal Government is not just ignoring but is contributing to the disparity of educational opportunity which exists from district to district.

Similarly, pursuant to programs which are operated through the State boards of education, disparities of opportunity among school districts are also created. While local awareness of programs is much better under this system as opposed to the direct Federal-local system, the quality of management varies from State to State. And this is true, even though several of the Federal programs provide money for State administration.

The reason is that, among States of unequal populations, the larger States have the advantage of economies of scale in program management since they receive more funds for administration from all sources. Even among States wherein population and wealth are equal, there are variations in program delivery since some States have proportionately fewer school districts than others. In such cases, State-local liaison is easier not just because of the fewer numbers of districts to be