"Save Our Schools"

Since last spring the world's biggest public school system, New York City's, has wallowed along like a superliner with a laming leak. The New York State Legislature and Mayor LaGuardia knocked $8,300,000 out of the schools' budget. The Board of Education at once hoisted an SOS ("Save Our Schools"), but the public paid little attention.

New York City's United Parents Associations and teachers' organizations thereupon began to raise alarms. They distributed more than 2,000,000 pamphlets among the State's citizens, made 54 radio broadcasts. When the Legislature convened last month, it got thousands of letters from indignant parents. To Governor Herbert Lehman were presented SOS petitions with 500,000 signatures. Result: several official and unofficial investigations to determine how badly the city's schools" had been damaged. By last week these investigations had established that the SOS was no false alarm:/-

>Highschool classes were so crowded (because of a shortage of teachers) that students had to stand up, had to wear their coats from class to class because there was no place to put them.

>Many schools were in such disrepair (the New York Post reported) that roofs leaked, plaster fell from ceilings on pupils' heads, and pupils caught cold from drafts.

>Lunchrooms, attics, balconies, base ments had to be used for classrooms and offices.

>Girl students complained that they tore their silk stockings on splintery old chairs.

>Science students had to make their own equipment: e.g., "laboratories" in the Bronx High School of Science had no gas lines, no running water. To operate a Bunsen burner, pupils inflated a football bladder with gas, took it to a laboratory, attached it to a burner, got a flame lasting two minutes.

>Lacking supervisors, school playgrounds were locked up and children were compelled to play in traffic-ridden streets.

Convinced that the schools were really in distress, Governor Lehman and the Legislature agreed to provide full State aid for the coming year. But the schools were still far from port. Although they had cut expenses by some $6,900,000, there was still a $1,400,000 hole in their current year's budget which they did not know how to plug. Only thing that could keep their ship afloat, the School Board warned, was a deficiency appropriation.

/-For an S O S that was, see p. 44.

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