Atlanta Daily World

Senate Committee Asked To Equalize Schools In D. C.

WASHINGTON. D C (NNPA)-

Charging that the segregated public school system of the District of Columbia is being operated "in blatant defiance" of the line of Supreme Court decisions upholding "separate but equal" facilities, the Federation of Civic Associations last Tuesday asked a Senate Appropriations subcommittee to equalize colored and white schools here.

The Federation of Civic Associations is a colored organization, composed of the presidents and delegates from thirty-three local civic associations. Its white counterpart is the Federation of Citizens Associations.

At the same time that the Federation of Civic Associations asked for equalization of the colored schools here with the white schools, it also asked that the public school administration be immediately requested to furnish the public with data showing the annual savings that would be effected by integration.

The Board of Education first voted to have Dr. Hobart Corning, Superintendent of Schools, to make a study showing the savings that could be made through integration, but later rescinded its action.

Robert L Pollard, chairman of the committee on educational action of the Federation of Civic Associations, told the subcommittee that he disagreed with Dr. Corning's statement that the savings would be negligible. He estimated such savings at $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 a year.

Presenting the statement of the civic associations, signed by himself and Dr. Ellis O Knox, chairman of its committee on education and professor of education at Howard University, Colonel Pollard asked for equalization all along the line—teacher-pupil ratio, administrative personnel and school buildings.

Col. Pollard told Senator Lister Hill of Alabama, who presided at the hearing, that on every academic level, from kindergarten through teacher college, colored children are required to attend larger classes than are white children.

As of October 19, last, he said, classes in the elementary schools averaged 33.6 pupils per teacher in white schools, and 37.9 in colored schools; junior high schools, 24 pupils per teacher in white schools, and 31.3 in colored schools; vocational schools, 13.7 for whites, and 14.9 for colored; senior high schools 17.5 for whites and 24.4 for colored, and teacher colleges, 15.8 for whites and 16.5 for colored.

Col. Pollard pointed out that the standards fixed by the school board were 36 pupils per teacher in the elementary schools, 26 pupils per teacher in junior high schools and 25 pupils per teacher in senior high schools. These standards, the civic associations charged, "are currently in pernicious myth."

Actual class sizes, Col. Pollard said, show without exception that the average class in white schools is below the standard, while in the colored schools it is above the standard.

Dr. Corning has recently been reported as recognizing that the established standards are too high for all levels, Col. Pollard said, but "educational advancements for colored youths are impeded by these grotesque standards, while the administration affords much more highly favorable standard for white youths."

From available data, he asserted, as of March 1, 1951, a total of 252 additional teachers for colored schools would be needed to reach equality among regular classroom teachers, if the white schools are permitted to continue on the more favorable standards, and if equality is to be achieved by simultaneous reduction in the number of teachers in the white schools and addition of teachers in colored schools a total of 127 teachers would have to be transferred to the colored schools.

The civic associations said its computations take into account the recent transfers of thirty-five permanent positions from the white to the colored schools, the creation of thirty-one teaching positions in the colored schools from savings, and also the transfer of positions on a temporary basis from the white to the colored schools.

This action Col. Pollard asserted, "constitutes little else than a weak gesture in relieving the inadequacy" of teachers for colored pupils, and there still remains a need for more than 200 additional teachers in the colored schools if desirable standards are to be attained.

The civic associations also requested a salary appropriation for a chief examiner for the colored schools. Such an officer has been continuously serving in the white schools with a salary provided for the position, Pollard said, but an "acting" chief examiner with a teacher's salary has been "forced" to serve the colored schools.

The number and character of the building inequities were too numerous to relate, Pollard said. There are more colored elementary and junior high school pupils than white but on both levels there are more and better buildings for whites.

The accelerated increase in colored pupils has "merely aggravated the problem due largely to long-standing improper administrative building planning programs" for colored pupils. Pollard charged. Paul Cooke, chairman of the Greater Washington Area Council of the American Veterans Committee, also urged school appropriations to equalize opportunity for white and colored children and also asked the subcommittee to recommend to the Senate that it begin consideration of integrating the local public schools.

The AVC supported House action in cutting out of the District of Columbia appropriation bill an item of $275,000 recommended by the District Commissioners for acquiring the public golf courses from the Interior Department.

Private management of the golf courses by S. G. Loeffler, under the supervision of the National Capital Parks of the Interior Department, the AVC spokesman said, "gives the public satisfactory, non-discriminatory service at no burden to the taxpayer."