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FEDERAL ASSISTANCE TO INCREASE PUBLIC

SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1955

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to recess, at 10:05 a. m., in the Old Supreme Court Chamber, United States Capitol Building, Senator Lister Hill (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Hill, Murray, Neely, Douglas, Lehman, McNamara, Purtell, Goldwater, and Allott.

Also present: Stewart E. McClure, staff director; Roy E. James, minority staff director; Michael J. Bernstein and John S. Forsythe, professional staff members.

Chairman HILL. The committee will kindly come to order.

We will proceed with the hearings on Federal aid for school construction and more particularly the President's proposals in the matter.

Now, our first witness will be Miss Selma M. Borchardt, Washington representative of the American Federation of Teachers.

Miss Borchardt, you have been with our committee a good many times in the past and we are always happy to have you. We welcome you here this morning. You always bring us most helpful testimony. Miss BORCHARDT. Thank you, Senator. Chairman HILL. It is good to have you. Now, you may proceed in your own way.

STATEMENT OF SELMA M. BORCHARDT, WASHINGTON REPRESENTATIVE, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS

Miss BORCHARDT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: First, we would thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, for giving time so generously to hear testimony on a bill which would authorize a long-term program of Federal aid for education.

We are particularly happy that the bills authorizing permanent aid and the bills authorizing immediate emergency aid have come from both sides of the aisle in both the Senate and the House.

We need both: Emergency aid and long-term Federal aid.

A program of long-term aid is sorely needed and we are happy to know that so many men in the Senate and House appreciate this fact. We shall certainly support a program of long-term aid; very long term, we believe.

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However, we come to plead that, while you are considering the extensive and varied needs of our schools requiring long-term aid, you recognize the urgency of our plea for immediate emergency relief. We would, therefore, before addressing ourselves to S. 968, renew our plea for immediate emergency aid.

S. 5 which we endorsed here just a couple of weeks ago provides for the emergency aid for which the whole Nation pleads so earnestly

now.

We shall not here again give the statistical data supporting our appeal for 300,000 classrooms now. You know well the facts of the need for fireproof, sanitary schools. Our United States Office of Education presented these data forcibly a year ago. On a basis of these facts the Senate committee voted for emergency grants, almost a whole year ago.

Today we come to testify on a bill which includes provisions for both emergency and long-term aid. We submit that combining provisions for emergency aid and permanent aid in one bill does at the outset present certain problems. Should we delay giving desperately needed emergency aid until a satisfactory program for permanent aid has been agreed on? We say emphatically, "No." We say emphatically, "No." Emergency aid should be given now, even while we further discuss the relative need for long-term Federal aid, and the program through which such aid is to be given. But give the emergency aid now.

So our first recommendation is that you separate the provision for Federal grants-in-aid now written into the Smith bill S. 968 in title III, and consider this section forthwith independent of the rest of the bill. Title III-page 21-in the language of the bill proposedFederal grant assistance to the States for school districts economically unable to finance or lease urgently needed school facilities.

Please note that the bill itself refers to urgently needed school facilities. Because the need is undeniably urgent we ask that the section of the bill-title III-dealing with emergency grants be considered separately and immediately.

We have some very serious reservations regarding title III. We fear that some provisions in this title seem to us to defeat the very purpose of the provisions of title III itself.

First Would not the very test of economic capacity of the State in itself deny the relief asked for to a number of States? A number of States cannot qualify for this aid because the program applies only to those districts in a State which cannot qualify under title I or title II. Actually, although school districts in a number of States could qualify under title II they have no assured sources of revenue to enable them to repay that obligation. Hence, they would be either increasing their school indebtedness or they would be enjoined from carrying on the urgently needed school building program. Actually, most school districts are bonded to capacity so that the legislatures or county or town councils are called on continually to vote special funds and levies for bare operation expenses. And with additional demands on local communities for school construction funds, where will the funds come from for teachers' salaries? And if teachers cannot be paid a more nearly adequate professional workers' salary, how can we expect to have and keep qualified teachers on the job?

So our first objection to title III as now proposed would be that its eligibility factors and its operational facilities render it of highly restricted use.

Second: The complex, and quite inflexible administrative procedures, would further delay the granting of relief to those States which through this complex machinery qualify for relief.

We submit that commonsense dictates that in giving emergency relief in any critical situation, that speed is of the essence.

Chairman HILL. Senator Douglas wants to ask a question.

Senator DOUGLAS. May I ask you a question on your second point? Miss BORCHARDT. Yes.

Senator DOUGLAS. You evidently think that title III would be slow in application.

Miss BORCHARDT. Oh, very much too slow.

Senator DOUGLAS. Would you develop that point?

Miss BORCHARDT. I think the machinery for qualifying a State, Senator, is in itself a means of delaying action, then the measurement of capacity, the checking on each State's capacity to raise funds within the State itself under the provisions in S. 968 is a time-taking factor which may have a place in a permanent program, but not for an

emergency program.

Senator DOUGLAS. I would like to ask this question. Is it your understanding that relief under title III would only be to States eligible, (a) for those districts where the interest rate is above 3% percent? Miss BORCHARDT. That's right.

Senator DOUGLAS. And where borrowing has not been consummated under title I?

Miss BORCHARDT. That is right.

Senator DOUGLAS. And, (b), in those districts where there is a State school building authority where that has been created, and where adequate funds have not been obtained under title II.

Miss BORCHARDT. That is our understanding.

Senator DOUGLAS. And thus all districts which did not fall under Title I and categories under title II would be ineligible for aid under Title III.

Miss BORCHARDT. That's right.

Senator DOUGLAS. And districts which would be eligible under title I and title II would be held up by the time required to prove that they were not qualified under title I and title II.

Miss BORCHARDT. Yes, Senator, and it is that administrative machinery for proving eligibility which is bound to take time.

Senator DOUGLAS. For instance, if it took some years to get a constitutional school building authority, if a district could not qualify under title I, and since the constitutionality or organization of the school building atuhority under title II would be postponed, is it your belief, therefore, that they could not get relief under title III?

Miss BORCHARDT. It certainly is. We refer to the very difficulty of getting legislative action a little later, Senator.

Senator ALLOTT. I would like the ask the doctor a question, Mr. Chairman, if I may.

Chairman HILL. Certainly, Senator.

Senator ALLOTT. Do you think that there should be any criteria or any proof or any standards set up before millions of Government money is passed out to the schools?

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Miss BORCHARDT. I certainly do, and such criteria are written into S. 5, and were written into the bill which the Senate committee unanimously reported out last year.

Senator ALLOTT. They are written into S. 968, too, are they not?

Miss BORCHARDT. They are written into S. 968 also, but the ones that are in S. 968 are more involved and do take longer than the ones for which the bipartisan committee voted last year.

Senator ALLOTT. If the testimony which has been presented to this committee and which you haven't heard, of course, is true that these schools, a good portion of them, have no money whatever in any way of matching Federal funds, that they are absolutely at the limit, as far as their tax lexies are concerned, their constitutional and statutory limits, how do you propose that they are going to match Federal funds?

Miss BORCHARDT. This is the emergency features which must be met. I mean there is a certain amount of direct aid needed under any aid bill, such as the one the bipartisan committee voted last year, and as is envisaged as a potential in S. 5. You see what we are concerned with is separate and immediate consideration of the emergency bill. Senator ALLOTT. I know, but would you please answer my question? Miss BORCHARDT. I thought I did. I am sorry.

Senator ALLOTT. Where do you propose that this money is going to come from?

Miss Borchardt. I propose that it come directly in grants-in-aid from the Federal Government for those States.

Senator ALLOTT. Then that would mean, according to the testimony before this committee that in a great many States the complete construction school program, emergency and otherwise, would be completely a Federal grant. Are you in favor of that?

Miss BORCHARDT. I am in favor of saving our schools and our children, Senator, just as much as I am in favor of presenting and promoting the welfare of our whole Nation.

I think it is basic, and if the situation demands a direct grant, then it must be a direct grant.

I regard an emergency as an emergency, whether it means fighting the destruction from one kind of a storm, a hurricane Senator, in fighting the storm of ignorance we fight it with a direct grant.

For example, we refer later, in this brief to those poor children in Mississippi whose school was actually picked up and blown away. We give direct relief to repair material loss in those storm areas. Senator, we plead here for the human beings as much as for the land. Senator ALLOTT. Well, doctor, I will tell you this. I have seen as much land moved by wind as many of you have ever seen moved by water, but the Government didn't step in and remove the results of it. Miss BORCHARDT. If there were an emergency, I think we should. I think our Government is a government of all the people of all the States.

Senator ALLOTT. I feel that way, too, but I just wanted to get your position clear on where you think the money would come from for matching purposes.

Miss BORCHARDT. I think the Federal Government's responsibility is absolute, where the need of the people is so great.

Senator ALLOTT. Then if it turned out as the second step, Doctor, that these school districts in such States as Mississippi, about which I

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