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eral aid realize that they couldn’t muster enough votes in Congress to pass the bill unl;ess they gave us some money to all states.
“Another point is being circulated that only $300-million federal dollars are needed at present for our schools. Now, if these proponents can just get the principle of federal aid established, they admit that .they will soon ask Congress to appropriate as m, eh as $2-hillion for, educational expenditures.
“The bill restricts use of the money for school construction, and thereby introduces one of the fust controls of federal government— tnat the money must be used for those purposes,” he said.
Saying that the entire federal aid proposal has been based upon the faulty assumption that local states cannot afford to finance their own schools. Bird called upon the individual communities and states to face up to the problem of educaton, instead of facing Washington for funds.
“Since the war, every state has been spending .more money for education than ever before,” he reported. "The state of Tennessee recently introduced a general sales tax of which 70 per cent is going to schools. Alabama earmarked a 1 per cent income tax to schools. Florida recently added another f50-mlilion to its schools system. Every state in the south increase*) its expenditures for education by at least $5-million in 1947-48.
“Yet, there is plenty of room for imp'Kpvement, and there’s lots of state aid that still can be developed. In 1940, lfi states were spending more than 3 per cent of their income on education. Today there is no state spending more than 3 per cent. Yet incomes, the ability to pay, have increased as much as SO per cent in .some states to over 300 per cent in others. Not a state in the nation today is spending as large a percentage of its income on education as it did before the war.
"It is a self-evident fact that our states ha\ e b 8 t h the ability and th*e willingness, as exemplified bv action of state legislatures this year, to increase educational expondit res," /Bipd said.
“So 1 am wondering, just who it is at the federal level that can or should determine what our ------
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