Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1928-09-24
Liberal School Appropriations.

The difference of opinion concerning
Jurisdiction between the Board of Edu-
cation and the Commissioners should
not and will not be permitted to pre-
vent the schools from securing in the
| District bill maximum of reasonable
appropriation for maintenance and to-
ward completion of the five-year pro-
gram of school expenditure which
Congress has authorized.
Both the Commissioners and the
Board are compelled by the Budget Bu-
reau, which represents the President. to
change their carefully prepared state
ments of actual municipal needs and
to present as their own estimates state
ments of such needs that are less by
millions than those in good faith orig
tnally submitted AS fellow sufferers
the Commissioners and the Board
would naturally be considerate of and
sympathetic toward each other, and not
hostile, arbitrary or disputatious.
Nearly everybody in the District is
interested, directly or indirectly, in the
schools, and Congress has already re-
fiected that interest by adopting and
authorizing a five-year program Of
school expenditure, which owing to GER
tain limitations upon District appro-
PR sions has been only partially car
ried out.
In the general community interest
and waving for the present the issue of
jurisdiction the Commissioners and the
Board of Education will doubtless be
found cooperating earnestly to secure
! Cor the schools the most liberal appro-
priations that the available revenues
, and resources of the District will rea-
sonably permit. To this end the Board
of Education should be given the OPP
portunity to fight for its own estimates,
before the Budget Bureau and the
congressional committees; and when
cuts in the regular estimates have been
finally decreed by the Budget Bureau
the Board of Education should be per-
mitted to determine where in the school
estimates to be submitted to Congress
the cuts should be made; that is, what
items aggregating the total cut should
be shifted from the regular and pre-
ferred estimates to the list of slurred
supplementary estimates.
In respect to its budget the District
government Is in a cramping strait
jacket. It's statements in good faith
of actual municipal needs are limited by
the assumption that in spite of the
fight by the Senate for fair play no
more than nine millions will be ap-
propriated from the Treasury for Capt.
tai maintenance, though the total Capt.
tai expenditures are steadily increasing
and though a large percentage Of the
total lump sum is inequitably diverted
from municipal to national projects. Its
budget is further limited by the urgent
plea of the local taxpayers against an
increase of the present tax rate, al
ready too high in view of its excessive
assessments, compared with those OF
other cities.
Some day Congress will do financial
equity Cd by restoring the definite
proportionate national contribution, or
co by increasing the lump sum pay
ment, or 90 by removing national or
semi-national projects from the Dis
trict bill, or by financing such projects
on Just terms of national-local contri-
button by separate provisions of the
District bill outside of the nine millions
payment