Mr. CHARLES O. PORTER,

Coos BAY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, Coos Bay, Oreg., February 18, 1959.

House Office Building,

Washington, D.C.

DEAR SIR: You may feel I am prejudiced in any matter concerning educational principles or welfare, but I assure you, as a citizen of Oregon for many years, I would feel the same way.

The Murray-Metcalf bill (H.R. 22) (S. 2) appears to be an answer to the ever pressing problem of funds for school buildings. This need is dire in certain communities in our State, and some schools are being typed substandard because of inadequate funds to support a building program. A substandard school, as you know, is not provided the funds necessary to comply with the standards committee's recommendations. The need thence in these communities becomes

even greater.

Another factor which comes to my attention from time to time is that some school administrations are sacrificing teachers' salaries to insure an adequate building program. Now, which would be worse, having poor substandard buildings with an excellent teaching staff, attracted by sufficient salaries, or a poor teaching staff with beautiful buildings and grounds? Neither of these could be a satisfactory solution to these present, pressing problems.

The Murray-Metcalf bill appears to be a needed answer for some of these problems and as it has been brought out as a bill to be considered, I would like to make my own and many others feelings known. I feel this is an adequate and just method of insuring some aid to needed areas. I hope you can see your way to aid us in securing this bill for Oregon. As of the many others who are writing you, we like to make our wants and needs known. We will be vitally interested in progress of this bill. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely yours,

KEITH A. WADE,

Principal.

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN E. FOGARTY, MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM THE SECOND DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND, IN SUPPORT OF HIS BILL, H.R. 4854, THE SCHOOL SUPPORT ACT OF 1959

Mr. Chairman and members of the Education and Labor Committee, I am pleased to have this opportunity to appear before you to support the proposed legislation which you are presently considering and to urge Federal action in the field of education. My own bill on the subject, H.R. 4854, which is a companion measure to others you have before you, would have the Federal Government recognize its rightful responsibility. I cannot too strongly request this committee to take the earliest possible action to remedy a situation which is fast growing to catastrophic proportions.

The need for increased financial support for education is indicated by the fact that we are now educating about 10 million more children in the public schools of the United States than we were prior to World War II. There will be another 8 million students in these schools by 1964-65 according to enrollment projections of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In the small State of Rhode Island alone over 5,000 additional children enter public schools every September. The Rhode Island State Department of Education estimates that from 1950 to 1960 the membership in Rhode Island schools will have increased by more than 40 percent. All of this tremendous influx of children is of course due to the great increase in the birth rate in the past war years. In fact the average number of births in Rhode Island during the last 10 years is almost 75 percent greater than the 1930-40 average. This means that Rhode Island like all other States is faced with the job of providing new school facilities for the children who are entering our schools now as well as those who will enter in the future.

The Rhode Island State Department of Education estimates that Rhode Island needs a minimum of at least 100 additional classrooms every year to meet the need of increased enrollments and nearer 200 additional classrooms if old and antiquated rooms are to be replaced. The lack of school building activity during the depression and war years left Rhode Island with a 20-year backlog in school building. The Rhode Island State Department of Education has

this to say about the school building situation in Rhode Island, "Rhode Island communities have been making a heroic effort to meet the school housing needs Fialone but they are losing the race to the shrinking dollar and the stork." nancial burden placed on some cities and towns in Rhode Island due to the school housing shortage has put their financial status in jeopardy. These communities are desperately in need of some financial relief.

Increased enrollments create a need for more classrooms. More classrooms create a need for more teachers. Rhode Island needs over 500 new teachers every year yet we have been able to train only half that number. The problem is complicated by the fact that today's college graduates were born during the depression, a period of low birth rates so that the number of students graduating from college in all fields is comparatively small. Thus the competition for the small available supply of teachers is very keen and Rhode Island is having its troubles staffing its schools. In fact in the fall of 1958 Rhode Island had to call on 307 teachers with emergency certificates to help it staff its classrooms.

It is evident from the data presented above that Rhode Island is faced with a serious shortage of classrooom facilities and a need for more teachers. This is true despite the fact that the State has almost tripled its aid to local communities since 1952. Local communities depending almost exclusively on property taxes are hard put to find where the next dollar is coming from to finance their school needs. A State fiscal commission is now making a study of the present tax structure of the State and will shortly make recemmendations to the Governor and the General Assembly. The State and local communities will continue to pay the major share of school costs. The need for new school facilities and higher teacher salaries however could very well place such a heavy tax burden on the State that it would find itself at a competitive disadvantage with other States.

H.R. 4854 would assist Rhode Island and other States by providing a measure of Federal support which would go a long way toward relieving part of the tremendous tax burden caused by the continuous rise in school costs.

Last year for the first time in our history the Congress of the United States passed a piece of legislation the title of which declared education to be an important part of the Nation's defense. The successful bill was a companion measure to one I had introduced early in the Congress. In 1957 the United States expended $44 billion on national defense; yet its contribution to the support of education was less than 4 percent of total education expenditures. H. R. 4854 calls for a Federal appropriation of $1.1 billion in 1959 rising to 4.7 billion in 1962. Surely the Federal Government can afford this kind of support to the States to assist them in the work of educating our human resources who play such an important role in helping keep America strong and free. The job cannot and should not be done alone at the local and State level.

I hope that the members of this committee agree with me and that they will take early action to favorably report a bill which will permit the Federal Government to accept its full share of the responsibility for the schooling of our Nation's youth.

TESTIMONY BY THE HONORABLE JAMES C.OLIVER, MEMBER OF CONGRESS (FIRST DISTRICT, MAINE), IN SUPPORT OF THE SCHOOL SUPPORT ACT OF 1959

Mr. Chairman, today I wish to add my voice to those of many of my distinguished colleagues who have appeared before your able committee in support of H.R. 22.

Although the "post-sputnik” reaction to our educational deficiencies has largely receded the pressing problem of revitalizing our entire public school system has not even been faced, let alone adequately solved. The issue was sidestepped in the 85th Congress. The passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1958 provided for certain scholarship and administrative funds, but the roots of the problem, the need for additional school construction and higher teacher salaries, were not attacked.

It is my feeling that H.R. 22, the Murray-Metcalf bill, is the one legislative proposal presently pending before Congress which satisfactorily attacks the basic defects of our educational problem. The administration proposals are pitifully weak in terms of our national requirements. In effect, the administration overlooks the fact that many of the local school districts have already borrowed to the extent of their debt limits. Our State and local governments have been doing a

miraculous job within the limits of their fiscal resources, but it is time that the Federal Government stepped into the breach. Certainly, in education more than in any other field, the shortsightedness of the Administration's preoccupation with a balanced budget is obvious. Higher rates of production, a swifter place in technology, better informed foreign policy, and greater military strength are all benefits which will accrue through the improvement of our educational system. This is not the time to enact half-way measures because of a misconceived lack of fiscal resources. Investment in a national educational eductional program can well be likened to a family's investment in sending their son to college. The initial outlay seems large but the final results more than justify the original investment. By the same token, expenditures for educational improvement under the Murray-Metcalf bill will be more than justified by future increases in our national productivity.

The educational needs in my own State are tremendous. Maine's school teachers receive the lowest salaries in New England. The United States Office of Education has estimated that the average annual salary of classrooms teachers in Maine for the school year 1958-59 is $3,825 compared with a national average of $4,775. The startling facts are that 55 percent of Maine's teachers received less than $3,500 per year and that not one classroom teacher in Maine receives an annual salary over $5,500.

Maine's national standing with regard to classroom construction needs also leaves much room for improvement. My State's classroom shortage is estimated at 835 by the United States Office of Education, an increase of over 100 from last year's requirements. The important thing to note is that Maine is planning construction of fewer classrooms, 87, than any other State. Consequently, Maine still will have a shortage of classrooms totaling 748 for the 1959-60 school year, not to mention additional classroom requirements cause by added enrollment or abandoned classrooms. Thus, without outside financial help, it is quite probable that Maine will begin the 1959-60 school year with an even larger classroom shortage than it had at the beginning of the present year.

The key to the classroom construction problem lies in the financial situation faced by the local communities. In Maine, there is a constitutional debt limit on the amount of money a town or city can borrow for these desperately needed public works projects. Based on the 1956-57 statistics, 40 out of 98 towns within my District have a borrowing capacity of $40,000 or less. Although construction costs in Maine would be somewhat less than the national average of $40,000 per classroom, it is obvious that a large proportion of communities within my Congressional District individually could not provide funds for the construction of more than one classroom under their present debt limit. In addition, I would like to point out the more basic fact that 40 percent of all Maine communities have borrowed to the full extent of their debt limits.

No matter how the problem is approached, Maine's educational needs must be attributed to lack of necessary funds which can only be provided through enactment of comprehensive Federal legislation. I strongly urge passage of the Murray-Metcalf bill in the belief that a healthy educational system, which this legislation will provide, is our only hope for future security and prosperity. Investment in our youth is the one and only guarantee for our future.

STATEMENT OF HON, JOSEPH E. KARTH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

Mr. KARTH. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to make a statement to this committee expressing my support for legislation which would give vitally needed financial assistance for public schools by providing funds for construction and teachers' salaries.

The importance of H.R. 22 almost daily impresses itself on my mind during the meetings of the Committee on Science and Astronautics. There some of the country's foremost scientists try to indicate the vast scope of today's knowledge and dream out loud of the unbelievable things which will be unlocked for us by the imagination, scientific skill and infinite patience of tomorrow's intellects now perhaps forming in some of the jam-packed fire-trap schoolrooms which are the shame of America.

To ill-prepare young minds for their future with poor training or to squander the rich gifts they might bring by closing off chances for their further schooling is today's "luxury" which tomorrow might cause doom.

This Committee has been bombarded with statistics of classroom shortages, teacher shortages, school finances, taxes and what-not, so it needs none from

me.

The purpose of my statement is to underscore the long time urgency of this Nation's educational needs. I feel this so strongly that I have indicated my co-sponsorship of the Murray-Metcalf legislation by introducing an identical bill, H.R. 4625.

The plight of our children's education is one that verges on disaster because a major depression and two wars have diverted from our schools the funds, the materials, and the teachers necessary to meet the needs of our country's growth. What a terrible shame it is then for the unenlightened conservative interests led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers to conduct a campaign of opposition to Federal aid to education, saying that education should properly be the complete financial responsibility of the States and localities. These organizations know full well that on one hand State and local governments are crushed by the burden of providing capital improvements postponed by the great depression and the recent wars and those necessitated by the tremendous growth of urban areas. On the other hand the State and local governments' dependence on real and personal property taxes, sales and excise taxes, and rigid allocation formulas, tax and debt limitations are driving more and more of these governments to the brink of insolvency.

I submit that it is cynical irresponsibility on the part of any organization to campaign against Federal aid to education when they know that lower levels of government cannot provide adequate schooling to meet nuclear and space-age requirements.

We must face up to the fact that this is a national emergency for education-there is a lot of catching up to do. There is so much legal precedent for support of socially desirable programs, even in education, that there can no longer be any doubt of the propriety of the Federal Government's participation in this program.

While I've stressed what I consider to be the national emergency aspect of aid to education we should in our thinking avoid the trap of letting the Soviet Union dictate the direction in which our educational system develops. On the collegiate level the National Defense Education Act has a very important function but I submit that in the long run we must not ignore the national need for educating our youth as doctors, dentists, nurses, newspapermen, lawyers, teachers, and social scientists. For who can say that the value of the contribution of any of these to the strength and well-being of our country is any lesser because their work is done outside the laboratory?

What I'm trying to say is that in my opinion the educational needs of tomorrow's adults will be enormous. If we are to fulfill our responsibility to our children and our children's children so that they can meet the exacting demands that the world preeminence of America will make on them, we must recast the social, intellectual, and cultural values of our society. We had better make a beginning right now with the program of assistance to our public schools as contemplated by H.R. 22—the Murray-Metcalf bill-in order to improve both the quantity and the quality of our education.

But we must do more than merely invest in brainpower, we must truly believe in it-in history the important measure of our country's greatness will not be the size of the pile of worldly goods we accumulated but the breadth of our intellectual achievement.

TESTIMONY OF MRS, PAUL BLANSHARD, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNITARIAN FELLOWSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE, BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON CIVIL RIGHTS My name is Mrs, Paul Blanshard. I am the executive director of the Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice. Our organization is the legislative and social action arm of Unitarians. It is nationwide and includes 60 chapters from Boston to Hawaii-from Detroit to Georgia.

The president is J. Ray Shute, former mayor of Monroe, N.C. The members of the legislative committee are Mrs. A. Powell Davies, Kenneth Birkhead, Mrs. Percival Brundage, Mrs. Paul Douglas, Ted F. Silvey, Mrs. Charles Tobey, Ross A. Weston, David C. Williams, Mrs. Richard L. Neuberger, and Ernest H. Sommerfeld.

I wish to record the support of the Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice for the Murray-Metcalf bill. The experts have appeared before you giving facts and figures of the desperate need for more classrooms and more teachers. We underscore their facts and steadfastly support their arguments.

We believe, however, that as Unitarians we have something new to add to the testimony which has been heard. Unitarians not only support Federal aid to education, we are ready to pay for it. But we support Federal aid for taxsupported public schools only.

I wish to insert in the record two resolutions of the American Unitarian Association as passed at its annual meetings.

The first was adopted unanimously in 1956 at the 131st annual meeting of the American Unitarian Association in Boston:

"Whereas our present prosperity may depend upon a uniformly well-educated producing and consuming public for its continuation, and our national survival may depend upon adequate numbers of engineers and scientists and those trained in the humanities: Therefore be it

"Resolved, That Unitarians be urged to devote their energies in the community, State, and Nation to securing sharply increased allocations of funds for the support of public schools, by all levels of government, even though it may result in substantially increased taxes."

The second was passed at the 133d annual meeting in 1959. It deals with the very proper concern of Unitarians for the loyal maintenance of the separation of church and State in our public schools:

"Whereas the principle of the separation of church and State is one of the foundations not only of religious freedom, but also of political democracy; and "Whereas violations of the principle endanger not only the freedom of religious minorities but, in the end, the freedom of all; and

"Whereas there have been increasing violations of this freedom on the local, State, and National levels, including legislation granting the use of public funds for parochial school bus transportation, development of released time programs for religious training during the public school time, pressure for medical care, purchase of textbooks for private schoolchildren from public funds, and public subsidies in the form of price concessions for the sale of public lands to institutions operated by religious bodies: Therefore, be it

"Resolved, That the delegates to the 133d annual meeting of the American Unitarian Association, assembled in Boston on May 27, 1958, declare their firm and unequivocal support for the principle of separation of church and State and urge the Adult Programs Department of the Council of Liberal Churches, to which the American Unitarian Association belongs, to develop an educational program for churches and fellowships on this problem with suggestions for local action; further, to work with organizations committed to the principles of separation of church and State with a view to develop a joint initiative; and be it further

"Resolved, That telegrams be sent to the President and leaders of both major parties in the Congress, declaring our concern at the growing threats to this basic constitutional freedom."

THE MINNEAPOLIS FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, No. 59, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

Whereas the maintenance and extension of public education is necessary to the preservation of our democratic way of life and to our very existence as a Nation; and

Whereas the public schools are in dire straits because of general apathy and because those in control of our schools had failed to foresee increased population trends and the inflationary spiral; and

Whereas the age-old principle of local and State taxation for schools can no longer operate in an economy where approximately 75 cents of every tax dollar is paid to the Federal Government; and

Whereas more money must be allocated to schools if able young men and women are to enter the teaching profession, if those now in the profession are to remain and continue to give of their skilled services, and if facilities and materials are to be adequate and conducive to learning; and

Whereas failure of Congress to pass Federal aid to schools legislation now will have catastrophic implications for our future as a people: Therefore be it Resolved, That Local 59, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, at its regular meeting calls upon Congress to give immediate and urgent consideration of the Murray-Metcalf bill; and be it further