Hurrah for HEW

A tale of bureaucracy at work

Last September the Department of Health, Education and Welfare sent a stern command to the Joseph Sears Elementary School in Chicago's posh North Shore suburb of Kenilworth (pop. 2,980). According to HEW, Sears was required to fill out a detailed Title IX questionnaire explaining how it had eliminated sex discrimination in its hiring policy, in facilities for its 575 pupils and in its curriculum. The penalty for noncompliance: an end to HEW aid for the school.

Superintendent John Beckwith was perplexed. Sears, Kenilworth's lone school, had never asked for any HEW money to supplement its $1.2 million budget. Beckwith wrote a letter to Washington explaining that since this was so, he saw no reason to spend 60 to 80 hours filling out the exhaustive questionnaire.

A month passed. Silence. Then came a computer printout from HEW, reminding Sears to return the form and once more threatening a cutoff of funds. Beckwith again wrote to explain why he had not filled out the form. On Dec. 2, a HEW secretary phoned him to repeat the warning. Her call was followed by one from a HEW attorney, who expressed regret at "the sequence of events" but told Beckwith that HEW would nevertheless cite his school for failure to complete the form.

A few days later, Sears was so cited by Secretary Joseph Califano, who solemnly announced that his department, ever alert, had caught a total of 49 such culprits --37 school districts plus twelve colleges. All had failed to fill out the Title IX forms. At least 19 of them, like Sears, had never received HEW money in the first place, but no matter. All were told that their funds would be cut off as of Jan. 8 and ordered to answer charges some time next year at the nearest HEW regional office.

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