Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-10-03
Senator Capper's Request.

Senator Cappsr's letter to the Board
of Education, requesting information
on the status Of the hve-year building
program and other conditions in the
schools, is written in vein that Is
characteristic of the Senator's friendly
interest in the District. The Senator's
motive is to find out why the intent
of Congress, which. in 1925. authorized
legislation designed to reach fixed
objective, has not been realized. He
is not so much interested in fixing the
blame as he is in correcting the de-
ficiencies that have become apparent
half a year before the five years" out
lined by Congress expire.
The Board of Education's reply to
the Senator's letter will be awaited with
interest. The District taxpayers are
generally familiar with the beginning
and the end Of the five-year program.
What they want to know, and Senator
Capper joins them, is what has taken
place in the interlude between the start
and the finish.
In 1925, Congress authorized legisla-
ton designed to accomplish the aban-
Comment of portable schools; eliminate
the use of rented buildings; abandon
the use of undesirable rooms; reduce
elementary school classes to standard
Of not more than forty pupils to class;
eliminate part-time classes; abandon
UNIT school buildings; abandon the
double shift" for high school pupils
and to take care of an annual increase
Of five per cent in enrolment during
the five-year program.
In short, as Senator Capper recalls,
the intent of Congress was Ito provide
in the District of Columbia a program
of schoolhouse construction which shall
exemplify the best in schoolhouse plan
ming, schoolhouse construction and edu-
cational accommodations"
But somewhere betwixt the cup and
the lip there has been a slip. The
opening of the current school year
found ~ portable schools in use: about
5000 children on part time; the need
for 221 additional classrooms, with only
IS new classrooms promised by next
February. Some Of the schools are
pitifully crowded. At the Wheatley
School, for instance, more than ninety
children appeared for enrolment in the
kindergarten on the opening day. The
ninety have been divided into two shifts,
one of them of about fifty children,
who come in the morning, and the
other of forty who come in the after
noon. The condition at Wheatley may
not be typical. But overcrowded class
rooms and overcrowded schools are the
rule rather than the exception.
The five-year program, so generously
authorized by Congress, has failed in
one respect because the appropriations
needed to carry it out have not been
forthcoming. That much is indicated
by DR.. Ballou. who. in speaking of the
necessity for the continued use of port
able schools, emphasized that fact that
1.-The school officials and the Board of
Education have individually and col
lectively made efforts to secure suf-
ficient appropriations for permanent
schoolhouses to make 1t possible to
abandon the use of portables. Had
the five-year school building program
act been carried out, most, If not all,
Of our portable schoolhouses might have
been abandoned by the end Of the
coming fiscal year"
There are ether reasons than in
suficient appropriations that will ex-
plain failure to realize all the objec-
tives of the five-year program. The
Commissioners, for instance. have been
in annual conflict with the Board Of
Education over the proportion of the
District budget to be allotted to the
schools. The city has grown, and in
some unexpected directions, so that
had the original five-year program been
carried out We still would find condi-
tons unsatisfactory in some quarters.
But Senator Capper strikes the right
key. Washington taxpayers are not
so much interested in fixing the blame
as they are in correcting the difficulty.
Let us hear from the Board of Educa-
ton as to where this difficulty lies. It
is comforting to feel that as able
friend as Senator Capper wants it
corrected