We anticipate that St. Louis will face such a loss in the next year. Because the Income Tax Reform Bill was not passed by state-wide referendum on April 7. the St. Louis public schools will probably receive $2.5 million less than in the current year. Severe cut-backs are planned. Dilemmas like the following could become typical: one logical place to reduce expenditures would be in library books, but if the school does not continue to spend the same amount or more for library books, it is punished by the loss of federal funds for buying Title II library materials. The same situation applies to social workers, librarians and other personnel hired under Title I. If the Board must cut-back on these services, Title I children also lose any extra service because effort has not been maintained.

Secondly, in school districts undergoing rapid social change the maintenance of effort clause can force a school district into retaining some unneeded services in non-Title I areas simply because they were there before Title I.

5. Title I or ESEA should recognize the intensity of big city educational problems

A school system faced by multitudes of extremely poor children suffering from all the urban ills may be overwhelmed by the task. The intensity of poverty in cities like St. Louis should be reflected in increased help for schools in severely depressed areas.

The school population has changed from 78% white to 63% black in the last quarter century. Despite the city's net population loss of 130,000, or 15%, the public school enrollment rose 24%. Today, 62% of the pupils in the public schools live in slum tenement areas. During the past two years there has been an increase of 29% in the number of children eligible for Aid to Dependent Children. At present there are 42,587 children receiving this aid and they are therefore, entitled to Title I assistance. These poverty areas are unstable; the mobility of pupils is so great that one-half of them move each year. Some are enrolled in a dozen different schools in one school year. In the 33 high rise buildings of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project 6,944, or 66%, of the 10,496 residents are under 16 years of age and 67% of the households are without a male head of the family. (This latter is 1968 data, but Housing Authority thinks percentages are up from 1968 figures.)

Titles to these 6,736 housing units are held by the St. Louis Housing Authority, a corporation formed by the City of St. Louis and the federal government. Under normal circumstances the city gets 10% of the rental fees after deduction of utility expenses. The city gives the Board of Education a part of the payment. Last year in-lieu-of-taxes payment to the schools was $200,469 or $20.04 per pupil. This year, however, abnormal costs have forced the Housing Authority to cut out all payments to the schools. So the school system receives no in-lieu-of-taxes funds for these children.

Thus, we find that federally sponsored housing projects, despite their great need in the community, cause serious problems for the schools. Tax yielding property is removed from the tax rolls and replaced by structures which often concentrate four or five times as many children as lived their before. These children are likely to need many expensive social services.

The School Board then has to submit local bond issues for schools which have been costing about $1.5 million on sites which have averaged a cost of $114.000 an acre. The local cost of school construction since 1940 to house children living in federal housing projects has been $7,832,939. The cost of new schools in the west end of the city to house displaced children from our earliest rehabilitation project (Mill Creek) was an additional $6,943,835, or a total of $14,776,774 of school construction costs directly or indirectly caused by federal housing and urban renewal programs.

In return for the loss of local tax revenue (which theoretically is compensated for by the in-lieu-of-taxes payments) and a local cost of about $15 million, the St. Louis School Board got $20 per pupil in place of the $675 cost last year. This year the Board will receive nothing.

At one time the St. Louis Public Schools were able to assimilate such additional cost burdens. Unfortunately, these times are gone. The St. Louis Board of Education has only one direct way to get money for schools-the local property tax. This tax has been going up steadily because of the increased costs of education and because the assessed valuation of city property has not increased. In fact, it has actually dropped below what it was a decade ago.

Taxpayers and tax paying businesses have been leaving the city. From 1950 to 1959, the city lost about 25% of its primary income producing citizens-aged

20 to 64. In the same period, there has been an increase of 16% among the older persons 65 years and over-most of whom are on small fixed incomes. Children and youth to age 20 increased by 25%. In the period from 1950 to 1967, the city lost almost 30% of its business firms.

In addition to the loss of taxpayers, there has also been a loss of tax-producing property. The city assessor's office shows that almost one-third (31%) of the property in the city is currently tax exempt. Whole areas of the city are declared blighted and are, therefore, subject to a tax moratorium-usually a decade. New highway construction; city, state, and federal building construction; church and other tax exempt property make up the remainder of the tax exempt property.

Municipal costs for fire and police protection, hospitals and other services are much higher in the city than in the surrounding suburban areas. This municipal overburden costs city taxpayers 73 cents of each tax dollar, whereas suburban residents pay only 39 cents of their tax dollar for such services. Thus, 27 cents of the city's local tax dollar goes to the schools compared to 61 cents of the suburban local tax dollar.

We would accordingly recommend that school systems with high percentages of poor children receive twice the funds that school systems with lower percentages receive. When a school system has a quarter or more of its enrollment classified as impoverished pupils (ADC or incomes less than $3000) that system has many requirements for services to children. These costs are much higher than are costs in school systems with lower percentages of poor children. 6. Title I of ESEA should provide support for school districts with diminishing local capacity to pay for quality education

St. Louis is finding that its local resources to provide quality education are diminishing even as its population of poor children increases. Total assessed valuation of real property is down. ADC children in the schools have increased 50% in four years. Federal aid should back up local and state resources in those districts which are undergoing rapid financial deterioration and socio-economic change. Such school districts should be allowed to use federal funds to enhance the whole school program. The school district should be accountable for pupil performance in terms of achievement test results, dropout rates, pupil attendance, or other indicators which the school district and state and federal officials can agree upon.

7. Pass an Urban Education Act

A comprehensive report prepared by the Urban Education Task Force (Congressional Record, January 20, 1970, E21-E78) recommends passage of an Urban Education Act as a long term solution to many of the cities' educational problems. Authorized by an Urban Education Act, urban areas should plan and develop comprehensive master plan proposals for the redesign of educational programs, social goals, educational services, and performance standards for the improvement of education at all levels within the area to be served, with special emphasis for inner-city students.

In addition, funds would be provided to make urban education of high quality. One element of such an act might include demonstration grant funds to school districts which are willing to introduce incentive pay plans for inner-city school faculties which make outstanding pupil achievement gains.

CONCLUDING STATEMENT

There is no question that federal programs and resources help the schools. Without this assistance urban education would have deteriorated much further than it has. Confronted by mammoth problems of all sorts the schools have at times made mistakes and have misplaced priorities. Federal assistance with its built-in requirements for evaluation has helped the schools uncover such mistakes which in previous years went undetected. Now sensitive to our deficiencies and faced by declining resources we need more resources than we can generate locally or even at the state level.

We very much appreciate the time, effort, and personal inconvenience which such hearings as this require. We thank you.

1 Average daily enrollment data is for the 1st semester of 1969-70 and includes regular elementary and high school students.

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS-ESEA TITLE I ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND PROGRAMS, 1969-70 (AS OF SEPT. 30, 1969)

[All of the schools listed below participate in the Vit-A-Lunch program and receive services from the instructional materials center, audiovisual services, and supplementary services under title I]

Mr. PUCINSKI. Our next witness is Dr. Samuel Shepard, Jr., who is superintendent of the Banneker District. We have spent considerable time in the district this morning and we are all agreed that the work Dr. Shepard has been doing in this district has caught the imagination of educators all over the country.

We recently held hearings in Los Angeles and there were some very kind things being said about you and your whole program here, Dr. Shepard, so I am most happy to welcome you before the committee.

We have all read your statement and I know that you want to get away to catch a plane, so we will put your statement in its entirety in the record at this point, and if it is agreeable with you I would like to go right into questioning.

STATEMENT OF SAMUEL SHEPARD, JR., DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT, ST. LOUIS, MO., "THE BANNEKER EXPERIENCE"-URBAN INNER-CITY EDUCATION

By the nature of its population and geographic location, the Banneker District, one of six administrative districts in the St. Louis city public school organization, has over the years been established as "the" hard-core poverty area. The district would conform to most descriptions of inner-city poverty areas as so often defined in the literature and research journals. It would, indeed, be repetitious and unnecessary to describe in detail the well-known physical characteristics, sociological implications, and psychological factors inherent in innercity environments.

The fact that schools in the Banneker District deal with children who come from depressing inner-city environments has caused the schools to seek a different and unique approach to educating these children.

As one attempts to define the Banneker District program, there is some difficulty. The program has been in operation over a period of years and may be characterized as a continuous living experience involving pupils, parents, teachers, patrons, and the community. Many of the activities, which are a part of the program, so intimately involve parents, students, teachers and administrators that it is difficult in an isolated way to separate and describe the various activities. For the sake of clarity and understanding, however, we will attempt to share our conception of the "Banneker Experience." From one perspective, the "Banneker Experience”, may be viewed as putting life and meaning into an abstraction-an idea.

It may be viewed as putting meaning into education as a process with immediate and remote rewards for children and parents who have never seen education from this point of view. It may, also, be viewed as a prolonged, massive, concerted and comprehensive district effort to develop a "common" attitude in pupils, parents, teachers, administrators and concerned community segments towards formal education. It is certainly understood that once this common attitude is developed the necessary psychological and sociological linkages between the groups described will also have been developed and, as a result, will lead to more effective and efficient inner-city schools. Fundamentally, the effort has been in two directions-first, to change the attitude of school personnel toward poor pupils, their parents and their potential. This change in attitude has been fostered not only to bring about greater academic success, but also to help teachers understand the children's potential for becoming active productive citizens. There is a positive team approach apparent in the district. Principals, teachers, and other staff personnel have developed a respect for and dedication to, a program of quality education for the pupils and their parents. The second aspect or direction of the program, which is equally important, is a companion effort to change the attitudes of the pupils and their parents. A change from attitudes of indifference, defeatism and hostility toward the school and formal education to attitudes of respect and esteem.

The district has developed a motto or credo which serves as a constant reminder to the students and parents of the primary emphasis of the program. This motto is "success in school is my most important business". Most of the district's pupils sincerely try to live up to this motto. Many have found a degree of success in the school setting inspite of their poverty and deprivation. With the help