Mr. KATIMS. I understood the Philadelphia plan was to withhold the tax where it is paid.

Senator CAIN. It is not quite as simple an answer as I know you sincerely think it is, because if it could not pass the Congress it is no answer at all.

Mr. BATES. That is the pay-roll tax.

Mr. KATIMS. That is correct. But if it cannot pass the Congress, I am in the unenviable position of being a resident of the District of Columbia in that I am not responsible for that situation. But it would be fair, as far as the residents of the District of Columbia and the taxpayers of the District of Columbia are concerned, to supply us with proper schools for our children. I cannot speak for the organizations I represent in relation to sales tax, but if I were permitted to express my own personal view I would say this: If you would put a sales tax on some objects which are not necessities of life, and mark that fund for the purpose of education, I would be in favor of it. favor of it.

Senator CAIN. Thank you, sir.

Mr. KATIMS. I just hope you gentlemen will not lose track of the fact that the more important thing here is not the question of getting the money, it is the effect on the school system, on the school children that are going to be the citizens of this community in the future.

Mr. BATES. You may rest assured that both of us, who have had this problem down through many years, have that viewpoint that you have expressed very much in mind.

Senator CAIN. I would just make one comment to you, that however important the school systems are, we think they are a whole lot more important than a lot of people think, and we are all jointly trying to help, but they never can replace the origin from which one starts. If we were to argue about juvenile delinquency, I have never known yet an American school which is much worse than the schools that you have, which are very good, that added very much to the delinquency of a boy or girl who had been properly trained by the time he got to that school.

Thank you very much.

In trying to be fair to everybody, it sometimes takes a little more time than we assumed. Mr. Bates has gone through 20 witnesses this afternoon. This leaves us 7 more, I think. There just will not be time this afternoon to hear their conclusions. We will make arrangements to do so before we are through.

The Superintendent has requested, and we have very happily agreed, to have his comments that he cares to make in the next 10 minutes, which will permit us all to go home at 4:30.

FURTHER STATEMENT OF DR. HOBART M. CORNING, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Dr. CORNING. I would like to make several comments, if I may, in summarization.

First, I would like to draw to your attention the fact that the drawing of a salary schedule for a large group of people in a complicated organization is an extremely difficult task. I have been through it many, many times and I know how difficult it is.

I would like to say to you what I said to the Joint Legislative Council when I first assigned to them the task of studying this problem, that try however hard we may, it is impossible to build a salary schedule in which every individual will be entirely satisfied. If you did meet all of the requests that are before you today, immediately other inequities would be created because of those decisions. It is not possible to make a salary schedule that is acceptable to everybody alike.

However, we are very happy that in this proposal before you now the great majority and the most important of the inequities which had existed in the 1945 Salary Act are corrected. The single salary schedule, the liberalizing of the promotion to master's degree classifications, and the liberalizing of the promotion to B and D classifications, were to eliminate very acute inequities which caused a great deal of dissatisfaction.

I think, too, in setting the salary schedule, we ought not to be aiming only at a cost-of-living adjustment. If we do, then the argument follows necessarily that as costs of living go up, salaries go up, and correspondingly, as costs of living go down, salaries go down.

It has been the history in the past nationally that the salaries of teachers have been the last, practically, to respond to the uprising of costs, and they have been among the first to be cut when costs go down.

I think we should aim in this matter toward equitable scale of pay that can remain constant.

I say to you that when there is the uncertainty and the insecurity and an almost annual appeal for better salaries, the service in the schools is impaired. We are all unhappy and dissatisfied and, as a result, less efficient.

I hope that we are headed toward a solution which can be reasonably permanent and not responsive to the changing indices of the dollar from time to time.

Attention has been called to the fact that several requests which have been made were not included. I do not wish to argue these points at all. But I should like to give you a summarization of the reasoning of my office and of the Board of Education in not including these requests.

Some of the requests are so limited to the interests of specific groups that additional inequities would be created if they were to be granted. Secondly, requests of individual groups are not always compatible with requests of other groups and with the good of the service.

Third, some are prohibitive in cost, so much so as to jeopardize the entire schedule, and would result in diverting funds for one group in amount disproportionate to the needs of other groups.

Those reasons were given when I presented our proposal to all of the teachers in general session.

I want to speak just briefly of three or four of the items that were not included. The $200 increment has been mentioned as being desirable rather than the $100 increment. I am not arguing against that point of view particularly, but our reasoning in not including it with these, first, was that the costs of the increment would mount so rapidly that we felt it would jeopardize the entire schedule.

In the second place, a teacher right out of training, on the $200increment basis, would in 6 years be at the maximum, probably before

she is 30 years of age, or if that teacher should enter on placement in 2 or 3 years she would be at maximum. We felt that that was too soon to arrive at maximum.

If you study the salary schedules of cities over the country, you will find that some grant larger increments. On the other hand, in every instance of a high increment, there is a much wider span between the beginning and the maximum salaries than is true here in Wash ington.

I do not know of any that would in so few years reach maximum as would be true here on the $200 increment.

There has been some reference to the beginning salary being $2,500 instead of $2,600. The point that is overlooked, I think, in that is that in addition to the $2,500, people coming in have the advantage of placement credit, so that we can place them up to $3,000. If a teacher has had 1 year of experience before coming here, she can enter at $2,600; 2 years, $2,700, on up to $3,000.

Furthermore, the beginning-salary change that has been referred to does not affect anybody in the system now, and it is the considered opinion of all the officers who have employment of teachers in charge that we will be able to attract teachers at this salary level of $2,500 to $3,000.

I am very much interested in the points raised by the attendance officers. I would suggest a comparison of the salaries now being paid attendance officers in Washington with the salaries being paid attendance officers in other cities. I think there is a bit of confusion between the function of counseling, which is the function of counselors attached to educational offices in the schools and the function of attendance workers, which is set forth in law very definitely as the enforcement of the public school attendance law.

We do need additional counseling in the schools, there is no doubt of that. We need visiting teachers attached to the educational offices as liaison officers between the schools themselves and the homes.

I think there is just a little bit of confusion of thinking as to the function of the attendance office. But our contention is and was, in omitting the request of the attendance workers, that the function of counseling and the function of the visiting teacher belongs in the schools themselves and not in a separate department.

I am not arguing against the requests of the coaches necessarily, but I would like to make this observation in that connection: If we tabulate the time of all other teachers—and I say "all" advisedlywe would find that great numbers of them have constant responsibilities after school hours in addition to correcting papers and preparing their lessons for the next day. I could enumerate for you great numbers of activities, such as cadets, the musical organizations, dramatics, the clubs, the school paper, all of which require teachers supervision. These are important and definitely a part of the educational program, just as we consider athletics a part of education.

The only conflict I can see in that whole matter is that if one group is to be paid for extra time, certainly the others should. It would not be fair to other teachers who spend long and repeated periods of time, day in and day out, week in and week out, on these other activities, if only the coaches are to be paid for extra time.

We made the proposal to the coaches when they came before the Board of Education, before the officers, that granting time off was the better way to handle the problem. It was better to adjust schedules so as to recognize that the activities I have named are specifically a part of the educational program, and that adjustments in time should be made rather than to make payment. I happen to be in pretty close association with superintendents of other large cities in other States where they are paying, some of them, for this extra service, and there is no greater headache in the world. The minute that principle is adopted here is what happens: Those that are being paid are not being paid enough. Those that are not being paid think they should be. Take it on down step by step and you always find some groups dissatisfied.

I think what we should do is to establish a fair load for all peopleand teaching is not confined for any of us to the hours of school that have been mentioned; all of us have added responsibilities. I think, therefore, we should make certain that a fair load of activity is assigned to all teachers, who should not expect the extra pay. The minute the money element enters in, then there is the struggle on the part of everybody to get that money, and quite inevitably.

One other proposal that has been mentioned by several witnesses, is the establishment of an extra classification for the people with master's degree, plus 30 hours. This proposal may some day be desirable. I indicated to you this morning, sir, that some day we may come to that. In common practice the country over now, work beyond the master's degree is not widely recognized. Here again I am not arguing against the idea, and if it is imposed, of course, we will accept the change, but our reasoning was that there was danger if we did take that extra step and bring that maximum up $500 higher, it would reach a point where it would be pretty difficult to defend and where it might jeopardize the entire schedule.

I might say that that is not a problem which is peculiar to the high school people. If the single salary schedule is to be in effect, and the 30 hours plus the master's degree is granted for anybody, then most certainly it must be for anybody who qualifies anywhere along the line. That increases the potentialities of cost considerably. I would like to make one other observation in general, if I may. This is an earnest request. If it should prove necessary to make alterations in this schedule according to any of the requests that have been made, or because of a limitation of funds, or for any reason, then I would earnestly ask that the whole matter be reviewed in the light of those proposed changes before they are made, because very often when a change in a schedule which has been carefully worked out as to its intricacies and its interrelationships is made in any one respect, then the whole schedule is thrown out of balance.

I would earnestly request, therefore, that if changes of even a minor nature are contemplated then the whole schedule should be reviewed with respect to the interrelationship of its parts.

May I say something about cost, and I then am through, right on the dot: The cost does seem high. Anything we get that is worth while is costly. I think we ought to review in terms of the cost of the schedule not only the size of the organization we are conducting, but also the importance of the function.

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I do not want to become sentimental, but it is factual that our forefathers, in establishing these schools originally, did so for the specific purpose of teaching the children so that the citizenry would be literate and able to assume its responsibilities in a free country.

I think that is the purpose we should keep before us always. While we are of course interested in the financial aspects of education, certainly our first concern is with the human values involved, which I think are tremendously important.

Senator CAIN. We all appear to agree that Dr. Corning has brought successfully to a close a very worth-while day, even by way of comparison with the sort of day which more normal people have enjoyed. Mr. Bates and I are anxious to resolve and conclude these hearings as soon as possible in order that we may do something about them.

I would say, in that connection, that I take it that Mr. Bates and I are particularly anxious to pass along to you, Dr. Corning, and to the Board, whatever reductions there might be required in your general program, in order that the dollars available, as we see them in the distance, you could fix to the best satisfaction of your problem.

We have some seven witnesses remaining. It is Mr. Bates' and my suggestion that we attempt to meet at 10 o'clock Monday morning. Therefore, I shall call the meeting adjourned until 10 o'clock Monday morning.

(Thereupon, at 4:35 p. m., the meeting was adjourned to reconvene at 10:00 a. m., Monday, April 21, 1947.)