Interior from such amount, such sums as he may determine for elementary and secondary schools operated for Indian children by the Department of the Interior. "(b) The remainder of the sums appropriated to carry out this part for a fiscal year shall be allotted by the Commissioner among other local educational agencies in a manner which gives consideration to the following criteria: "(1) the need for assistance, taking into account such factors as- "(B) the financial need of such local educational agency; "(C) the expense and difficulty of effectively carrying out a plan described in section 144 (a) in such school district; and "(D) the degree to which measurable deficiencies in the quality of public education afforded in such district exceed those of other school districts within the State; "(2) the degree to which the plan described in section 144 (a), and the program or project to be assisted, are likely to effect a decrease in crime in the schools; "(3) the degree to which the plan described in section 144 (a) enjoys the support and approval of parents, professional school employees, and the community at large in the school district affected; and "(4) the degree to which the plan described in section 144 (a) affords full protection of the civil and constitutional rights of students and employees of the school district affected. "APPLICATION "SEC. 144. (a) A local educational agency may receive a grant under this part for any fiscal year only upon application therefor approved by the Commissioner, with the consent of the appropriate State educational agency, upon his determination that the local educational agency has adopted and is implementing, or will, if assistance is made available to it under this part, adopt and implement, a plan to reduce crime and increase the safety and security of the students, employees, and facilities of its elementary and secondary schools through programs and projects designed to carry out the purpose of this part, including "(1) the provision of additional professional or other staff members (including staff members specially trained in problems incident to crime control) and the training and retraining of staff for schools which are affected by such plan; "(2) the provision of services to meet the special needs of students and employees in such schools; "(3) community activities, including public education and participation efforts, in support of such plan; "(4) special administrative activities, such as the rescheduling of students or employees; "(5) provision of information to parents and other members of the general public incident to the development or to the implementation of such plan; "(6) planning and evaluation activities; "(7) acquisition, installation, modernization, or replacement of appropriate equipment and supplies; "(8) minor alterations of school plants and facilities; and "(9) other specially designed programs or projects that meet the purpose of this part. "(b) No funds authorized for assistance under this part shall be used to support the introduction, presence, or use of firearms, other weapons, or chemical agents in any school." SEC. 3. (a) Part D of title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 is redesignated as part E, and sections 141 through 144 of such title are redesignated as sections 151 through 154, respectively, and sections 146 through 150 are redesignated as sections 155 through 159, respectively. Cross references to such part and such title are redesignated accordingly. (b) The provisions of part E of title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (as redesignated by subsection (a)) are amended as follows: (1) The material preceding paragraph (1) in section 151 (a) is amended by inserting "part A, B, or C of" before "this title". (2) Section 151(a)(1) is amended by inserting "part A, B, or C of " before "this title" the first time it appears. (3) Section 151(a)(2) is amended by inserting after "such agency" the following: ", in the case of assistance under part A, B, or C". (4) Section 151(a)(6) is amended by inserting after "the programs" the following: "assisted under part A, B, or C". (5) Section 152(a)(1) is amended by inserting before "and which meet" the following: "or 144", by inserting after "103 (a) (5)" the following: "and of part D", and by inserting before the semicolon at the end thereof the following: "or part D". (6) Section 153(a) (2) is amended by inserting "part A, B, and C of" before "this title", and by adding at the end thereof the following new sentence: "From the funds paid to it pursuant to paargraph (1), each State educational agency shall distribute to each local educational agency of the State which has submitted an application approved under section 144 the amount for which such application has been approved, except that this amount shall not exceed the agency's allotment under section 143." (7) The first sentence of section 154 is amended by inserting "parts A, B, and C of" before "this title". (8) The third, fifth, and sixth sentences of section 154 are amended by striking out "this title" and inserting "such parts". SEC. 4. Section 303 of the Act of September 30, 1950 (20 U.S.C. 244), is amended by adding at the end thereof the following: "(16) The term 'crime' means any unlawful act or activity, not including any violation of any rule, regulation, or code of behavior established by any organization, agency, or institution not enacted into law." Mr. PERKINS. That act, introduced by our colleague from New York, Jonathan Bingham, would create a new Federal categorical program of aid to local educational agencies for the purpose of implementing plans to reduce crime in the schools. Congressman Bingham is our first witness on H.R. 2650. But before he begins, I would just like to congratulate him for so energetically bringing before this committee his proposal for solving a very real problem in many of the schools of this country. Your dedication to securing a safe and good education for the children of this country are well known and well appreciated by this committee, Congressman Bingham. Your statement will be included in the record and you proceed in any manner you prefer. [The statement referred to follows:] STATEMENT OF CONGRESSMAN JONATHAN B. BINGHAM, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee. It is a pleasure to appear again before this Subcommittee which has been so greatly responsible for the formulation and enactment over the years of the Federal education assistance programs that have helped make the American educational system the finest in the world. Our considerable success in developing an admittedly imperfect but also enviably fine system of public education in this country is due in no small part, in my judgment, to the work of this Committee, and particularly to its adherence to a strategy of directing Federal assistance to specific needs and goals through categorical programs. While some of these programs may require better administration, and some from time to time may need to be terminated or reoriented as educational needs and priorities change, let me say at the outset that I sincerely hope this Committee will not yield to pressures to abandon this approach to educational funding. On the whole, existing categorical programs have been most successful, and should certainly not be put aside entirely in favor of a plan of unstructured funding which is still experimental and of questionable value and impact in the field of education. The particular purpose for my appearance this morning, Mr. Chairman, is to remind the Committee of a serious and growing need of the schools which, in my judgment, is not being met or even adequately attended to under current educational assistance programs. I refer, of course, to the problem of crime and criminal violence in the schools. I know, Mr. Chairman, that this Committee shares my concern about this problem. Late in 1971, the General Subcommittee on Education chaired at that time by our former colleague from Illinois, Mr. Pucinski, conducted hearings in New York City and Boston on the problem of crime in the schools and on the Safe Schools Act, a bill which I introduced in the 92nd Congress (H.R. 3101 and H.R. 10641) to provide a program of Federal assistance to enable school districts to better cope with this problem. I have reintroduced this bill in the current Congress (H.R. 2650) with the cosponsorship to date of 20 Members of the House, including the Chairman and a number of Members of this Committee. A bill identical to mine has recently been introduced in the Senate (S. 485) by Senators Cranston and Gurney. Since those earlier hearings, Mr. Chairman, incidents of crime against students, staff, and facilities in schools across the nation have continued. Fear on the part of teachers and students has spread and intensified, and more and more school systems have been faced with the difficult task of trying to develop an organized response to the problem. The incidents which are occurring, and about which we must be concerned, are not mere infractions of school rules-dunking pigtails in inkwells, talking out of turn, or pushing and shoving in hallways. They are serious violations of law. As illustrations, Mr. Chairman, bomb threats and actual bombings have become relatively frequent occurrences in schools, and are among the most costly and disruptive. Similarly, the presence of guns, while not common, appears to be increasing in schools. If the Committee agrees, I will submit for the hearings record at this point a list of reported school bomb incidents during 1970 and 1971, and a summary of a recent survey by the Associated Press of incidents of violence in schools in which guns were present. In some cases, lacking any means of coping with problems of crime and violence themselves, educators have simply called the police into the schoolsa step which, in many instances, has proved more an invitation to violence than a solution to it. Finances are another problem. With schools budgets strained in order to provide the direct educational facilities and services needed and demanded by students and parents, few school systems can marshall the funds needed to tak on the added burden of providing organized security services for students, personnel, and facilities. Yet in many school systems the learning process cannot go on without effective security provisions. The Safe Schools Act I have developed and introduced is designed to meet these problems. It would earmark Federal funds for the purpose of learning more about the school crime problem, developing and testing techniques for dealing with it, and assisting the most vulnerable school districts in formulating and implementing organized programs to achieve a secure learning environment for students and a secure working environmet for staff. The Los Angeles, area, Mr. Chairman, is one where the problem appears to have reached crisis proportions most recently. As an illustration of the financial and other pressures a school system faces when violence erupts and becomes commonplace, I should like to submit for the hearing record several editorials that have appeared in the Los Angeles papers on the incidents there, and a newsletter published by the Los Angels United School District Board of Education outlining how the Board proposes to respond to the problem. The proposed response of the Los Angeles School Board is unusually imaginative and comprehensive. Most school systems have little notion how to deal with outbreaks of violence. Teachers and school administrators have for years disclaimed any responsibility on the part of the schools to assure security. As a result, little in the way of special knowledge about providing security in schools has been developed. As I'm sure Mr. Kelly of the International Association of Chiefs of Police will verify, much of the thinking that has been done recently on this problem, as more and more school systems have been forced to think about it has been borrowed from the methods and philosophies used by police-some appropriate for schools, but many not so. The most commonly expressed doubts about the Safe Schools proposal, Mr. Chairman, are the following: first, that to devote Federal funds to preventing and dealing with crime and violence in the schools is, so to speak, treating the symptom rather than the disease; and, second, that the proposal, worthy as it might be in substance, adds to the already excessive number of categorical programs of educational assistance rather than eliminating categorical limitations on the use of education funds. I agree, Mr. Chairman, with those who believe that crime and violence in the schools are symptoms of basic problems in our schools and, even more importantly, in society at large. Who would deny it? I also agree with those who contend that there is need for sweeping changes to make education more interesting, involving, and relevant to young people. I believe that we should proceed with these and other major improvements, difficult as they are to make, with all possible speed, and that the bulk of our energy and funds for education should be devoted to these reforms. We are, in fact, already doing so. Many of the programs recommended by the Committee and approved by the Congress are making such reforms possible, and those programs should be continued and expanded if at all possible. But I cannot agree with those who suggest that in light of the need for these reforms, which will hopefully do away with crime and violence by erasing their underlying causes, there is no need or justification for reserving and devoting even a fraction of our resources to try to provide as much security as possible for those who are in the educational stream while basic reforms are being effected. A great many of the crimes committed in schools are committed by outsiders-individuals who don't belong in the schools in the first place. Similarly, many of the conditions that lead to crime in the schools are community conditions outside the control of the schools. Improvements in these conditions through basic reforms, while no less pressing than reforms within the schools, will be longer in coming. To argue that we should not undertake to provide reasonable security for those now in the schools is like arguing that immediately available treatments for cancer should not be used pending discovery of a total cure. Such an argument ignores the fact that there are many students and teachers in even our most uninspiring schools who are trying to get the best education they can. We owe it to them to make a reasonable effort to provide an atmosphere free of fear. With regard to the matter of categorical programs versus less directive funding in education, even the President's Commission on School Finance, while urging a greater State role in general education funding, also recommended "continuing financial support" on the part of the Federal government to stimulate "State and local public and private activity to meet national concerns and interest. . ." It noted further: "School children need to be able to walk from their home or bus to the school building in safety and need to be free from physical violence and extortion while attending schools. Until the atmosphere of terror is removed from these schools, little progress can be made in restructuring and maintaining environment (sic) conducive to learning." Federal leadership is essential for the achievement of security without repression in all our schools. The task of developing and testing appropriate school security methods is often beyond the capability of local and state school systems. The fact that inappropriate activities may threaten constitutionally guaranteed rights argues for close Federal guidance in this area. Finally, by enactment of the Safe Streets Act and other legislation, the Congress has identified crime as a matter of overriding national urgency and concern in which the Federal government must play a major role. This should be no less the case with regard to crime in the schools than it is with regard to crime in the streets. Mr. Chairman, this Committee, the Congress, and the Executive branch invest slightly over $3-billion a year in elementary and secondary education. Though data are incomplete, responsible estimates are that as much as $500-million a year in equipment, supplies, and facilities are lost by the nation's schools through vandalism alone, and that figure does not include the dollar value of resulting losses in teaching and learning time and efficiency, particularly when vital learning materials are vandalized. Mr. Chairman, there is not a major corporation in the private sector that would hestitate or fail to invest substantially in security if for every $6 it was investing in an enterprise, $1 or more were being lost as a result of criminal activity. The human cost of crime in the schools, of course, is even more significant than the dollar cost. It may be a long time before this society can provide an atmosphere free of fear for every citizen, in every institution and on every street in every community across the land. It should be possible, however, with a concerted effort employing a proper combination of new and existing techniques, to make the schools a refuge from crime and violence. Certainly there is no more important institution in our society within which to preserve and protect personal security and individual rights. Indeed the schools should serve as enclaves from which this society can move toward ridding itself entirely of crime. In the longer run, that will require basic reforms to rid the schools and the society at large of conditions that elicit violence and crime, and again I urge this Committee to continue and expand programs to provide such reforms. But in the shorter run, much can and must be done to provide immediate relief in the schools from fear and deprivation as a result of criminal assaults upon persons and property, and I urge this Committee to take the leadership in that respect by enacting the Safe Schools Act or a similar program of Federal assistance for the purpose of increasing school security. STATEMENT OF HON. JONATHAN B. BINGHAM, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK Mr. BINGHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate those kind words very much. I have a prepared statement and I will summarize it. It is indeed a pleasure to appear again before this distinguished subcommittee. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the members of the subcommittee for this opportunity to express my views on the very serious problem of crime in the schools. Let me say at the outset on the general question before this committee of categorical versus special revenue sharing for education, that I sincerely hope the committee will not yield to the pressures to abandon successful categorical programs in favor of unstructured funding which in my judgment is still experimental and of questionable value as a method of providing assistance for education. I know, Mr. Chairman, that this committee shares my concern about the serious and growing problem of crime in the schools. Unfortunately we don't have up-to-date statistics on this problem, and some of the witnesses who are appearing before you today will touch on the reasons for that. I would like, however, to call attention to some figures that I have not included in my statement this year, but that were included in my statement in 1971, and which appear on page 10 of the 1971 hearings. These figures were compiled by the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency showing the trend in crime in elementary and secondary schools from 1964 to 1968 and some of the figures are relatively startling. I would like to call the committee's attention to them. For example, in that 5-year period, robberies increased from 369 to 1.508. That was, I should say, a survey of 110 urban school districts, for a percentage increase of 376. Narcotics offenses increased from 75 to 855, a percentage increase of 1,069. Crimes by nonstudents, and I want to stress that because I think it is a major part of the problem and one of the reasons why this kind of bill is needed in addition to bills that deal with educational problems as such, crimes by nonstudents went up from 142 to 3,894 in that period, a percentage increase of 2,600. |