needs. But what is more basic to education and its new role in the "cold war of the classroom" than teachers' salaries and school facilities?

Senate bill 2 deserves support because it permits the State to use the money where it is most needed. There is no discrimination against those States which already made an earnest effort to meet their school construction requirements. No State would be unjustly rewarded for laxity due to indifference in attempting to meet obligations. Since this bill supports salaries and construction, it supports basic education and does not support one phase or activity to the disadvantage of others. You will observe that this plea has been made to maintain education at its present level. It does not take into consideration required support for more and better education, such as need for community colleges, technical institutes, improvement of instruction in science and mathematics, guidance, testing, scholarships, seeing and hearing aids, and other services, some of which fortunately will receive Federal aid under Public Law 85-864. Political and educational statesmanship must find the means and the programs for more and better education. To date, for our State, no Federal proposal is more reassuring for the overall financial support of education than is Senate bill 2.

Senator CLARK. Mr. Boehm, I think that is a very helpful statement to the committee. Do you have any estimate as to the overall need in dollars for increasing teachers' salaries in Pennsylvania?

Dr. BоEHм. There are various proposals, Senator Clark, and some of these would run into the amount of money provided for in Senate bill 2, 4 years from now. The need would be attached to mandated salaries and would depend upon whatever that mandated salary would be. And I have no specific amount that I could give you now.

Senator CLARK. Can you state as a generalization whether in your opinion teachers' salaries in Pennsylvania are high enough now?

Dr. BоEHм. Oh, no. There is no question that we have not been able to attract the kind of personnel we wanted. The average salary is low because you have a great mass of young teachers. Within 4 or 5 years, when they come up to the point where over half of their teachers are experienced teachers of 4 or 5 years, they will be in the same class that second-class cities or large cities are, where they are unable to meet further demands to keep their best teachers. They have been in a very favorable position in the last 5 years. This would, to me, have a very important aspect in the State, because it is in these areas where we are attracting the competent teachers currently. They are flowing in there. But this sort of "honeymoon" will be over in about 5 years.

Senator CLARK. Can you give us the general range of teachers' salaries in Pennsylvania today, from the minimum salaries paid in the poorer districts to the top salaries paid in the wealthier districts?

Dr. BOEHM. Even though the State Department of Justice has ruled that the minimum salary for properly certificated teachers in Pennsylvania is $3,500 for the school year 1958-59, we have found that the average salary of beginning teachers who graduated last year from college is between $3,800 and $3,900. The range for these beginning teachers extended from $3,500 to about $4,500.

Senator CLARK. Could you give us any kind of an estimate as to what a teacher who had been teaching in, let us say, in Luzerne County for 10 years would be getting today?

Dr. BOEHM. The following salaries apply to teachers with 10 years of service in a respective district: In Luzerne County teachers with a bachelor's degree average slightly above $4,700, while teachers with a master's degree would average around $5,000. In Lower Merion Township, by way of contrast, a teacher with a bachelor's degree would average about $5,400 and with a master's degree about $6,000. Abington Township has even higher salaries. The corresponding figures for that school district are $5,850 and $6,700. There are a few teachers in these systems making close to $8,000.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Dr. Boehm, in the final page of your statement, you make a very strong endorsement of S. 2. Directing your thinking to section 7 of S. 2, requiring that the State educational agency shall verify annually to the Commission, would you withdraw your endorsement of the bill if that word "verify," is not changed to "certify"?

Dr. BOEHM. No.

Senator YARBOROUGH. You do not make your support hinge on whether the language requires the State official to certify or to verify? Dr. BOEHM. I probably did not get your question. Our support of Senate bill 2 would not be contingent on the change.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Do you foresee under this bill, with its language, the Federal control of your office and the schools in Pennsylvania, if this bill should become law?

Dr. BOEHM. No, I do not foresee any Federal controls which will in any way outweigh the tremendous advantages.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Have you had an opportunity to study the administration's bill, S. 1016?

Dr. BоEнм. This concerns the subject of school buildings?
Senator YARBOROUGH. Yes.

Dr. BOEHM. I have gone over it several times and am familiar with just a few parts of the bill. I was asked to see how it applied in my own State.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Have you had an opportunity to study it? Dr. BOEHM. Well, to that degree we are not very happy, because we foresee the difficulty of giving aid to distressed districts when there is a commitment that they must provide a reimbursement or become obligated for 10 years after their bond issue is through. Our attorney general prevented our teacher colleges from using any State money to match the loan fund, because putting $1 down meant extending the State debt for 9 years. If they should continue that thinking in this act, it would not be of benefit to districts where it would be most useful.

Senator CLARK. Just two more questions.

Dr. Boehm, you have told us I think that you had 608 projects backed up on the shelf for school construction, where no finances were available, and in addition to that $80 million as your best guess of what would be required because of the fire hazard; but can you convert those needs into classrooms? What is the classroom shortage in Pennsylvania?

Dr. BOEHM. I am sorry. I do not have that in terms of classrooms. These are actual projects filed. And the one difficulty of giving classroom shortages is that here you have a secondary school with one-half of its facilities not in terms of classrooms, and then you have an elementary school, which is just the reverse, and the same thing is true with additions. I do not say this is not important, but we have grouped these in terms of the overall project.

I could furnish you, however, with this information at a later date. Senator CLARK. I think it would be helpful to have it for the record. The administration, and I think some of the school authorities, are talking about a classroom shortage of 135,000 at the present time, which will increase as the population explosion hits the schools. My thought was that the administration bill might remedy over a 5year period 75,000 of that shortage; but if you do not know what your classroom shortage in Pensylvania is, I wonder how Health, Education, and Welfare is able to compute the shortage of the country.

Dr. BOEHM. Quite often, they take the existing facilities, and then they take the increase in the birth rate, and they translate this into terms of 30 per teacher and get classroom shortage. This falls far short of our obligation when you translate in terms of projects. But if you build on the rural countryside, $2 to $1 goes into the total facility, and therefore the amount of money you are talking about is much, much larger than can be translated into terms of pupils and so much per teacher and classroom. But I will get the information for

Have you any estimate of the money needed to bring teachers' salaries to what you, as a professional in the field, consider an adequate level, plus the completion of additional construction to remedy not only your present deficiencies but any additional deficiencies which would result from the increase in the school population from 1.900.000 to 2,250,000 over the next decade? How much money does Pennsylvania need?

Dr. BOEHM. That is a very difficult question to answer. We have always made our estimates in terms of the existing laws and not upon what the superintendent or someone else thought the salary should be. We have no question in terms of subsidy to say that the way we are not subsidizing school construction, it is simple arithmetic. If it now runs close to $50 million every 2 years, we would need $15 million of State subsidy for each year additional to what we are now putting in to amortize school construction. I am aware of the fact that school buildings will cost twice as much over the 30 years in financing if they are financed in this method.

Senator CLARK. That is because of the interest, is it not?

Doctor BOEHM. That is right. Certain districts have paid as high and slightly higher than 5 percent interest for bond issues to be used for capital outlay. A rule of thumb which is helpful in determining Pennsylvania's annual share of rental payments for new buildings may be obtained by multiplying the number of millions of dollars of reimbursable construction under lease by $25,000. Thus at the end of 1958-59 school year approximately $925 million of reimbursable construction will have been approved. Hence, the State's share of the annual rental will be 925 times $25,000 or $23,125,000. If the legis

lature grants the request of the approval of an additional $250 million of reimbursable construction for the year 1959-60, the approval of an additional $150 million of reimbursable construction for the year 1960-61, the approval of an additional $100 million of reimbursable construction for the year 1961-62, and if these moneys were loaned during the corresponding years, then the State's share of the annual rental would be $29,375,000 for 1959-60; $33,125,000 in 1960-61; and $35,625,000 in 1961-62. If Pennsylvania were to approve an additional $100 million of reimbursable construction for each of the next 7 years (this is a modest figure in terms of building obsolescence and the ever increasing costs of construction), then in the year 1968-69 the State would pay $53,125,000 as its share of the annual rental of these school buildings.

Senator CLARK. Well, let me try to boil it down shortly. If S. 2 were to become law, do you think you would be able to achieve, with an appropriate State effort, an adequate salary level, and a construction program which would satisfy you?

Dr. BOEHM. For the next 10 years, this would be adequate.

Senator CLARK. Now if the administration bill were passed, there was testimony the other day that Pennsylvania would get an allocation of $32 million a year for the next 5 years, but then it developed that the State would have to put up half of that money, itself, so that you would only get $16 million a year for school construction for 5 years, again on a basis by which each of your schools would cost you twice as much as they would if you paid for them immediately. Do you think that administration bill would meet your school construction needs for the next 5 years?

Dr. BOEHM. No.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Boehm, from your study of the Murray bill, S. 2, which provides for grants-in-aid to States in their school programs, either in teacher pay or construction of buildings, or both, and your study of the administration bill, S. 1016, with its requirements of State matching of funds for buildings on a complicated formula, when the Federal Government would come in, which bill, if enacted, do you think would result in the least Federal interference?

Dr. BOEHM. There is no question about Senate bill 2, because, as Senator Clark indicated, if our building needs should shift, we have the opportunity of using it for salaries or vice versa. The administration bill gives us no such opportunity. And when you ask for matching, quite often our matching funds take away money from other avenues. We saw this happening earlier when the National Defense Education Act passed. Districts kept down their employment of teachers, tried to put money together to take advantage of title 3, because they got $2 for $1.

Then along came the fire provisions, and they had to take all their money they could to make temporary adjustments, temporary petitions. So the matching requirement of title 3 has been seriously jeopardized for our State, at least the matching part, for this year. So that whenever you attach matching to something, its total effect is nebulous in the distant future.

You think you have money to match for it today, and something happens, and tomorrow the money is not there.

Senator YARBOROUGH. So you think the administration bill, S. 1016, with its matching requirement, would lead to far more Federal interference with local schools than S. 2, without-right grants to States?

Dr. BоEнм. Yes. There is one part our attorneys find difficult. That is the obligation of the local district to continue payments of some kind 10 years after the bond issue is past.

Senator YARBOROUGH. That is in S. 1016, the administration bill. Dr. BOEHM. Yes. I think there is the first place we found difficulty. And that may even make it impossible to administer the act in a State like Pennsylvania.

Senator YARBOROUGH. You find that a very burdensome requirement in the administration bill, and a very onerous interference with local control, this requirement that for 10 years after the bonds be paid off they continue to pay back money out of the current operating expenses to pay back the Federal matching?

Dr. BoEHM. Yes. It not only would be onerous, but the fact is that our attorneys would interpret that as borrowing, as an obligation. Senator CLARK. Mr. Chairman, I ask that the figures which I have requested from Dr. Boehm may appear at this point in the record when received.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Without objection, it is so ordered. (The information referred to follows:)

Percent salary data and estimates for selected Pennsylvania school districts

1 Due to the location of this district in an area which is not increasing rapidly in population very few new teachers are employed.

2 No teachers possessing a master's degree were hired during 1958-59.

Source: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Public Instruction, Bureau of Research, Harrisburg, Feb. 26, 1959.

Insofar as what has happened in the past in regard to salaries of professional personnel in Pennsylvania public schools is an indication of what salaries will be in the future, it would seem that the maximum increase can be projected by considering salary data from the year 1947 through 1956. This statement is based upon the fact that Pennsylvania's teachers have made larger gains in real wages during the years 1947-48 through 1955-56 than any other similar period for the past 25 years. A regression equation based upon salary for alternate school years for this period indicates that the average annual salary of professional personnel in 1955-56 dollars will be approximately $6,379 for the school year 1968-69.

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