Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1950-06-01

Last August two young Arkan-
sas state officials dramatically
solved the conflict between tax
payers who hate to pay taxes and
parents who want decent schools,
and thereby raised Arkansas rank
in education among the states
from 47th to 34th. The men were
Governor Sid McMath and State
Education Commissioner A. P.
Bonds; their method was a unique
caravan that toured the state for
month, renovating and equip
ping model school houses before
the astonished eyes of local resi-
dents. The upshot was a vote in
that statewide school elections for
higher school taxes, according to
Albert @. Maisel, who writes about
the experiment in McCalPs for
June:
The jeep with the long, horns
pulled into little Mountain Home,
Arkansas, just as the sun began
warning of another blistering Au-
gust day, and started to blare,
Caravan coming! All out to the
schoolhousep A mile-long chain of
orange school-buses appeared sud-
denly-30 of followed by
heavily loaded trucks and trailers.
while the growing crowds
gaped and gossiped, swarm of
men invaded the schoolyard,
trundling all sorts of equipment
rods and pipes and fittings, desks
and chairs and chalkboards. AS
order began to raise out of the
chaos, the fascinated onlookers
saw, completely equipped play
ground standing in the middle of
the schoolyard: Jungle Gyms,
swings, teeter-totters and slides.
when the doors of the school
house finally swung back, the
grownups turned as bug-eyed as
their children had before them.
The dark, oiled and well-worn
Railways of the school had been
transformed to cleaning newness.
There were microscopes and movie
projectors, steam kettles and serv-
ing trays, floor-polishing machines
and high-powered vacuum cleaners,
screens and thousand other things
that most of them had never seen
in a school before.
inside the classrooms, the once
brown and grimy walls had dis
appeared behind fresh coats of
soft-blue paint. The ancient black
boards had vanished too, replaced
by light-green chalkboards. Where
only two hours before the ancient
desks had stood in rigid rows, the
crowd now saw spanking-new
'airplane' desks and seperate
chairs-movable ones - arranged
SO that each child could get the
best light and clear view of what
was going on. Overhead, the soft
strong light that flooded down
from new fluorescent fixtures
served to emphasize the magic of
the transformation.
"All this - and much more -
happened last August in Arkansas
in one of the strangest election
campaigns this country has ever
seen. 1t was plain, open and I'M
ashamed propaganda, designed to
sweeten the pill Of higher local
school taxes.
"The first thing AL Bonds en-
countered on his new job as state
education commissioner was a set
Of ugly facts dredged up by the
Arkansas Council on Children and
Youth. They boiled down to the
statement that in education Ar
kansas ranked 47th among the
states.
Behind this fact stood tradi-
tons and conditions that were not
Easy to change. Biggest bottleneck
If all was the Arkansas constitu-
ton itself, which declared that
school taxes could never exceed 10
mills on every 500 { little less
than $2) Of assessed property.
"In 194S the teachers, backed
by Governor McMath, passed an
amendment to the constitution. 1t
didn't raise school taxes, hut it
allowed the people to go over the