record as of 5 p.m., August 6, and I thank all the witnesses for the great help they were to this subcommittee, and I want to say we are going to win. Maybe not this session, but the facts are with us, and we are going to win.

(The prepared statement of Dr. Willis and the documents referred to are as follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. BENJAMIN C. WILLIS, GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, CHICAGO, ILL.

I am Benjamin C. Willis, general superintendent of the public schools in Chicago, Ill., where I have served since September 1, 1953. I am here to testify on behalf of Senate bill 2528 and to endorse the amendments to Public Law 874, 81st Congress, to provide assistance to local educational agencies for the education of children of needy families and of children of unemployed parents residing in areas of substantial unemployment.

It is the responsibility of the school to provide for the education of all the children of all the people regardless of the parents' economic contribution to the community or their direct or indirect payment of real property taxes. But in fulfilling this responsibility, the great cities of the United States are confronted with the effects of four factors shaping our society today: the tremendous mobility of our people, the mounting urbanization of the country, the technological advances, and the tensions of today's world. Each poses a challenge to education particularly in the great cities.

Mobility has drawn to the great cities large numbers of the persons least experienced in urban living while it has drawn to the suburbs many of those persons most highly urbanized. The concentration of people in large centers has altered the way of life and introduced persons needing more help. Not only have technological changes challenged educational programs directly, but they have altered employment opportunities particularly for the least able. Social ills concentrated and accentuated in the great cities have increased the tensions.

It is upon the children that the penalties fall. Data supplied by the Cook County, Ill., Department of Public Aid indicate that approximately 92,000 children of school age are receiving public aid. Of these approximately 88,000 reside in the city of Chicago. This number approaches approximately one-fifth of the public elementary school enrollment in Chicago.

This situation is not peculiar to Illinois or to the city of Chicago. Currently, in New York State 399,000 children belong to families receiving assistance: of this number, 257,000 live in New York City; in St. Louis on the first of May 1964, families of 29,496 children were receiving ADC. In April 1964, 145,531 children of families receiving public aid resided in Los Angeles and San Francisco out of 377,056 children in the whole State of California.

These figures describe some dimensions of the problem at present but they do not indicate the dramatic recent growth of the number of children on ADC rolls. In 1948 the average number of children on ADC rolls in Cook County stood at 30,370; by 1961 this number had risen to 98,121, an increase of over 200 percent and did not include the numbers added through extension of ADC to a new type of recipient. From 1958 to 1961 the number increased from 61,268 to 98,121 to 126,151, another increase of 29 percent.

The logic in proposing amendments to the existing act rests upon the premise that children of parents receiving aid for dependent children are in fact, federally connected through the Federal Government's provision for food, clothing, and shelter.

The financial problems of the cities' schools are further compounded by the fact that many of the recipients of ADC live in public housing from which the city or school district receives little or no revenue. In Chicago, in the fall of 1963, it was estimated that 50,000 pupils lived in public housing representing 10 percent of the total school enrollment. The per-pupil revenue from property taxes, based on the total enrollment, was $416; the per-pupil payments in lieu of taxes by the public housing was $9.48, equal to only 2.3 percent of the perpupil property tax revenue. Other large cities have similar situations. In appendix A to this statement are statistics for 14 major cities in the United States.

What this burden means to the financial health of the public schools in the large cities of America is underlined by the fact that financial support for the

public schools in the Nation's great cities comes mainly from the local property taxes as indicated in tables 1 and 2.1

TABLE 1.-Percent of local public school revenue derived from the property tax,

TABLE 2.-Sources of revenue for great city public schools1

The great cities pay more of the cost of education with local funds and are receiving a smaller proportion of State and Federal support than do other school districts within their respective States. Table 2 illustrates the financial situation of the cities by comparing the sources of revenue of the great cities, with the sources of revenue for all public schools in the respective State. Twelve of the 15 great cities are paying well over 60 percent of the cost of operating their schools from local revenues. Two cities are burdened with 89 and 92 percent of the school cost locally. In only 4 of the 11 States in which the great cities are located, is the State supporting more than 33 percent of the schools' operating budgets. The portion provided by the State also includes Federal funds such as those for vocational education, which are channeled through State offices. Less than 1 percent of the public schools' budget in each of these cities comes from the Federal Government, with only two exceptions: Washington, D.C., derives its funds through congressional action; Philadelphia is a federally impacted area and derives 2.2 percent of its budget from Federal sources. The major financial source for the public schools is still the revenue from the local community.

The sharp increase in cost between elementary and high school instruction and the still greater costs of vocational and special education are revealed in table 3 which summarizes the findings of the Research Council of the Great Cities Program for School Improvement. Revealing as these cost ratios are in themselves their full significance cannot be understood until they are applied to school budgets.

As indicated in table 3 the per-pupil cost of the academic high school program is one-third more than the amount spent per elementary pupil. Vocational and technical programs cost 80 percent more per pupil than the elementary program

1 These and subsequent tables are taken from "The Challenge of Financing Public Schools in Great Cities," prepared by the Research Council of the Great Cities Program for School Improvement, 228 North LaSalle St., Chicago, Ill.

costs, whereas provision for the handicapped child is more than twice as expensive as is provision for the regular elementary pupil.

TABLE 3.-Cost ratio and average cost per pupil by instruction areas, 1962-831

1 State data from U.S. Office of Education, Digest of Educational Statistics, 1963 edition, table 31. Data is for 1962-63 fiscal year.

NOTE.-Information in table 3 includes all of the great cities except Washington, D.C.

Table 4 dramatically demonstrates that the programs of special and vocational education programs, and so the greater financial burdens for these programs, are largely concentrated in major cities. The average great city has only 18.5 percent of the total State enrollment, yet is serving 27.2 percent of the handicapped, and 52.3 percent of the vocational, trade, and technical school enrollments of the State. This situation can be expected to persist. The impact of automation and other technological developments falls most heavily upon large urban centers which continue to attract thousands of in-migrants with many children who can be effectively served only by special education programs. Public schools will be compelled to expand and adapt their vocational, trade, and technical programs at an even more rapid pace in the years ahead if the schools are to continue to serve their communities effectively. The greatest burden in this costly adjustment to modern technology will fall on the public schools of the Nation's large cities, where the competition for tax dollars is becoming increasingly severe.

Statistics include handicapped pupil enrollment only for those pupils in ungraded classes.

Another financial problem of the schools in large cities arises from the fact that cost of sites in large cities is many times that of sites in other school districts. As shown in table 5 for 1958–63, the average cost of all school sites purchased was $68,156 per acre for the great cities, in contrast to the $3,074 per acre average for the sample of other school districts in the States represented. (Metropolitan, suburban, and rural school districts were included in the sample.)

TABLE 5.—School site costs per acre for the last 5 years 1958–631

Average for sampling of other school districts in these States..
Average for 14 great cities..

1 Average is for most recent 5-year period for which data is available. 24-year average.

Average cost per acre

$3, 074

68, 156

197, 841

136, 927

125, 741

112, 081

108, 009

96, 754

74, 620

71, 975

68, 000

67, 344

64, 909

39, 300

29, 181

5, 692

These substantial differences between school site costs in the large cities and in other school districts constitute an increased financial burden in the provision of adequate facilities for the school districts with higher costs in contrast to the districts with lower site values.

Construction costs and restrictive municipal building codes are additional factors which contribute to the high costs of school plants in large cities and should be recognized in provisions for financial support.

The public schools in the great cities have shown a tremendous growth in enrollments since World War II. As indicated in table 6, the enrollments of 14 cities have grown from 2,765,337 in 1950 to 3,890,466 in 1963; for 1965, a conservative projection suggests a growth to 4,109,632, an increase of 48.6 percent between 1950 and 1965. The problem of financing the public schools in the great cities becomes even more critical as the enrollments rise.

TABLE 6.-Public school membership on or about Oct. 1

1 Projected by the Research Council. The average annual increase for 1963 to 1965 was assumed to be the same as the average annual increase for 1960-63.

The greater loss of taxable assessed valuation in large cities, relative to the loss in the rest of the State when coupled with the exploding school population in the cities, dramatizes the fact that the large city school systems are in the midst of a financial crisis.

Table 7 indicates that the large cities have either suffered greater loss in taxable assessed valuation than the rest of its State or has gained less than the rest of the State.

Without access to additional revenue these cities cannot keep pace with the rest of the country in meeting the increasingly complex educational needs facing them.

Baltimore.
Boston.

Buffalo..

Chicago.

Cleveland.

Detroit..

Houston..

TABLE 7.-5-year change in taxable assessed valuation

1 Change is for the most recent 5-year period for which data is available. Not available.

Moreover, the taxable assessed valuation is not keeping pace with the growth in pupil population and school costs in many communities. The fact is that over the past 5 years, the tax base per pupil has decreased in 10 of the 14 cities listed in table 8, while during the same period the tax base per pupil has increased in 8 of the 10 States reporting.

TABLE 8.-5-year change in per pupil taxable assessed valuation

1 Change is for the most recent 5-year period for which data is available. 2 Not available.

Table 9 illustrates the fact that in these cities from 51 to 77 cents of every property tax dollar goes for nonschool services. In 9 of the 14 cities the nonschool share is 60 percent or more, while in other parts of the State the average local nonschool government is taking less than 50 percent of the property tax dollar and some are taking as little as 22 percent.

This problem is well illustrated by the situation of Pittsburgh, Pa. Of each dollar paid by a resident of Pittsburgh for property taxes, 61 cents goes to nonschool governmental units. In the average Pennsylvania community only 22 cents of the property tax dollar goes to nonschool services, only about one-third that in Pittsburgh. The difference of between 61 and 22 cents, or 39 percent of the total tax revenue, used by the nonschool governmental units in Pittsburgh, represents, in part, an extra burden that must be borne by its residents to support services not provided in other communities. This "municipal overburden" is provided