Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1920-09-29
$30,0DO,000
WILL NOT COVER
ALL SCHOOL NEEDS
Citizens Feel More Play
grounds Vital Necessity to
ChiIdren's Safety.

There's crying need for more
school buildings in Washington. ade-
quate playground space for the chill
dren and physical improvements in
the buildings which would entail a
cost of approximately s30,000,000. All
are vitality necessary in the opinion of
school authorities il a high standard
of education is to be maintained.
Congress, school officials concede,
will not grant an appropriation so
large for the District school needs or
one tenth of that amount. Therefore,
they have decided to literally knife"
all demands of civic associations for
improvements. except the vital neees-
stiles, and ask for fund of about
SO, 900, 900 for the next fiscal year, for
the most urgent of the school needs.
Claxsrooms Greatest Need.
Virtually all of this appropriation.
if granted. will be utilized in building
more classrooms. which Superintend-
ent of Schools Ballou regards as the
most urgent Of all needs. Fairgrounds
for the children. assembly halls and
gymnasiums, badly needed in many of
the schools, must wait, probably an
other year or even longer.
There are $50 permanent school
buildings in Washington. built to ac-
commodate $4,000 children. Nearly Co.
900 children are enrolled in the schools
today. Seventy-nine portable and
nineteen rented structures also are
being used as schools, but still ad-
equate accommodations are lacking
for the entire enrolment.
These conditions are causing sew
eral thousand children to attend
school only a half day, with abbre-
waited courses. The detrimental ef-
feet on their education is clearly rec
ognized by DIR. Ballou and other Of
ficials, and for this reason they are
doubly anxious to obtain additional
classrooms before other needs.
The school budget submitted to the
District Commissioners by the board
of education last year carried recon-
mendationS for an appropriation of
$2164,163 with supplementary list
calling for 100000, or total of s2.--
564.163. to provide for the needs of
the schools this fiscal year. The Com
missioners approved estimates for this
work of $1,027000.
Citizens to Fight Reductions.
Fearing that the Commissioners
again this year will reduce the ap-
propriation recommended by school
officials for improving the schools,
many civic organizations are planning
to appoint delegates to confer with
them and urge that the figures in
cluded in the school estimates be not
only approved. but increased SO as to
provide Fairgrounds, assembly halls
and gymnaStumS.
scores of communications have been
sent to school officials depicting cond-
tions around schools which have no
playgroundS during recess periods
All of them point out that children
either have been killed or injured
playing in streets, while all Of them
mir do
ger by heavy vehfcuiar traffic. For
this reason the civic organizations
have so strenuously urged adequate
nIayprounds for the children, which
are to be virtually ignored in the
school estimates for the next fiscal
year, to go TO the Dlssrlct Commls-
sioners Friday.
Adequate Fairgrounds are not the
only urgent needs of the schools
which are to be overlooked in the es-
Inmates. Assembly halls. gymna
siums lunchrooms and shower baths
are to meet the same fate.
Failure to recommend these improve
ments in the school budget is going to
meet opposition, not only from citizens
associations, but also the District Con-
ASSOCIATIONS. Members of this organiza-
tion already have made a comprehensive
survey of all school buildings, and have
comniled a report outlining the Imme-
diate needs When Mrs Giles Scott
Rafter. president of the organization, re-
turns to Washington next week she is
likely to go before the board Of Com
missioners and demand an increase in
the school boards estimates for the
work of improving the schools.
Conditions found at the Petworth
School one of the most overcrowded in
the city, will be described in The Star
of tomorrow.