Senator YARBOROUGH. Five or ten thousand classrooms a year. There might be that much error, that many more classrooms needed than the Commissioner's statement?

Mr. CONRAD. Well, it is a possibility. These figures here do not represent any kind of watchmaker's precision. That kind of precision is not possible; but out of 416,000 for the 5 years, there is a certain variation that is possible. It might be 25,000.

Secretary FLEMMING. That is over the 5-year period.

Mr. CONRAD. That is correct. I do not believe, if anybody has ever given the impression that these are exact figures-I feel sure that the Secretary and the Commissioner would divest anybody of that persuasion. All of our figures have usually been rounded, when we have been talking about the need for classrooms. They are in thousands. and not, generally, in hundreds.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Based on your own experience, plus the Commissioner's testimony, do you not think that 50,000 to 52,000 new classrooms a year, projected over the next 5 years, would be a more accurate estimate of the actual needs, Mr. Conrad, than this 40,000 estimate that someone has given?

Mr. CONRAD. I would be inclined to say that the needs mentioned by the Commissioner he gave a rather long list of factors for which classrooms are needed that if we took into account all of those factors, we might come out with, I would judge, 5,000 a year, rather than 10. Senator YARBOROUGH. Five thousand short, you mean?

Mr. CONRAD. Yes, sir. But I would like to emphasize that the factors which the Commissioner mentioned, if they were taken into account, would result in rising standards of schoolhousing in the United States.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Well, every time you build a new school building, that is a rising standard, is it not; even though your total shortages might not decline or might even increase with the rising birth rate, you have a better standard every time you build a new building, do you not?

Mr. CONRAD. What I had in mind, sir, was of this nature: that as better provision is made for instruction in, let us say, home economics, or as the number of children that are assigned to a classroom decline, or as an old school is replaced by a new school, there is a difference not merely in the number of seats per child, but there is a superior kind of accommodation. And I think that some of this 5,000 would represent an improvement in quality, in qualitative aspects, and not merely in quantitative aspects.

Senator YARBOROUGH. You mean that some of the old rooms might be condemned even though still there, and that might increase the number of new rooms needed? Is that what you are saying?

Mr. CONRAD. Well, I mean this: Sometimes you have a classroom that is not adapted to the use to which it is put. The newer classrooms include that, and the newer classrooms may have enough seats for overflow for certain purposes, whereas the older classrooms might not. And I doubt that this 5,000 is assignable purely to error, but I believe it represents to some extent rising standards. And the most important rising standard, perhaps, is the tendency, when people can afford it, to put fewer children into a classroom, to have 30 in a classroom instead of 32, to have, say, 25 in a classroom instead of 28, and so on.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Any rising standard that would bring about the abandonment of old classrooms at an accelerated pace would increase the Commissioner's estimate that we would abandon 16,000 classrooms a year because of obsolescence, would it not? Any change in this line that you have mentioned would raise another figure, another estimate, and would make the Commissioner's figures short here, and not big enough for the increasing demands of education?

Mr. CONRAD. Yes, sir. If you have rising standards, you will find, of course, that you have increases for current expense, for housing, for transportation, and for everything else.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Is it not a fact that after the disastrous school fire in Chicago, a good many cities and States inspected their schools and found many of them to be deathtraps and fire hazards, and the classes were shifted to other buildings, and that that has accentuated the classroom shortage, the fact that they were sending children to school in buildings that were veritable deathtraps?

Mr. CONRAD. We have noticed an increase in the number of rooms abandoned, and that increase has been taken into account in our calculations here.

Senator YARBOROUGH. You say those were taken into account?
Mr. CONRAD. To the extent that a rise actually occurred.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Have you seen a copy of the testimony of the Commissioner of Education for the State of PennsylvaniaMr. CONRAD. I am afraid I have not.

Senator YARBOROUGH (continuing). Where he gave his estimate of the number of the classrooms that were being abandoned in Pennsylvania because of the Chicago fire that had been found to be too hazardous for use in the schools?

Mr. CONRAD. I am not familiar with that, but I think everyone is aware that superintendents and parents have become more conscious of the importance of safety and the importance of architectural guarantees against such disasters.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Of course, any unexpected events that happen in the next 5 years are more apt to increase the need for classrooms, rather than decrease them. are they not? Such as fires, floods, tornadoes? They destroy; they do not build classrooms. If there is any change over a projected estimate, that change will be upward, will it not?

Mr. CONRAD. That is true; but I believe that our figures on replacement can be taken as a fairly safe average. And I would like to point out that while a tornado may come one year and be unusually damaging, there may be relatively few tornadoes the next year, and so on, so that if you are talking of a 5- or 10-vear period, the average is a safe thing to figure on, although it will not represent, as you point out, the annual variations.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Well, now, your average, or the Commissioner's average, of 40,000 over each of the next 5 years, as the actual number of new classrooms needed to take care of the increasing enrollment, was not based on experience of the past, was it? Because your experience was from that past year that you needed 52,000.

Mr. CONRAD. It is based on the number of children born and on the assumption that we would have a continuation of the same standards of school housing as in the past. And I think that the under

estimate of need that you have pointed out is in the record. And it is not a very large figure when you think of the total number of classrooms needed.

I would like to point out that we are assuming that there will be 30 children per classroom in the elementary grades and 25 children per classroom in the secondary grades. And this is not an inviolate number. If, for example, Mr. Conant's recommendations were taken seriously, it is very likely that the number of children per class in the high school would decline. He has recommended that children take 4 years of language. And these fourth year language classes, in general, tend to be small.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Did you gentlemen have any further testimony that you desired to present?

Secretary FLEMMING. Senator Yarborough, on the point that you have been discussing here, in regard to the statistics, as you can well understand, there are times when I am talking with some persons about these statistics, and they think they are too high; and then there are others who think that we may be too low. I think, as has been brought out, of course, this is not an exact science when it comes to making these predictions. It seems to me that an order of magnitude of somewhere between 420,000 and 450,000 over a period of the next 5 years is reasonable. And the thing that I am interested in pushing for this program is that, if we can get substantial agreement on this kind of a program, it would mean that the Federal Government would be in a position where it could help us to get 75,000 classrooms that I think otherwise we are not going to be able to get. And I would like to get those 75,000 classrooms, make that reduction in the backlog. Then I would like to follow this closely, and if next year, for example, some of the factors that you have properly pointed out indicate that maybe this order of magnitude of 420,000 to 450,000 is not too firm, that we ought to step it up to 460,000, or whatever the case may be, if the facts point to that conclusion, then come back and ask for a modification or extension of the program, something of that kind, in order to take care of that situation.

My hope is that as we discuss this together in the executive branch and the legislative branch, somehow or other we can find a common ground that will permit us to do what the Federal Government has been unable to do now for 3 or 4 years, and that is get into the business of helping the States and local school districts deal with this problem. And I feel that 75,000 is a rather substantial number and would make a substantial contribution to dealing with this national issue.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Secretary, I am certain that we all recognize the national need for doing something about education in this country, both the housing of education and the instruction that is received.

Now, I presume that you either heard or had reported to you the testimony here of some of the State superintendents of public instruction, that since the administration's bill deals only with school construction and requires that State matching funds be put up for construction, in order to match these funds, certain States have only certain moneys available to them, and they will have to pull that money out of funds now used for teachers' salaries, and the result of the matching program will pull down teachers' salaries in some States.

Secretary FLEMMING. This was taken up in the discussion when I appeared before the subcommittee some days ago. Senator Javits, in connection with that discussion, made a suggestion, which I said I would be very glad to take a look at and report back on. I have written a letter to Senator Javits on this particular matter. I would like to have the privilege of reading this letter. It is short. It deals with the issue that you have raised. It will, then, be a

record.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Yes.

Secretary FLEMMING. In my letter I said:

part of the

Thank you very much for your letter of February 20 requesting my reply to a question you addressed to me at the February 17 hearings before the Education Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Your question concerned the possible desirability of adding to the reasonable tax effort criteria proposed in the administration's school construction program some provision for recognition of the tax effort exerted by a school district to increase the salaries of its teachers.

I fully share the feeling underlying your question, that no program of Federal assistance to school construction should operate in such a way as to depress teachers' salaries, and that it should, so far as possible, encourage improvements in salary levels. Certainly there is no national goal deserving greater effort than the goal of salaries which will increase the attractiveness of the teaching profession. I accordingly believe that your suggestion should be acted upon. An amendment to S. 1016 designed to carry it out is enclosed. First, the amendment would state expressly what is now implicit in the bill, namely, that the reasonable tax effort for school construction should be determined by the State in the light of the local tax effort devoted to school operation and maintenance, including the payment of adequate teachers' salaries. The proposed amendment accordingly provides that the standards and criteria utilized in establishing a reasonable tax effort "shall also take into account the tax effort which local educational agencies shall reasonably be expected to exert to meet other public elementary or secondary educational expenses, including the payment of adequate teachers' salaries."

Second, the amendment would remove any possible inducement to decrease the portion of tax effort devoted to increasing teachers' salaries. We recognize that there may be situations where the resources available to a local school district which should increase teachers' salaries are so limited that the school district may be induced by the availability of Federal-State school construction assistance, to divert existing revenues from teachers' salaries to school construction or to utilize new revenues for school construction in order to meet the reasonable tax effort requirement. To preclude this possibility, the amendment would permit any State to provide for a reduction in a local school district's reasonable tax effort for school construction financing if and to the extent that the school district exerts more than a reasonable or usual effort to pay teachers' salaries or other educational expenses.

The amendment itself is very brief. I will read it. It is an amendment to section 6(c).

Substitute a period for the semicolon and add at the end thereof the following: "Such standards and criteria shall also take into account the tax effort which local educational agencies shall reasonably be expected to exert to meet other public elementary or secondary educational expenses, including the payment of adequate teachers' salaries, and may, if the State so elects, provide for a reduction in a local educational agency's reasonable tax effort for school construction financing, if and to the extent such local educational agency exerts more than a reasonable tax effort to meet such other educational expenses."

In other words, if the reasonable tax effort, let us say, was 13 mills, and there was a finding that the local school district was exerting more than a reasonable effort in the area of teachers' salaries, that reasonable tax effort for that school district might very well be dropped from 13 mills to 10 mills, just to take a hypothetical case.

I would like to say this, Mr. Chairman: that I personally would never be back of legislation that would have the effect of depressing teachers' salaries. I have too deep-seated convictions as to the inadequacy of the present salaries. And I think that this kind of an amendment would prevent that from taking place, and in addition to that, I think it would provide an incentive for the increase in salaries in many of these school districts.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Secretary, in that amendment that you proposed to the administration's bill, what agency would determine whether the teachers' salaries were adequate?

Secretary FLEMMING. The State.

Senator YARBOROUGH. The State and the Federal Government? Secretary FLEMMING. Not the Federal Government; the State. Senator YARBOROUGH. When you take this provision, though, and the other provisions of the law, as an experienced administrator, you recognize, do you not, Mr. Secretary, that ultimately this will put the Federal Government in the business, if it does not assess the taxes in the district, of saying what is a reasonable assessment on each piece of property in the district where they go in, to lend money to the district?

Secretary FLEMMING. Senator Yarborough, I do not think that it would have that result. And if there is any language in here that would tend to produce that kind of a result, I am certainly ready and willing to try to suggest amendments that will eliminate it.

As I look at the bill as a whole, and as I consider the role that the Commissioner of Education would have under the provisions of this bill, it seems to me that it comes down to this: That the Commissioner of Education would look at the State plan in order to determine whether the standards that the State proposes to apply in determining, for example, whether a reasonable tax effort has been exerted, are in harmony with the objectives of the bill.

Now, as I see it, a State can present a plan which would have no figure in it at all, as far as a reasonable tax effort is concerned; but it would simply indicate how it was going to go about determining what is a reasonable tax effort. And if the criteria that it was proposing to apply are criteria that would lead to a result in harmony with the general objectives of the bill, namely, to determine a reasonable tax effort, then, as I see it, under this law the Commissioner would be legally obligated to approve it. He could not get down underneath it and insist that it would have to be this rate or another rate.

The fact of the matter is that this section 6, Mr. Chairman, was drafted with that in mind. Now, as I say, maybe there is faulty draftsmanship here someplace, but I think our objectives and your objectives and the objectives of the other members of the committee are the same.

This section 6 in the second sentence says: "The Commissioner shall approve a State plan for purposes of this act if the plan does certain things." It does not put any discretion in his hands if the plan contains criteria that, if applied, would achieve the general objectives of this bill.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Of course, Mr. Secretary, you and the Commissioner under you would have the discretion to determine whether you thought those criteria carried that out. You are not bound by