4. The Board has failed to perform its duty to provide equal education to all students by favoring one race over another, and the Board did this because of the Board's assumed belief that minorities are inherently less educable. (pg 87-VI) 5. The Los Angeles Board of Education must, by law, comply with the regulations of the State Board of Education; and the Court has no jurisdiction over the State Board and so cannot pass upon the validity of the State Board's regulations. Therefore, the Los Angeles Board must comply with the 15% yard stick established by the State Board's Regulation #2011, and the Court has no jurisdiction to determine whether that 15% yardstick is reasonable or wholly unsuited to conditions in the Los Angeles School District.* (pp 88-94-VIII-X) 6. The Constitutional rights of the petitioners (minority children) to an equal and integrated education cannot be sacrificed or denied on the grounds that whites will flee from the district if integration is ordered. As the Supreme Court stated a decade ago, "law and order are not here to be preserved by depriving Negro children of their constitutional rights." (pg 95-XII) 7. The Board's open-transfer policies are invalid inasmuch as they have had the effect of promoting segregation rather than desegregation. (pg 98-XIII) 8. The Board is under a legal duty, and is ordered by the Court, to prepare a workable Master Plan of integration which shall be district wide in effect and which shall comply with State Board regulations, and this Master Plan shall be presented to the Court for its approval by June 1, 1970 in order to become effective on September 1, 1970 or, at the latest, September 1971. (pp. 99-101XIV & XV) 9. The Board is prevented by Court Order from selecting any new sites or changing any boundaries or modifying its transportation policies in any way unless such changes are done for the purpose of integrating its schools. (pg 101XVI) 10. Finally the Court commands the Board to pay the lawyers for the petitioners $65,000 plus a reasonable fee for any appeal, and the Court keeps jurisdiction over the case in order to determine what that fee shall be. *The Los Angeles Board of Education has asked Judge Gitelson to rule that State Board Regulation #2011 was unworkable and invalid. The Judge was saying here that he did not have the power to make such a ruling. The so-called 15% yardstick means that any school is considered a racially imbalanced school if it has more or less than a 15% deviation between the ethnic breakdown within that school as compared to the ethnic breakdown within the school district. If, for example, the Los Angeles School District had a total enrollment which was 50% white and 25% black and 25% brown, then a school would be racially imbalanced, under State Board regulations, if that school had less than 422% or more than 572% white pupils, or less than 214% or more than 28% black or brown children. NEEDS OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION FOR THE SEVENTIES SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 1970 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, GENERAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION Los Angeles, Calif. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 8120, New Federal Building, 11000 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, Calif., Hon. Roman C. Pucinski (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Congressman Pucinski, Hawkins, and Bell. Staff members present: Alexandra Kisla, majority clerk; Will Henderson, minority staff. Mr. PUCINSKI. The committee will come to order. The General Subcommittee on Education is very pleased to be here in the district of our colleague Congressman Bell, who is the ranking Republican member of our committee and who is one of the hardestworking members of our committee and who in the last 10 years has put his imprint on very significant pieces of legislation affecting education in this country. We are pleased to be here in this district this morning as a continuation of our hearings which we started here yesterday and which we have been conducting now for several months on the educational needs of the seventies. The whole purpose of these hearings is to try to anticipate the educational needs of this country in the next decade. Up to now, Government agencies and educators, for the most part, have been reacting to our problems instead of trying to anticipate them; and the young people of this country have suffered immensely in this process. This subcommittee has started a series of hearings in an effort to anticipate the educational needs of this country in the next decade; and with this sort of anticipation, try to come up with meaningful legislation. We have had some extraordinarily good hearings in Washington, and now we have moved out into the field. We intend to examine all aspects of the American education spectrum, mindful of the fact that local school districts all over America are in a deep financial and educational crisis. It is our hope that when we complete our hearings here we will be able to recommend to the President and to the Congress meaningful legislation to help resolve these problems. I think that perhaps the most difficult and urgent problem is the financial need of the large urban areas, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Boston, and St. Louis. My own feeling is that we should declare these large urban areas disaster areas in education and come up with a meaningful financial program for assist(1223) 51-937-70-pt. 3- -7 ance. We do not hesitate to declare the coastal area of Mississippi a disaster area when a devastating hurricane hit the gulf coast and destroyed so much of that area. As I look at the crisis of the Los Angeles schools, with some 2,000 of the administrators being threatened with layoffs and a serious curtailment of the educational program here, I look at my own school superintendent in Chicago saying we are $40 million short to conclude this school year. There is no question in my mind that the urban areas in this country are experiencing a disaster in education. When we return to Washington, it is my hope to discuss this matter with my colleagues and see whether or not we cannot get the President to take some action along those lines. Before we begin our hearing, I would like to call upon my colleague Mr. Bell, because of the tremendously high regard that you have for him and the work and contributions that he has made to the whole field of education. Frequently citizens at the local level do not realize contributions that their representative is making in Congress. It is a very highly complex field. I personally, as chairman of this committee, am most grateful for his deep understanding of the problem and his unyielding support and tremendous effort in trying to address himself to that problem. I am very happy to be here in this district. Mr. BELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your kind remarks, and also I appreciate your cooperation in having these hearings out here in Los Angeles. I think it is very important, particularly right now. It is a very difficult period we are going through in education. As we move into the decade of the seventies, I believe we will enter the most exciting era in educational history. Dramatic new learning concepts have been brought to our attention during earlier sessions of this series of hearings in Washington. We look forward today to hearing about more of the innovations which will play an everincreasing role in education in the seventies. Of special interest to me are some moves in our Nation to utilize the demonstrated effectiveness of our private enterprise system. We have learned that an experiment in, for example, Texarkana, is off to a very encouraging start with a program employing the resources and the management know-how of private industry. That school district has contracted with a profitmaking corporation which has taken on the job of teaching math and reading, and will be paid according to results. The San Diego school system, I might add, has recently negotiated a similar contract for the fall semester. Another variation of the competitive private enterprise spirit which has been proposed by some of the Nation's leading educators is what is sometimes called the voucher system, a means by which every parent would have the oportunity to purchase in a free market the kind of education he wants for his child. Many of these concepts must be explored further, for in them may lie the answers to President Nixon's question of: "What makes a 'good' school?” Emphasizing the need for these hearings was the message sent to Congress just a few days ago by the President in which he strongly emphasized the very essence of what we are talking about: the discovery of what works and what doesn't work in education-and why. The failures to date have been too costly, not only in terms of incalculable human suffering and loss-as our chairman mentionedbut also in terms of dollars and cents return on the taxpayers' investment. For that is exactly what education spending is: an investment in our children's future, and, indeed, in the future of our Nation. We must find the ways to achieve a better return on that investment. I was especially pleased to cosponsor, just this week, the President's legislation to establish a National Institute of Education as a focus for the kind of educational research and experimentation that we will hear about today. We do not have the answers yet, but we are learning a little bit more about what directions we might follow. That is why we are here today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. PUCINSKI. Thank you very much, Congressman Bell. Before we proceed, I would like to call upon our other colleague from this area, who is equally a key member of the committee. I call him the "whip" of the committee, because of his devotion to the cause which we are trying to serve. Yesterday we held hearings in his district, and I am convinced as a result of the marvelous experience that we had yesterday, and the experience that I hope we are going to have today, that the best way to legislate is to get down to the grassroots level, where the people are and where the problems are, because that is where we really find out some of the solutions and some of the methods being imposed. I am delighted to be able to welcome to our committee here our colleague Mr. Hawkins. Mr. HAWKINS. I want to echo the chairman's views in being invited here to Mr. Bell's district. I think that he and I joke sometimes about being on different sides of the railroad track, but certainly it is a pleasure, Mr. Bell, to be invited here today. Mr. BELL. Yes, sir. Mr. HAWKINS. Thank you very much. Mr. PUCINSKI. Our first witness this morning is Mr. Jerry Halverson, who is the legal adviser to the Los Angeles Unified School District; and I will ask Congressman Bell to introduce Mr. Halverson in greater detail. Mr. BELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As has been mentioned, Mr. Jerry Halverson is the legal adviser to the Los Angeles Unified School District, Board of Education. He received his doctor of jurisprudence degree from the University of Southern California and holds elementary, secondary, and administrative credentials. He represented the Los Angeles schools in the recent court case involving school desegregation. Would you come forward, Dr. Halverson, and take a chair? Mr. PUCINSKI. Dr. Halverson, I don't know whether you have a prepared statement. Dr. HALVERSON. No; I'm sorry, I don't. wish. Mr. PUCINSKI. If you do not have one, on the record at this point any manner in which you may proceed in Dr. HALVERSON. Thank you. you Mr. PUCINSKI. I was very happy to learn from Mr. Bell of your role in the legal action taken here; because surely if we are going to look at the educational needs of the seventies, we have to explore all of the complex problems and various legal decisions that are now being generated by the various courts around the country. We are very much interested in the decision here in Los Angeles and particularly what role you feel this will play in the educational spectrum. I recall Secretary Finch testifying in Washington last week that the decision handed down here recently, if it were to be fully implemented, would affect some 270,000 students at a cost of some $180 million to the taxpayers in this community over the next 8 years. I do hope as we go along we will explore this aspect for this committee. STATEMENT OF DR. JERRY HALVERSON, LEGAL ADVISER TO THE LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT Dr. HALVERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I have not prepared any written remarks. I can reduce whatever I say here to writing and submit it to the secretary of the committee. Unfortunately, I have been in trial a lot and have not had an opportunity to do so. I am very pleased to be here. I hope anything I say will be of assistance to the committee. The lawsuit that we have been concerned about was filed way back in August 1, 1963, and went through a series of preliminary stages, ultimately going to trial May 28-October 28, 1968, and was continued through May 2, 1969. So it was about 5 months of trial, with the exception of portions of the month of December. The issues, of course, were primarily the question of de facto segregation and whether or not the Los Angeles city schools could have and should have legally and educationally done something to remedy the effects of de facto segregation and deal with the mechanics to establish balance within the schools. May I say this: that if I touch on something that the committee members would like to have explored, please stop me; because, as I said, I have nothing prepared, and please explore any particular area of this that meets the interests of the committee. The position of the board of education has always been, and was, of course, in regard to the lawsuit, that the board is not opposed to integration; it favors integration. And the policy of in favor of it, a statement of "certain specific and limited steps to encourage integration wherever possible," and that evidence was introduced during the course of the case including the position of the petitioner in this case and that was that we had ignored the growing minority community in terms of the vocation schools and in terms of the school attendance areas that have gone around the schools in terms of any mechanical programs designed to achieve some kind of racial balance. That is an oversimplification but essentially those were the positions of each side in the case. And evidence came in from across the Nation. There were a series of expert witnesses brought in by the petitioner with respect to the New York situation and every large urban center. There was very little evidence offered with respect to the Los Angeles city schools by the petitioner. We, of course, carried that burden, and I think we carried it very well. |