Additional assistant principals in elementary schools to improve school administration and instructional supervision.

MEETING THE NEEDS OF THE DISADVANTAGED

The funds provided in the budget will also help to meet the needs of children whose background and family resources are inadequate. Nearly half the pupils in the District's schools come from areas where the average family income is under $5,000. Funds from Federal programs have helped to enrich the school experience of these children, but more is necessary. The budget will

Provide teachers who can give individualized instruction to pupils who can be helped by more teacher attention provided through team teaching, ungraded classrooms, smaller class arrangements, seminars, and tutorial assistance in after-school study.

Initiate a pre-kindergarten program for 3,000 children, to convert the Head Start approach into a full-year program.

Provide help to approximately 60,000 students in remedial reading.

Double the present number of pupil personnel teams to provide help both to pupils and to teaching personnel in determining the abilities and emotional stability of children.

Expand the school lunch program.

Provide matching funds to qualify for teachers from the National Teacher Corps.

CONSTRUCTING AND EQUIPPING SCHOOLS

Funds in the amount of $63.3 million are provided in the budget for various phases of school construction. This is a substantial increase over past levels, but it is a more current assessment of the need. There is no economy in delay. On the contrary, postponement of essential facilities condemns many students to educational handicaps that will endure throughout their lives. The budget is intended to reflect urgency.

It will provide funds for

Construction of 17 projects for which site and planning funds have already been appropriated-including 2 new elementary schools, 2 elementary school replacements, additions to 12 other schools, and an addition to the school warehouse.

Equipment for elementary and junior high construction projects already funded.

Planning and construction funds for three elementary and one senior high school additions.

Site and planning funds for 28 school projects.

Seventy-five portable pre-kindergarten classrooms for the most seriously deprived areas of the District.

An addition to Sharpe Health School, and a new school for the severely mentally retarded.

Funds are provided for the construction of a new Shaw Junior High School, for which the Congress provided special legislation in 1966. Funds to enable the Board of Vocational Education and the Board of Higher Education to begin planning for the two new institutions

authorized by Public Law 89-791 can be supplied from existing resources in 1967. Provision is made in the budget for financing the two Boards in 1968.

THE ECONOMIC REPORT FOR 1967

The President's Annual Message to the Congress. January 26, 1967

The coexistence of job vacancies and idle workers unable to fill them represents a bitter human tragedy and an inexcusable economic waste. One of society's most creative acts is the training of the unemployed, the underemployed, or the formerly unemployable to fill those

vacancies.

A dynamic economy demands new and changing skills. By enabling workers to acquire those skills, we open opportunities for individual development and self-fulfillment. And we make possible higher production without inflationary pressures.

I shall ask the Congress for funds to support a new and special effort to train and find jobs for the disadvantaged who live in urban ghettos.

I shall also propose legislation to improve the effectiveness of the Federal-State employment service.

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EDUCATION AND HEALTH

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Individually and collectively, Americans have insatiable appetites for more education and better health. Education and health contribute both to individual well-being and to the Nation's productivity. But far too many of our urban and rural poor are denied adequate access to either. The efficiency of our methods of education and of providing medical care can and should be strengthened.

History will record these years as the time when this Nation awoke to its needs--and its limitations-in education and health. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Head Start, the Teacher Corps, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Partnership in Health will be landmarks in our social and economic development.

I shall propose

-an expanded Head Start program; a Follow-Through program in the early years of school; and the opening of other new educational opportunities for children;

-both legislative and administrative changes to accelerate research and development on more efficient and effective ways of providing health resources;

-an expanded child health program, including early diagnosis and treatment, a pilot program of dental care, and the training of additional health personnel to provide services to children.

AMERICA'S SERVICEMEN AND VETERANS

The President's Message to the Congress. January 31, 1967

EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE VETERAN

Since last June, when the new G.1. Bill went into effect, more than 500,000 veterans have applied for education and training benefits. Thousands more are signing up each week. Today, over one quarter of a million returning servicemen and women are preparing for the future and learning new skills in universities, colleges, and technical and vocational schools across the Nation. By the end of Fiscal 1968, this number will increase to more than 500,000.

While the new G.I. Bill is less than a year old-and an outstanding success-we can still work to extend and improve it.

Even today, some 20 per cent of those separated from the Armed Forces each year-about 100,000 young men-have not completed high school. Many of these young veterans have the ability and desire to better themselves. All too often, they lack the financial means to complete their high school education and enter college.

As a nation, we cannot afford to neglect this valuable manpower

resource.

The present G.I. Bill makes no special provision for a returning serviceman who needs to finish high school or take a "refresher course" before he can enter college. In fact, it works in just the opposite way. For each month the veteran pursues a high school education under the G.I. Bill, he loses a month of eligibility for college benefits under the law.

This situation must be changed. I recommend legislation to provide full G.I. Bill payments to educationally disadvantaged veterans so that they can complete high school without losing their eligibility for follow-on college benefits.

We are taking a further step. In recent months, thousands of men who have been rejected for military service because of insufficient educational achievement are being accepted. 40,000 men will enter the service in the first year of this new program, and 100,000 each year thereafter. Its purpose is to provide the intensive training needed to make these young men good soldiers. Upon the completion of their military service, they will be better educated and equipped to play productive and useful roles as citizens.

I am directing the Secretary of Defense to find new ways to improve this program.

The time has also come to increase the educational assistance allowance under the G.I. Bill. A single veteran pursuing a full-time course receives $100 a month to help him finance his education. This amount is less than the $130 a month paid to the child of a deceased or disabled veteran who may be taking the same courses at the same school.

The veteran going to school is usually older and may bear heavier responsibilities. I recommend an increase in the monthly educational assistance allowance under the G.I. Bill from $100 monthly to $130 for a

veteran.

In accord with the present scale of benefits, a married veteran with children receives $150 monthly under the G.I. Bill, regardless of

the number of children he has. To help veterans with families who wish to continue a full-time educational program, I recommend that the monthly payment be increased by $10 a month for the second child and $10 a month for each additional child.

These increases in the educational assistance allowance will benefit the more than 250,000 veterans now enrolled in schools under the G.I. Bill.

CRIME IN AMERICA

The President's Message to the Congress Recommending Crime Control and Law Enforcement Legislation and Measures for the Control of Narcotics, Firearms, and Wiretapping. February 6, 1967

To the Congress of the United States:

2. Enforcement Training

I recommend that the Congress provide funds to enable the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Food and Drug Administration to enlarge their existing enforcement training programs, so that they can reach a far greater number of local and state enforcement officers.

Under these programs, enforcement officers and experts of the Federal government are sent to local communities with severe drug addiction problems, to train local enforcement personnel in the most modern techniques of detecting and apprehending drug pushers and addicts and the most advanced methods of treating drug addiction.

3. Public Information and Education

It is essential that the public be better informed about narcotics and dangerous drugs: what they are, what their effects are on the body and mind, how widely they are misused, the laws which govern them, and the medical treatment that offers the best chance of cure. This information should be made available to local governments, school systems, parents, young people, college campuses and medical groups.

AMERICA'S CHILDREN AND YOUTH

The President's Message to the Congress Recommending a 12-Point Program for Young People. February 8, 1967

To the Congress of the United States:

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In the past three years, I have recommended and you in the Congress have enacted legislation that has done more for our young people than in any other period in history:

-Head Start and other pre-school programs are providing learning and health care to more than two million children.

-The Elementary and Secondary Education Act is improving the education of more than seven million poor children.

Our Higher Education Programs support more than one million students in college students who might otherwise not have been able to go.

-The Neighborhood Youth Corps, the Job Corps and an expanded Manpower Development and Training Program are bringing skills to almost one million young Americans who only a few years ago would have been condemned to the ranks of the unemployed.

Recent studies confirm what we have long suspected. In education, in health, in all of human development, the early years are the critical years. Ignorance, ill health, personality disorder these are disabilities often contracted in childhood: afflictions which linger to cripple the man and damage the next generation.

STRENGTHENING HEAD START

Head Start-a preschool program for poor children-has passed its first trials with flying colors. Tested in practice the past two years, it has proven worthy of its promise.

Through this program, hope has entered the lives of hundreds of thousands of children and their parents who need it the most.

The child whose only horizons were the crowded rooms of a tenement discovered new worlds of curiosity, of companionship, of creative effort. Volunteer workers gave thousands of hours to help launch poor children on the path toward self-discovery, stimulating them to enjoy books for the first time, watching them sense the excitement of learning.

Today Head Start reaches into three out of every four counties where poverty is heavily concentrated and into every one of the fifty States.

It is bringing more than education to children. Over half the youngsters are receiving needed dental and medical treatment. Hearing defects, poor vision, anemia, and damaged hearts are being discovered and treated.

In short, for poor children and their parents, Head Start has replaced the conviction of failure with the hope of success.

The achievements of Head Start must not be allowed to fade. For we have learned another truth which should have been self-evidentthat poverty's handicaps cannot be easily erased or ignored when the door of first grade opens to the Head Start child.

Head Start occupies only part of a child's day and ends all too soon. He often returns home to conditions which breed despair. If these forces are not to engulf the child and wipe out the benefits of Head Start, more is required. Follow-Through is essential.

To fulfill the rights of America's children to equal educational opportunity the benefits of Head Start must be carried through to the early grades.

We must make special efforts to overcome the handicap of poverty by more individual attention, by creative courses, by more teachers. trained in child development. This will not be easy. It will require careful planning and the full support of our communities, our schools and our teachers.