On behalf of the Board, I want to say this to you gentlemen: We are charged with the responsibility of the education of the teachers of the children of the District of Columbia. In discharging that responsibility to the children, we feel that a change in the salary schedule is absolutely necessary. The teachers will benefit, to be sure; but we are not asking it primarily for our teachers; we are asking it because it is necessary to have that to keep qualified personnel to teach our children.

The opening salary, which it went back to before it was the $450, was only $1,900, and those salaries, of course, in the Federal Government cannot attract people with A. B. degrees at $1,900.

Senator CAIN. One other question, please. The $450 was temporary; only for the fiscal year '47?

Mrs. DOYLE. Yes.

Senator CAIN. Unless other legislation is passed for '47-'48, you lose the $450 temporary increase?

Mrs. DOYLE. That is right. As I know you will see, that is an impossible salary to attract young men and young women who have had a 4-year college course, because we require the A. B. degree.

In addition, we are asking other salary increases because we have to think of keeping qualified personnel after they come in; we have to try to keep them, both administratively and as teachers.

So, on behalf of the Board, I want to say to you gentlemen that in our opinion, action is absolutely necessary to keep these people with us; to get them in, in the first place, and to maintain a school system that is the type of system that ought to be for the children of Washington.

I am going now to ask Mr. Lee, who is the chairman of our legislative committee and who conducted the hearings on the bill to speak to you briefly and from then on Doctor Corning will talk to you on the details of the bill.

Mr. BATES. Mr. Chairman before the other witness begins I would like to ask some questions.

You are chairman of the School Board?

Mrs. DOYLE. Yes.

Mr. BATES. Mrs. Doyle, as such, of course, you are appearing here on behalf of the school system of the District. You are, after all, the official and most direct witness with whom we have to deal, so I will have to ask you a few questions.

Have you given this bill your most thorough thought and consideration from every angle?

Mrs. DOYLE. Yes.

Mr. BATES. Including the ability of the taxpayers to assume the responsibility for this increase?

Mrs. DOYLE. Well, Mr. Chairman, as I said in the beginning, our responsibility is for the education of the children, and we have looked at it from that point of view. Our function, as charged in the 1906 act, is to be responsible for the education of the children. We are not charged with the financial responsibility, but as citizens, as all of us are, and in my contacts with the community, I feel that the citizenry of Washington want to pay higher salaries to keep the teachers.

Now, that is our approach to it. As citizens, we are confident that Washington taxpayers are interested in higher salaries for teachers.

Mr. BATES. I think we could all go along with that, but to what degree are they interested? Are they interested to the degree that you have recommended in this bill?

Mrs. DOYLE. From the organizations that have acted and from whom you can get testimony, I would say "Yes."

Mr. BATES. The Commissioners have not taken any action yet.

STATEMENT OF GUY MASON, MEMBER, BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Commissioner MASON. Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to make a statement, and I apologize for coming in late and being tardy.

Mr. BATES. With due respect to Mrs. Doyle, I think we ought to hear from the Commissioners.

Senator CAIN. If you will, just sit where you are, Mrs. Doyle.

Commissioner MASON. The attached graph shows that the present teachers' pay scale for Washington, excluding the special $450 bonus which was granted for 1 year only-that answers your question, Senator.

Senator CAIN. Yes.

Commissioner MASON. It is below some important American cities, and not much above the average of all the cities shown. With the increase proposed by the Board of Education's bill, the scale would be higher than for any city except New York; but in terms of dollars per year per teacher it would still not represent a very large increase. It is common knowledge that the pay scale for teachers in cities throughout the United States, including Washington, is so low that teaching staffs cannot be recruited to full strength; that the turnover is excessive; that some teachers are below the standards of ability or experience demanded for a sound educational system; and that there is a widespread dissatisfaction and lowered morale. When such a condition develops, it is essential to the public interest to increase pay scales enough to correct the condition.

We are very much in a competitive field. Industry and many of the professions are making inroads on the teachers' ranks for their help because of their educational qualifications and their ability to perform. For this reason I believe that pay increases, on some such scale as those proposed by the Board of Education, are needed to maintain the efficiency of our public schools.

I have not studied the bill enough to form an opinion on whether the exact scales specified for different positions are sound and properly balanced, but I do feel that, regardless of any changes in detail, the total cost to the District-which is the matter primarily concerning the Board of Commissioners-will not be far from the total estimated by the Board of Education.

To this extent, and with these qualifications, I endorse the bill, and the other Commissioners join me.

However, I wish to emphasize that the adoption of this bill would not produce an over-all benefit to the District of Columbia as a whole, unless means are found to finance it without reducing other expenditures contemplated by the Commissioners' 1948 budget, as already submitted. If the money to finance this bill is taken from some other department or departments of the District government, either by re

ducing annual costs or by eliminating capital expenditures, precisely as critical a condition will develop elsewhere as has already developed in the Board of Education.

We cannot escape the simple and fundamental fact that lies behind the city's finances and municipal facilities. Since 1941 our population has had a permanent growth of nearly 200,000. There will be little, if any, immediate reduction, and before many years the increase will be resumed.

Large new areas within the District are being built up; these new residents and newly built areas call for new streets, new schools and playgrounds, additional police and fire protection, a large expansion of water and sewage disposal systems, and so forth. Very little has been spent since 1941 to give such new facilities.

A report prepared last summer by the Engineer Commissioner estimated that the capital costs of such needs, from the general fund alone. total about $100,000,000. This report is being checked by a citizens planning committee appointed by the District Commissioners which will submit a final report shortly. It is probable that the increase in construction costs over the past year will necessitate an increase in General Young's total estimate by at least 10 percent.

If we do not adopt and adhere to a systematic plan for providing these capital improvements at a reasonable rate and financing them, the consequences can easily be foreseen. Progressively, and at an increasing rate, persons who can afford to do so will leave the District and move into adjacent areas where better services will be afforded them. They simply will not remain in a city where they cannot get adequate service as regards schools, utilities, highways, and the like, if they can afford to move elsewhere.

These citizens in the middle and high-income brackets pay a large share of our taxes. The retail outlets which serve them pay another large share; and those retail outlets will progressively follow them. The condition will develop, if it is not developing already, where the city's population will contain a greater and greater proportion of persons with low incomes, who pay small taxes but make high demands on the city's treasury, while the sources of taxation to meet those demands are drying up.

The situation as to schools is typical. The Department of Educa tion admittedly needs more money to pay its teachers. But it also desperately needs more money for new schools. In our 1948 budget we provided less than $8,000,000 for all capital improvements from the general fund, of which only $2,000,000 was for new schools. The amount is pitifully inadequate, but it was all that we could afford, and on the basis of making capital improvements from current revenue.

Therefore, if Congress should finance a teachers' pay bill by reducing the capital improvements or the annual costs of any other departments which we are proposing in the 1948 budget, Congress will simply be curing one sore spot by creating another.

In the last few months I have been coming to the belief that the only solution to our problem may be to finance general fund capital improvements by a loan. Unless Congress can devise some means to pay our annual costs, such as teachers' salaries, and still give us money to make capital improvements out of current revenue at a reasonable rate, I feel that Congress should turn its early attention. to the possibilities of such a loan.

Senator CAIN. Well, in just a word, you are sympathetic to the proposed teachers' salary increases program, and only if they can be paid out of revenues that are in addition to that which you have budgeted for your own general fund operations.

Commissioner MASON. Well, we have budgeted all the revenue in sight; and that is true, Senator-we cannot approve a bill at the sacrifice of all other departments.

Senator CAIN. If you had to make a choice between granting these salaries or keeping your own budget items, as you hope to have them approved, you would have to go along with your own financial arrangements?

Commissioner MASON. That is true, sir.

Mr. BATES. Mr. Chairman, if I may ask the Commissioner a question. Mr. Commissioner, you say that the Commission has not given intensive study to this bill.

Commissioner MASON. The Commissioners; no. The bill under the act of Congress granting the $450 bonus-the law provided for the board of education to do that. Now the corporation counsel assisted only in respect to the technical drafting of the bill. This is a board of education bill, and we have not gone over it in detail yet. Mr. BATES. Well, Mr. Commissioner, this is one of your responsibilities.

Commissioner MASON. That is correct.

Mr. BATES. That is something that nobody can get away from.
Commissioner MASON. That is correct.

Mr. BATES. It embraces an expenditure of a fifth of all the expenditures of the Government here in the District, and here is a bill before us, notwithstanding what we are told to be the critical financial condition of this District, it is calling for an annual outlay of $4,000,000 a year over and above that already expended in the school department. Commissioner MASON. I believe the bill ultimately will cost that

much.

Mr. BATES. Do you not think that a bill of that kind ought to receive the most careful attention and consideration of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia who, after all, we must look to for advice and direction on a matter of this kind. I do not know what the Senate chairman thinks about it, but I certainly will not take any action until we hear directly from the Commissioners as to how they stand on a matter of this kind.

Mr. WALTER FOWLER (Budget Officer, District of Columbia). Mr. Bates, may I read this provision to you?

Mr. BATES. I am familiar with that just as well as you are. That is where Congress asked that a survey and a study be made and report back to Congress.

Mr. FOWLER. That is right.

Mr. BATES. And we have the report here. That is what you are referring to, is it not?

Mr. FOWLER. That is what I am referring to, and it left the

Commissioners out.

Mr. BATES. What I want to know is what the District Commis

sioners' opinion is of this bill.

Mr. FOWLER. Well, let me give it to you this way.

Mr. BATES. The Commissioner cannot do it himself; is that it?

Mr. FOWLER. The Commissioner can.

Commissioner MASON. I certainly can. In the first place, the bill did not get to us until within the last week or 10 days.

Mr. FOWLER. The Corporation Counsel is here, and he knows when they prepared it.

Commissioner MASON. It was prepared and sent back to the school people.

Dr. CORNING. May I just say in that connection that everything went simultaneously to the Commissioners when it went to the Hill. We sent it directly to the Hill, but simultaneously it went to the Commissioners.

Mr. BATES. You would like to have more time to study the bill? Commissioner MASON. We have got to have more time to study the details.

Mr. BATES. And then you will be able to answer the committee's inquiry as to how the Commission feels about it.

Commissioner MASON. Because the bill involves classifications into the teaching structure, and we are not familiar with it at the present time, and there was an effort made to compromise our own differences in that field; and that is what held up the bill.

Mrs. DOYLE. When we called upon you, Mr. Mason, you will recall, as soon as it was finished, the hearings had been held, and from our point of view it was finished.

Commissioner MASON. That was in the latter part of March just before the bill was sent up.

Mrs. DOYLE. No; that was not the date; it was much earlier than that, to acquaint the Commissioners with the situation, and you were then good enough to tell us that Mr. West

Commissioner MASON. But you had not drafted the bill; it had not been drafted.

Mrs. DOYLE. But all the provisions were ready for it; we realized this peculiar situation where we were reporting directly to Congress, and we wanted you to know everything that we had done, so we made an early appointment with you, and if you recall, I explained it to you, and we felt that the drafting of it, while very important, was, however, merely the instrument to carry forward the report that we brought to you, and Mr. West worked on that, which has taken some time, of course.

Mr. BATES. Of course, Mr. Chairman, this is a matter of very farreaching importance, in my opinion, and it very seriously affects the fiscal affairs of this District. It is nothing new to me; I have been through this before in other communities.

Mrs. DOYLE. So I understand.

Mr. BATES. I think it is a matter that needs a good deal of explanation and study. I have quite a good deal of material myself that we have to collect within a very few hours, because we only received that bill ourselves last week; and after all, we have a Commission here that is set up by statute to administer the affairs of the District, and that includes the financial administration of all departments, trying to correlate all the available revenue, and then to disburse it or to spend it along the many lines of municipal activities. I have been just long enough in this business to know that the amount that we can give to any department is a relative question, and it all simmers down