Truant & Consequences

Manhattan's Public School 19 was a splendid new building, sporting the very latest gaslamp fixtures, when Abraham Lincoln was campaigning in the neighborhood in 1860. Although its gaslights have long since been replaced, P.S. 19 still stands, somewhat the worse for nearly a century of students' wear & tear. Alongside a five-story addition built 61 years ago, the antique landmark is jammed by 1,009 kindergarten - through -sixth -grade pupils. The children crowd through its dingy, narrow halls, must sometimes go down five flights of stairs to reach the toilets, which are all in the basement.

Lawyer Allen Murray Myers, new in the neighborhood, walked into P.S. 19 last September to register his nine-year-old daughter Shelley for the fall term. He was, he recalls, "shocked to tears." He promptly told New York City's board of education that he "would rot in jail myself first . . . before I would send my only child to that dump." Myers and his wife, who holds a New York state teacher's certificate, began tutoring Shelley at home in her prescribed subjects. Shelley's five hours of "classes" are held on every day that P.S. 19 is in session. Mrs. Myers claims her truant daughter is now "far ahead" of most fourth-graders.

The board of education is not totally unsympathetic about the Myers' little rebellion. Officials offered to let Shelley attend any of three newer schools, but the nearest was more than three traffic-cluttered miles away from their apartment. The Myers said no. Last week the inevitable showdown began. Haled into domestic relations court for violating the compulsory-education law, Attorney Myers outlined his test case. Said he: "We want to determine whether the . . . board . . . has a legal right to force parents to send their children to filthy, insanitary, crumbling schoolhouses that are a physical and mental hazard."

From two city employees he got some potent evidence in his defense. Testified a fire department inspector: P.S. 19 has gone 18 years without a fireman looking it over for possible hazards and violations. Also on the stand: a health department inspector with records showing that 21 sanitary-law infractions discovered in the school are listed as uncorrected.

The court, reserving a decision, told each party to file a brief next week. With a "backlog of deferred maintenance" of more than $75 million on all its schools, the perennially short-funded board offered Allen Myers a bit of appeasement. Decrepit old P.S. 19, it announced, will be abandoned just as soon as a new school, now going up, is completed next summer.

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