Monday, Feb. 21, 1955

Emergency Measures

In view of the alarming shortage of classrooms (300,000) in the nation's public schools, it was probably inevitable that the Federal Government should have to step in. But how to provide federal aid without federal control? Last week President Eisenhower offered his own solution: a $7 billion school-construction program whose very complexity seemed designed to safeguard the authority of state and community by avoiding direct federal grants on a wholesale scale. The President's recommendations:

P: $750 million appropriation to enable the Government to buy school bonds issued by local communities over the next three years.

P: An appropriation to enable the Government to help the states establish a series of special agencies to build $6 billion worth of schools. According to the plan, the state agencies will issue bonds, build schools in districts with restrictive debt limits, then rent or lease the buildings back to the districts.

P: An appropriation of $200 million over the next three years for direct grants-in-aid to meet "urgent situations" in districts that can neither issue bonds nor pay rent to a state agency. In each case, the state must match whatever the Government gives.

P: An appropriation of $5,000,000 this year and $15 million later to help the states pay the administrative costs of whatever programs they may have to solve "such underlying problems as more efficient school districting."

To some members of Congress (which already has 23 federal-aid bills before it), the Eisenhower program was clearly disappointing. Said Representative Cleveland Bailey of West Virginia: "Nothing short of $1 billion a year over the next six years is adequate." The whole scheme, added Alabama's Senator Lister Hill, offers nothing more than "a paltry sum ... an interminable delay on the one hand or a meager dole on the other."

Paltry or not, the President's program was specifically designed "for the purpose of meeting the emergency only." In the next few months, various states will hold special conferences on their school problems, and these will lead to a big White House conference on education next November. Perhaps then, said the President hopefully, the Government will have given the best type of federal aid of all: leadership in arousing "the American people to a community effort for schools and a community concern for education unparalleled in our history."

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