Mrs. TAYLOR. I have some pictures of our schools.

Mr. WIER. Your picture has been very well depicted here this afternoon.

Mr. METCALF. I wish that you would show the committee some of those pictures.

Mr. PERKINS. If there is no objection from any member of the committee, the record will remain open as long as next Wednesday for any members that care to get statements into the record or any other individuals who care to get statements into the record.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. What is the size of the Seeley Lake school? Mrs. TAYLOR. Which one of the classrooms? One is four and a half miles down the road.

I certainly want to thank you gentlemen for the opportunity to appear before you.

Mr. PERKINS. We are proud that you came here, Mrs. Taylor. Mrs. TAYLOR. I knew, like you do, that Lee Metcalf would do everything he could to help. That is why I came to him.

Mr. PERKINS. The subcommittee will be in recess subject to the call of the Chair.

(Whereupon, at 3:25 p. m., the hearing was recessed, subject to the call of the Chair.)

AMENDMENTS TO PUBLIC LAWS 815 AND 874,

81ST CONGRESS

TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1956

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR,

Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess at 2 p. m., in room 429, Old House Office Building, Hon. Carl D. Perkins (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Perkins, Wier, Metcalf, Thompson, Udall, Wainwright, and Frelinghuysen.

Present also: Fred G. Hussey, chief clerk.

Mr. PERKINS. The committee will come to order.

At this time we will hear Mr. Frank M. Wright, associate superintendent of public instruction, and chief of the division of public school administration, of the California State Department of Education, along with Mr. Theron L. McCuen, superintendent of Kern County Union High School and junior college district, with headquarters in Bakersfield, Calif.

Did you have some particular phase of this law that you wanted to testify on, or were you just going to make a general statement? STATEMENTS OF FRANK M. WRIGHT, ASSOCIATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, AND CHIEF, DIVISION OF PUBLIC SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION; AND THERON L. McCUEN, SUPERINTENDENT, KERN COUNTY UNION HIGH SCHOOL AND JUNIOR COLLEGE DISTRICT, CALIFORNIA STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Mr. WRIGHT. Mr. Perkins, we have a specific problem that relates to the China Lake area, which is the elementary school district located in Kern County, and the fact of the matter is it is in three counties.

Mr. PERKINS. You are only concerned about your specific problem? Mr. WRIGHT. Right now, yes.

Mr. PERKINS. Let me see if we cannot get some other committee members here, if that is the problem.

Will you proceed now?

Mr. WRIGHT. My name is Frank Wright, associate superintendent of public instruction in the State of California, and this is Mr. Theron McCuen, who is the superintendent of the Kern County Union High School district, the high school district in which this elementary district of China Lake is a part.

Mr. McCuen probably can give the background of this problem that dates back into 1944, as he was assistant superintendent of that school district then, and later I believe has been superintendent of the high school district since 1945, I believe.

This was a problem that developed from those days of this naval ordnance test station.

Briefly, this area was practically a desert no-man's land until the Navy moved out there to use this as a test station, and naturally, with the kind of things they were doing, they wanted to get away from everybody, and they certainly did when they got out to the China Lake area.

The background of this problem is something that I think the committee would undoubtedly be interested in and I think we can briefly give that to you.

Mr. McCUEN. Thank you, Dr. Wright, and Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

I would like to leave a map of the Kern County area with the committee, which shows in color that portion of Kern County that is covered by our high school and junior college district. You will notice an island over in the northeast corner of the county. That is the China Lake area.

(The map referred to was filed with the committee, and is available for reference.)

The center part of our district is in Bakersfield and we have this metropolitan area with the island of China Lake, an operating high school here, and detached from the rest of our district. În going from the center of our district where our main operations are to China Lake, we have to travel about 120 miles and we have to leave our district at this point and we travel outside of the district for a large number of miles in getting to this remote area.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. What does the uncolored portion represent? Mr. McCUEN. The uncolored portion is territory outside of our high school district.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. How do you happen to have jurisdiction over something like that?

Mr. McCUEN. We do not have jurisdiction.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. However, I mean the China Lake area. Mr. McCUEN. We have jurisdiction over the colored area here [ndicating] and that is what I am going to tell you about, as to how we happened to get the jurisdiction of that. I wanted to give you the geographic picture so you have an idea of what we are talking about. There is a mountain range through here where I am pointing. This is desert area and the reason the Navy went over there to test the rockets is because it was an isolated area.

In order to make my remarks concise, I would like to read a statement that I have here and I will leave this with the committee.

The establishment of the naval ordnance test station in the sparsely populated desert area in eastern Kern County in the early 1940's created a definite educational problem with respect to organization of schools, their facilities, operation and finance. The establishment of a high school was particularly difficult since the station area was not a part of any high school district.

The commanding officer, Capt. S. E. Burroughs, Jr., at the time of the station's establishment, recognized this educational problem. He

saw clearly that the only way to get a high school into operation on the station under the critical conditions then existing was to join a high school system already in operation. Because of existing conditions, the urgent need for educational opportunities at the naval ordnance test station, and because of the Navy's willingness to supply maintenance and operation costs, this district agreed to the proposals made by Captain Burroughs.

Accordingly, he submitted a request in January of 1945 to Dr. Walter Dexter, then California State superintendent of instruction, to introduce State legislation which would enable the establishment of an elementary district on the station and permit its joining a high school district for high school purposes.

At that time, Captain Burroughs stated in part:

In order to attract and hold a corps of scientists and engineers to this desert area, remote from any center of population, the government has deemed it necessary to build a completely modern school providing education from kindergarten through high school. At the same time, the Navy wishes to make these fine school facilities available to all of the children who live in the Indian Wells Valley, whether or not they live on the station.

This school will be built on a 33-acre plot located wholly within the area of the station. It is planned to have it completed for the 1945-46 school year. Furthermore, the Navy will maintain this property by furnishing janitor service, necessary repairs, heat, light and water. However, the Navy will not provide furniture laboratory and shop equipment or school supplies and does not contemplate furnishing any supervision or teaching service.

The subsequent session of the State legislature enacted a law in accordance with the wishes of the representatives of the United States Navy. A copy of the provisions of that law is appended hereto.

Following the enactment of this law and the creation of the China Lake elementary district and the petition of its board of trustees to the Board of Trustees of the Kern County Union High School District, this area became a part of the Kern County Union High School, the junior college district, and, beginning with the school year 1945-46, our district operated the high school, which came to be called the Burroughs High School, named after the first commanding officer of the station. We have operated it since that time.

The enactment of Public Law 874 took over some of the functions of the Navy from the operation and maintenance standpoint and we get some funds from that source.

We are not permitted to construct any buildings because of the State law and the original agreement. At the present time our district is spending approximately $112,000 a year for operation and maintenance over and above tax moneys received from this isolated area, Federal apportionments, or State aid.

Our board of trustees is not complaining about that. They are willing to continue that. That is not their concern. The concern has to

do with school housing, and that is the place where we need relief. Before I conclude this background, I might say that the present attitude of our board of trustees is pointed up in this resolution which was adopted April 9 of this year, and I will leave that copy of the resolution with the committee.

Mr. WRIGHT. I think, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, that this problem comes out of the residue that is left when Public Laws 815 and 874 pick up all of this conglomeration of Federal projects of one sort or another that had been financed in various regions, all of

which, I am sure, you are thoroughly familiar with, because Public Law 815 consolidated all of this sort of thing.

I only know what has taken place in California because I am not too familiar with the rest of the Nation, but I do know that, in every instance except this, Public Laws 815 and 874 did a very acceptable job and they picked up the support, so they knew where it was coming from, and the good thing about it is that every one of these schools are now operated by a school district. There is not a single one of them operated by military authority.

When China Lake was established, I was not with the Department at that time, but I heard of it then and I have become more or less familiar with it since. There was an attempt to set up a school on this military reservation and, in fact, the Navy had already picked its governing board. It was to be strictly a naval institution.

The commanding officer finally agreed that if the Legislature would make certain provisions for the establishment of a district there on this base, they would concur to go along and establish it as a public school district, which was done.

As Mr. McCuen says, then they ran up against it for a secondary school and so the law was further enacted which permitted this China Lake district to attach itself to any existing high school district they could get attached to. Kern County went along with it and voted to get it done.

The problem is that when Public Laws 874 and 815 picked up this obligation-here was an on-going deal and arrangement-they did not pick up all of it, and ever since I have had anything to do with the Department, for the last ten years, we have been wrestling with this problem out there. They have a community inside the fence and then this desert area began to spring up outside the community, and everybody out there is connected with this federal installation. There is not anything out there except, of course, service stations and stores and what-not, the regular servicing people, but most of the people who live out there are people employed on the base.

However, this Burroughs High School is located on Federal property and, therefore, the entitlement outside the base that otherwise might have been used has never been used to construct a school building on the base for these high-school kids.

We have been in the process of, along with the district, you might say, almost bootlegging the kids in. A few of them we could absorb all right, but it has now reached the point, and has for some time, where approximately a third of the children coming into this school are outside the base, and the school is only built to house the kids on the base, but we then have to add another third of the youngsters on top of that.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Are these federally connected children? I am speaking of the ones outside the base.

Mr. WRIGHT. A very large share of them are.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. They could qualify?

Mr. WRIGHT. They could have qualified if the school had been built on school property, but it was not on school property. It is on Federal property, and the way the law has been drawn the entitlement can only be for those people who live on Federal property, so we have never used that outside entitlement all these years.