Again, may I urge you to transmit this memorandum to local educational agencies in your State and to establish appropriate procedures for them to follow with respect to future Title I applications and amendments to applications. Please let us know how many copies you need for this purpose. I would appreciate hearing from you concerning any problems you may have in implementing these provisions in your State. MEMORANDUM FROM MR. LOUIS J. MCGUINNESS TO MISS CAROL HERZMAN-TITLE I ESEA (OFFICE OF EDUCATION), WHICH LIST, BY STATE, THE NUMBER OF PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS CONDUCTED WITH TITLE I FUNDS We apparently do not have the kind of data in DCE which will satisfy the Perkins Committee request. About the best we can do is provide them with the results of the 1966 summer Title I survey covering all LEA's with 1200 students or more (these LEA's have 89% of the public school children). This survey obtained information on the number of preschool programs and kindergarten programs utilizing Title I funds last summer. We have extracted out this information on the States that would be involved and it is attached to this memo. I discussed the segregation problem with Mr. David Seeley today and with some of his top staff-they can be of only slight help to us. They lack data on this subject just as we do. As you know, we have published two different guideline memoranda on the subject of desegregation for the purpose of attempting to force integration in Title I summer programs. Copies of these two memoranda are attached. I have also discussed the segregation problem with both Al White and Paul Miller and they too lack precise data on segregation in Title I programs for their respective States. In effect, we have to consider a program in compliance if the Equal Educational Opportunity office declares a given LEA in compliance. Practically speaking, we are forced to rely on public complaints, which have been very few. Regarding Item #3, the purported shift from OEO Head Start funding to ESEA funding-this is again an area where our data are inadequate. We do not know anything about this with any degree of certainty. It may be possible for the Committee to gather this information from OEO sources. It may also be possible for us to gather "shift" data from State Title I coordinators. MEMORANDUM MARCH 23, 1967. To: Carol Herzman, Program Officer. From: Louis McGuinness, Assistant Chief, Program Development Branch. The following table, containing information extracted from a U.S. Office of Education survey sent to 6400 school districts with an enrollment of at least 1200 students (such school districts serving 89% of the nation's public school pupils), shows the number of school districts in the South who reported having Title I summer school programs serving prekindergarten and kindergarten children. INFORMATION ON THE AMOUNT OF FUNDS AVAILABLE FOR THE ADMINISTRATION OF TITLE VI FOR SCHOOL DESEGREGATION FOR EACH OF THE LAST THREE FISCAL YEARS 1. Dollar amount for Titles VI and IV, salaries and expenses: 2. Number of Civil Rights positions prior to end of fiscal year 1966: Title VI: 70 (Office of Education, Title VI Unit). Title IV: 90. 75-492-67-pt. 2-51 SUMMARY OF THE BASIS AND GENERAL CONTENT OF THE ECONOMIC General The Economic Opportunity Amendments of 1967 consist of a section authorizing fiscal year 1968 appropriations for various Economic Opportunity Act programs, and three titles. Only title I includes amendments to the Economic Opportunity Act itself. Title II would establish a program to aid in the provision of summer camp opportunities for disadvantaged children, pursuant to a recommendation of the President in his recent Message on Children and Youth. Title III would provide certain criminal sanctions to cover cases of embezzlement, willful misapplication, theft or kickbacks involving financial assistance funds under the Economic Opportunity Act. Authorizations Section 2 of the bill would authorize appropriation of $2.06 billion for programs under the Economic Opportunity Act for fiscal year 1968, including $874 million for carrying out the Job Corps and work-training programs under title I of the Act, $1.022 billion for community action programs under title II, $47 million for the rural loan, and migrant and seasonal farm worker programs under title III, $70 million for work-experience programs under title V, $16 million for administration and coordination activities under title VI, and $31 million for VISTA and volunteer programs under title VIII. Amendments to the Economic Opportunity Act Title I includes a large number of amendments to the Economic Opportunity Act. These are sufficiently numerous and comprehensive that-partly for technical reasons and partly for greater clarity-major parts of the Act, including Job Corps and Community Action, have been rewritten. Although the amendments are substantial both in number and in anticipated over-all impact, they would not change the fundamental character of existing programs. To the contrary, they are predicated on the view that those programs are and have proved themselves to be-sound and effective in basic concept. Yet no one would pretend that, today, the several programs are simply an extension of what they were in the beginning. They have, to some extent, developed along unanticipated paths; they have encountered some unforeseen problems. Policies once tentative, but of major importance, have been tested. And the experience, not only of the Office of Economic Opportunity, but of the State and local agencies, and many private groups that have participated in these programs is now sufficient to permit decisions governing long-run program direction that were not possible three years ago. Cumulatively, the adjustments suggested by these considerations add up to a law which will be in some respects less useful than the present Act for the processes of trying, testing and learning. But it will be a law which, while still retaining flexibility for needed innovation, is better suited to the complexities of effective and efficient administration. Many of the amendments are technical. Some, such as provisions defining the structure and powers of community action boards,1 are designed to deal with specific problems peculiar to a particular program. There are, however, several features which recur repeatedly. Among these are— 1. A better focusing of programs on the goal of helping people to help themselves to become self-sufficient.—The Economic Opportunity Act represents a national commitment to the elimination of poverty. The needs of the poor are, however, so great and so extensive that it is frequently difficult to maintain a focus upon the causes of poverty as distinguished from its symptoms. Yet for Economic Opportunity Act programs that focus is critical. The bill undertakes to sharpen this focus in a number of ways. For example (a) It contains a new employment program designed to reach thousands of unemployed or underemployed slum residents many of whom are at best only marginally employable, and to provide them, for the first time, with the kind of intensive help and support needed to enable them to secure and hold the substantial number of meaningful jobs that today exist or can be made available in many urban areas. 1 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 211. 2 New title I-B (sec. 102 of the bill), sec. 123. (b) It specifically directs the complex of activities represented by community action to one over-all objective-the promotion of full family and individual self-sufficiency." (c) It expands the concept of the migrant and seasonal agricultural worker program, currently stated in terms of assistance in meeting housing, sanitation, education and day care needs, to include the assistance required to help these workers and their families cope with technological changes which are cutting deeper and deeper into even their present inadequate livelihood.* (d) It revises the formula in the present law relating to the treatment under the welfare laws of persons in training or work-training, so as to provide-and test-a new system of incentives under which public assistance recipients would be encouraged not only to work but to push their earnings up to the point where they will get out of poverty.5 2. Strengthening of fiscal and administrative controls and standards.-As Economic Opportunity Act programs mature, and as agencies responsible for those programs gain operating experience, they should be expected to meet increasingly high standards of efficiency and technical competence. This objective holds true of all programs under the Act. The problems involved are, however, probably most complex in the case of community action. These local programs may include a wide range of projects and activities; they may involve numerous participating agencies; the community action agency itself is likely to be relatively new; and there are manifest difficulties in developing personnel systems which maintain necessary merit features without curtailing job opportunities for poor people who commonly lack the formal education and training required to satisfy traditional job entrance and promotion requirements. Yet for all these complications, it is clear that if community action agencies are to perform effectively, and measure up to their responsibilities, they must aim for administrative standards which are not only adequate but if possible distinctly above those generally acceptable in the community. The bill includes a substantial number of amendments which are basically designed to improve or tighten administrative standards consistent with the needs and growing technical capabilities of the several programs. These range from specific evaluation requirements which the bill would attach to the Job Corps, work-training, and community action and migrant programs, to limitations on Job Corps enrollee allowances and the addition to VISTA and the newly authorized part-time volunteer program of safeguards to assure that fees are not charged for volunteer services and that volunteers do not displace employed workers.' In the case of community action, the bill includes an expanded audit and fiscal responsibility provision which would require annual operating audits, as well as the preliminary audits now prescribed; provide for the handling of audit disallowances; and require specific controls over the rate of local agency expenditures. The bill sets forth evaluation requirements, already mentioned above, which cover agency efficiency as well as program effectiveness, and which contemplate appointment of committees which could be composed of business and professional men to advise agencies having particular problems." And it expands and focuses existing program criteria so as to establish for each community action agency a specific obligation to achieve and adhere to standards of organization, management and administration that will meet the objective of providing assistance efficiently and free of any taint of partisan political bias or personal and family favoritism. This obligation would be implemented through rules governing a variety of specific potential problem areas, including staff accountability; salaries, salary increases, travel and per diem allowance and other employee benefits: hiring, retention and promotion standards: personal and financial conflicts of interest; and partisan political activities." 3 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 201. New title III-B (sec. 104 (e) of the bill), secs. 311 and 312. 5 New title VII (sec. 106 of the bill). New title I-A (sec. 101 of the bill), sec. 113 (a); new title I-B (sec. 102 of the bill), sec. 130 new title II (sec. 103 of the bill), secs. 215 and 222(d); new title III-B (sec. 104 (e) of the bill), sec. 314. 7 New title I-A (sec. 101 of the bill), sec. 109; new title VIII (sec. 107 of the bill), sec. 834. See also the criminal provisions in title III of the bill. 8 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 243 (c) and (d). New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 215. 10 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 214. It should be noted that, in addition to provisions which directly prescribe administrative standards, the bill includes a variety of features which should help in eliminating red tape, bolstering administrative resources, particularly in rural areas, or otherwise facilitating greater efficiency in operations. Some of these are described below in connection with amendments relating to the delineation of program purposes, State participation, increased private involvement, and improved coordination. 3. A clearer delineation of specific program objectives. For all its apparent generality, the Economic Opportunity Act is in fact a complex enactment estab lishing a number of major programs which are themselves complex-complex in what they seek to do and in the number and variety of problems with which they must deal. There has been inevitably-debate over the precise paths these programs should follow. This is not undesirable to the extent it involves shaping a program to the realities of what can be done as opposed to theoretical and untested notions of what should be done. But unnecessary debate can confuse needlessly, impair effectiveness, result in undue delays and contribute to a kind of inefficiency which defies even the best organization chart. A clearer spelling out of purposes can help minimize this kind of problem. As in the case of improved administration, the problem of program purpose is probably most obvious in the case of community action. For a good local community action program must involve not just one but a number of essential elements; it cannot be all this or that; it must maintain a balance. This is a characteristic easily lost sight of by people seeking, not unnaturally, easy or simple and sometimes flatly inconsistent-solutions to very complicated problems. One of the objectives of the amendments is to make this characteristicthe need for balance-explicit in the law and, by so doing, to help local agencies to develop programs that will reflect with increasing precision all that the community action concept requires." But the spelling out or refinement of purposes or basic program standards is not confined to the community action provisions of the bill. Many parts of the amendments, including for example Job Corps provisions specifying more precisely the group to be served and establishing criteria and objectives for center programs and center community relations," would be similarly characterized. They speak to and are designed to reflect programs which have now moved away from initial experimentation and are acquiring a structure which requires more attention to securing the maximum results from established polices than to what those polices should be. 4. A greater emphasis on coordination as a means of assisting State and local agencies to overcome specific, practical barriers to more efficient operation.— The better coordination of all anti-poverty programs has been a basic objective of the Economic Opportunity Act. It is, however, probably too easy to view coordination as something which requires only a few, simple decisions by one or more Federal officials from which all kinds of good and desirable things follow with little additional effort. In practice, coordination is much more apt to involve continuing attention to a lot of hard details, generally uninteresting in themselves, but cumulatively capable of creating real barriers to efficient and cooperative efforts. These barriers are sometimes best seen-as their consequences may be most keenly felt-not by Federal agencies but by people at the State and local level who have ultimate responsibility for translating Federal laws and regulations into measurable and meaningful results. The coordination and information center provisions of the bill are designed to give greater emphasis to a pragmatic approach that focuses upon the hard, if sometimes grimy, details, and upon the operating problems encountered by State and local agencies in trying to do things a little more effectively and efficiently in the midst of a complicated network of laws, rules, conditions, guidelines and instructions.13 In addition (a) The Work-training provisions of the bill are designed to make it easier for localities to construct programs that pull together different authorities now scattered in different parts of the Act, without having to secure separate grants or contracts covering the different activities which a project fully responsive to local needs and opportunities may require." 11 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 201; also, sec. 212 (b) of that title. 12 New title I-A (sec. 101 of the bill), secs. 103, 105, 108 (a) and 111. 18 New title VI-B (sec. 105 (e) of the bill). 14 New title I-B (sec. 102 of the bill), sec. 122. (b) The bill contains a provision under which Federal agencies, pursuant to Presidential regulations, may waive and eliminate some of the maze of potentially inconsistent technical requirements with which a local agency may now be saddled when it seeks to put together a single project combining assistance from different Federal sources.15 (c) The community action provisions of the bill include a specific provision designed to lay the basis for joint action by Federal agencies in helping local agencies engaged in community action programs to overcome problems arising out of diverse Federal requirements and to make longer range plans than are now generally possible.16 5. An expanded role for States and State agencies.-In the development of Federal grant-in-aid programs, there has been a tendency to observe relatively rigid categories: some types of assistance are given only to the States, with no direct dealings between Federal and local agencies; other assistance, to an increasing degree, has been granted directly to local agencies, with no State involvement. Some recent legislation has tended to suggest a more flexible and potentially creative approach. The present Economic Opportunity Act, with its provision for Federally assisted State technical assistance agencies to help local communities develop and administer programs, provides an example of this latter approach. The bill undertakes to build upon this relatively small but significant base for a cooperative Federal-State-local relationship. It thus contains a number of provisions-particularly in community action-designed to expand the use of State resources and capabilities. These include specific provision for Stateoperated community action programs serving rural and smaller communities, for State agency operation of community action special purpose programs, for Federal-State evaluation projects, and for joint Federal-State funding of specific projects or programs as a means of promoting the better coordination in the use of Federal community action and State funds." The bill also is designed to make it possible for State technical assistance agencies to play a broader role at the State level than the law now contemplates.1 Further, it contains provisions designed to afford States a more explicit role in the Job Corps 10 and to invite their help in Federal coordination efforts.20 18 19 6. An expansion of programs in rural areas.-The bill contains a number of provisions designed to stimulate, facilitate and support the expansion of programs in rural areas. This is one of the objectives sought to be attained through the greater participation of States and State agencies, as described above. An expansion of rural areas programs is also one of the major uses to be made of the additional fiscal year 1968 funds which the bill would authorize-a need which is particularly crucial in view of the impact of reductions in funding for the current year on communties which had not started or only just initiated programs. The bill further contains provisions designed to focus existing community action authorities more effectively on rural problems; and to encourage the development of joint or common community action projects between urban and rural communities."1 It seeks to channel technical assistance efforts under the several work-training programs so that they will be particularly helpful to rural communities in developing meaningful projects taking full advantage of the more flexible authority the bill would provide." It would, in addition, provide for an assistant director of the Office of Economic Opportunity who would be charged with responsibility for seeing that rural problems are taken into account in all programs and for developing new programs, procedures and approaches wherever necessary." 7. An increase in opportunities for, and efforts to secure, private individual and organization participation.-A striking-and in its scope, novel-characteristic of the Economic Opportunity Act is its reliance upon private as well as public effort and resources. The Act reflects, in this respect, two facts: the problem of 15 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 241 (b). 16 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 241 (a). 17 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), secs. 213, 222 (b), 222(d), and 241 (c). 18 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 231. 19 New title I-A (sec. 101 of the bill), sec. 115. 20 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 231; new title VI-B (sec. 105(e) of the bill), sec. 632(2). 21 New title II (sec. 103 of the bill), sec. 240. |