INEQUALITY IN SCHOOL FINANCE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1971

U.S. SENATE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON

EQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY

Washington, D.C.

The Select Committee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to call, in room 1114, New Senate Office Building, Hon. Walter F. Mondale, chairman of the committee, presiding.

Present: Senators Mondale and Hatfield.

Staff members present: William C. Smith, staff director and general counsel; Donn Mitchell, professional staff; and Leonard Strickman, minority counsel.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MONDALE, CHAIRMAN

Senator MONDALE. The hearing will come to order.

This morning we begin hearings on inequalities in the financing of public elementary and secondary schools.

On August 30 the Supreme Court of California handed down what is probably the most significant and potentially far-reaching decision in education law since Brown versus Board of Education in 1954.

The California decision is important both for the constitutional rights it established and because, I think, it marks the beginning of a new era in our Nation's efforts to provide quality education for millions of disadvantaged children.

The right to an education in our public schools is a fundamental interest which cannot be conditioned on wealth .. the California public school financing system conditions full entitlement to such interest on wealth, classifying its recipients on the basis of their collective affluence and makes the quality of a child's education depend upon the resources of his school district and ultimately upon the pocketbook of his parents . . . this funding scheme invidiously discriminates against the poor because it makes the quality of a child's education a function of the wealth of his parents and neighbors.

The California decision comes at a time of financial crisis in education-a crisis which has resulted in the dismissal of thousands of teachers, administrators, and other school personnel. Many school districts have had to eliminate programs in music, physical education, and art. Kindergarten classes, school libraries, and cafeterias have been closed. Other school systems face the prospect of closing down for weeks or months this school year.

Perhaps more important, the California decision has brought to the surface what many educators and observers have known for a long time. The inequalities in resources and expenditures among school districts in almost every State are so widespread and extreme as to insure that quality education is simply unavailable in poor school districts.

Low OF $213 TO HIGH OF $14,554

According to one report, public school expenditures in the Nation's 18,000 school districts range from a low of $213 per pupil to a high of $14,554. The facts which led to the California decision are both revealing and typical. Assessed property evaluation per pupil in California school districts range from a low of $103 to a high of $952,156. Per pupil expenditures range from a low of $407 to a high of $2,586, a ratio of more than 6 to 1. This, despite the fact that California, as do most States, has a State financing system specifically designed to equalize expenditures by supplementing revenues available to school districts with low tax bases.

In terms of the extremes found in the 50 States it is not uncommon to find schools with the highest expenditures per pupil spending five or six times as much as schools with the lowest expenditures per pupil. Nor are these inequities confined to per pupil expenditures within States. Average expenditures among the 50 States range from lows of $463 in Alabama and $495 in Mississippi to highs of $1,330 in Alaska and $1,245 in New York.

At these hearings we will explore a range of school finance problems beginning with the condition of near-bankruptcy faced by many school districts. We will hear about the discriminatory effect of local property taxes, disparities in school resources both within and among school districts the failure of State financing systems to overcome these inequalities, and the role of Federal aid to education programs—which often serve to compound inequalities already present.

Finally, we will examine remedies and reforms which might be undertaken at the State and Federal levels through both legislation and judicial action.

At the conclusion of these, and other hearings, our committee should be in a position to recommend legislation which will serve both to increase the Federal resources available to local school districts, and provide the incentives necessary for the reform of school finance systems in every State.

Without prejudging the outcome of these discussions it seems to me that two principles ought to guide our deliberations on these issues. First, I believe expenditures on education ought to be based on the needs of schoolchildren and not on the accidents of birth nor residence. This will require a reversal of present inequalities so that children from disadvantaged families receive not just comparable educational services; but, the resources necessary to overcome the adverse effects of disadvantage, and to enable them to perform in school to the best of their abilities.

Second, it seems clear that the States and the Federal Government must, together, assume the major burden in financing education. That means Federal aid of a magnitude much greater than the 7 percent of educational expenditures now provided from Washington. The need for massive Federal general aid to education is clear. It is time the Congress began to seriously debate the form which that aid should take; and, declare, as a matter of national policy and national priority, that every American schoolchild has a fundamental right to quality education, and to the resources necessary to achieve that goal.

We are privileged this morning to have two school superintendents who are in the front lines trying to fight this problem without the resources that they need.

We will begin with Dr. Mark Shedd, superintendent of schools, Philadelphia, Pa., and then Dr. Robert Blanchard, superintendent of the Portland public schools system in Portland, Oreg.

If both of you will come to the witness table. Dr. Shedd, we are delighted to have you here with us this morning.

You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF DR. MARK R. SHEDD, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Dr. SHEDD. Thank you very much, Senator Mondale.

I express on my own behalf and on behalf of the board of education my sincere appreciation for the opportunity to present testimony before this distinguished committee. Since one of our colleagues who was scheduled to be here will not be here, I will presume on the committee's time to do what I hadn't planned to do, and that is to go through most of the written, prepared testimony.

Senator MONDALE. By all means. I have read both your statements. They are excellent. I wish you would do that, and then we can ask questions.

Dr. SHEDD. Thank you, sir. I would like to get right to the point. Senator MONDALE. That would be revolutionary around here.

Dr. SHEDD. The urban schools of this country are dying. They are dying from financial strangulation, and if the Federal Government doesn't do something about it-something more than pious, pie-in-thesky pronouncements about what might be done, or could be done sometime in the far-distant future-there won't be, in the words of one famous American, any urban public school systems left to kick around any more.

I certainly don't mean to joke about the situation, because I'm being extremely serious when I say, gentlemen, that right now you have a choice between supporting education in the Nation's great cities today with relatively modest sums of Federal funds, or of pouring infinitely greater sums of money into a police State tomorrow.

Now, obviously, that is a dire prediction, and you may tend to discount it as an exaggeration-many persons do-but I invite any of you to tour any of the urban ghettos and the ghetto schools of this Nation; talk to the kids and to their parents, and to walk through mile upon mile of blight, littered not only with decaying buildings but with uneducated, unemployed people who simply have lost hope.

Public education has always met the challenge of educating the ghetto dweller as he migrated to the big city in search of a new life. It wasn't too long ago that the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Polish and many others came to the urban ghettos of this Nation and turned to the local schools for an education; and, each in his turn received that education, despite the same constraints of illiteracy and poverty that exist in the ghetto today.

The difference now is that today the urban schools are being forced to cut so deeply into their instructional programs due to a lack of

funds, that they now fail to meet even the most basic needs of a quality education. I'd like to repeat that: The public schools in the big cities of this Nation, including Philadelphia, don't have the money nor the staff to provide even a basic education for all of their pupils. Senator MONDALE. What is your per pupil expenditure in Philadelphia?

Dr. SHEDD. During the current year, it's approximately $900. Senator MONDALE. Do you have an estimate of what it would cost to provide minimum, basic quality education, per pupil?

Dr. SHEDD. If you take into account what affluent suburban, essentially unracial communities spend on the education of their youth, and consider the problems of educating urban youth, I would say a minimum estimate would be double what we are now spending.

Senator MONDALE. About $1,800?

Dr. SHEDD. $1,800 to $2,000.

Whereas previously we have served the interest, the educational interest well, of other ethnic and national groups coming into the cities, it's now the blacks, the current ghetto dwellers of the big cities who are caught up in this failure of the Nation's urban public schools. We didn't give up on all the other various ethnic groups that preceded the blacks in the ghettos, and I am asking the question today: Are we prepared to give up on the blacks?

Let me just describe, briefly, what a ghetto school is really like, using one of ours in Philadelphia as an example:

Unless you have visited such a school and seen firsthand the conditions with which students and teachers have to contend, you can't know their frustration and depression.

Here are some facts about one such school in North Philadelphia. The school was constructed before 1905 and is nonfire resistant. It's old and dilapidated. It's a firetrap.

The school has none of the modern facilities built into the newer schools. There's no cafeteria, which means no School Lunch Program. There's no auditorium which means no assembly programs.

There's no gymnasium and, therefore, no organized physical education program. The best the kids can hope for is a little exercise in the basement near the boiler and the furnace, or perhaps in the yard when the weather's nice.

The heating system is deficient. Some of the classrooms are consistently around 50 degrees, all winter long. Children dress in coats to keep warm.

When you add to that the many broken windows, damaged sashes and frames-which create drafts and noises throughout the buildinglearning becomes secondary to just keeping warm.

Perhaps you are beginning to see that it is not a very pretty picture that I am painting. But I am not finished vet.

The roof leaks and water has caused damage to the building. Paint and plaster are cracked, peeling, and falling throughout the building. The school has one set of toilets for the children, which is located in the basement.