Educational Slums

The Parents' Association at Manhattan's Public School 54 had had enough. Last week they hired a lawyer and prepared to force the New York school board to one of two choices: clean up their school, or close it down as a menace to health. Their complaints:

P.S. 54, a dreary, five-story school on the edge of Harlem, is a relic of the school-building programs of 1888. The building has no gymnasium, and its tiny playground is hardly large enough for one class at a time. It has just seven toilets for 600 boys, provides neither toilet paper nor towels. Children attending the school periodically suffer from scabies, a skin disease usually caused by filth.

The case of P.S. 54 was a fresh reminder to New Yorkers that their public-school system, though the nation's biggest (862,000 pupils), is a long jump from being its best, may well be among its worst big-city systems. Like P.S. 54, one-third of the city's 800 schools were built before 1900; 21 antedate the Civil War. More than 280 are fire traps, and 250 lack adequate plumbing (eight have only outhouses).

Many hand-me-down textbooks are so foul-smelling that children refuse to use them. One school has texts for only one out of three students. Long-outdated books put New York City's population at 4,000,000 (actual population: 9,000,000). Critics say that the city needs 10,000 more teachers, 9,000 new school rooms, about 50 more assistant superintendents, more contact between parents and teachers. Estimated cost to modernize the city's schools: $140 million.

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