and offer them the same benefits that the 6 to 16's are offered in this bill? Mr. STANLEY. When I first reviewed the bill my initial reaction to it was that I thought the age limitations on it prevented certainly those from 3- to 6-years old in the Headstart program from being served. Mr. SCHEUER. Under the Headstart program, the summer programs, they do have provisions for school lunches but there are many voluntary private agencies that offer a comparable program and they would not be blanketed in under these age brackets. Mr. STANLEY. That is correct. As a consultant to Headstart, as one who just finished working on some of the new guidelines about how it is going to operate, there will be many agencies carrying out preschool programs that will not have Headstart programs and will need this kind of support and provisions of funds. If this is going to be pursued one would want to take into consideration first how might you simplify some of the procedures for applying for the funds so that we don't get involved, as we have in some areas, with such long, drawn-out procedures for receiving funds to carry on a program that the program is almost over before one can take advantage of it. And secondly, we clearly designate that in some instances there is a need for professional assistance in setting up some of the nutritional programs as part of the overall day-care activity. I say this from two respects. One, as one who just returned from the problems in the Watts area and where we are now making some recommendations for massive programs to get underway there, and where one of the problems in terms of what has happened this week is that since last August most of the programs planned for, most of the programs designed to be implemented in that area, have not gotton off the ground and, the people of such areas who are going to be served only relate to something that is tangible, something that is visible. So, you have a lot of frustrated hopes even on the part of the professional workers in the area who say we are supposed to be funded for such and we don't have it. Secondly, I designed and operated a project known as Program Uplift in Harlem, where a number of day-care programs are activated. Yet we could not do it under the provisions of CAP. We could not provide summer lunches to the day-camp program under the community action concept last year. Mr. SCHEUER. Why not? Mr. STANLEY. They had written into one of the administrative guidelines and not the law, itself, that there would not be free lunches provided in the day-camp program. We found this to be disheartening. We could not turn to any other funding source at that late date to receive funds. I think certainly there should be a provision here to provide funds for those kinds of programs, because at the present time, for example, there is consideration now of whether or not a yearround Project Uplift might fit into the area in Watts. Mr. SCHEUER. Do you have any knowledge of what the reason was for that prohibition? Mr. STANLEY. No, I am not sure of the rationale or the justification. of it. It was just one of the limitations we had on that summer activity. Mr. SCHEUER. I have no further questions. This was very interesting testimony. I know it will be useful to the committee. Thank you very much for taking time out from your busy schedule. Mr. PUCINSKI. In view of the fact that this program contemplates going into new areas of day camps and day nurseries and day-care centers, do you anticipate any problems in setting up the physical facilities for preparing and disseminating such hot lunch programs in these respective centers? Do they have them now and, if they don't, do you think it will stimulate the construction of such facilities? Mr. STANLEY. Most of the day-care centers, for example, that were used last summer in Harlem, which were some 100, the vast majority of them were churches or settlement houses who already had kitchen facilities as part of the overall physical facilities provided by the institution. The need there was not so much to set up new physical facilities for doing something but the need there was to provide professionally trained people to help set up some nutritional programs as a matter of a proper balanced diet. It is my personal opinion and observation from moving around the country that you have a large number of indigenous organizations related to the target area where programs of this nature would be underway which do have adequate facilities. Mr. PUCINSKI. Mr. Carey, another Member of Congress from this area, who I am sure you know, testified earlier this morning before the committee. Mr. Carey is not a member of the subcommittee but is a member of the full committee. He, of course, in praising this legislation, expressed a hope that it would go further. He talked about providing programs for breakfast for these youngsters. I merely mention that because all of this dialog-Mr. Scheuer's bill, Mr. Carey's suggestion, the President's message to the Congress in his nutrition message of 1966-all these seem to be going in the direction of your own organization's historic conviction that, as you say on page 2 here, free nutritional programs should be an essential service of public education. I would like to commend you for that. I would like to assure you that I agree with that principle. It is my hope that the day is going to come when we are going to serve hot lunches in all of our schools as a part of the educational process and not charge any youngster, regardless of what his position in life may be, any fee. I strongly believe that the lunch period should become a part of the cultural enrichment process of the youngster. Thousands upon thousands of American executives, as a matter of fact, the whole American business community and the whole educational structure in adult life, is based on the luncheon meeting, where either two or more men or women or people get together to have their lunch and discuss various aspects of their pursuits. The luncheon is an integral part of our entire structure. Yet, as you know, in our school programs, the youngsters hang around some hotdog shop within the vicinity of the school and get a very bad lunch. Mr. SCHEUER. Soda pop, potato chips. Mr. PUCINSKI. French fried potatoes. Mr. SCHEUER. And Eskimo Pies. Mr. PUCINSKI. I am the chairman of a task force committee which is now studying the poverty program and the schools in the District of Columbia, studying the schools only in terms of how they relate to the war on poverty in the District. One of the cruel facts of our times is that in many of the District schools the only youngsters who participate without cost in the hot lunch program are the youngsters from families who are on relief. Now the youngsters who are not eligible for this free hot lunch program, and who would normally pay the 32 or 35 cents, for various reasons go out and buy a bottle of pop or a hamburger. What happens here and I think this is the tragedy of this program, I intend to raise my voice very loudly in this regard and I hope your organization will join me—is that the very system of distributing free lunches to the needy automatically stigmatizes the need. The kids in the school immediately know that these 300 or 400 youngsters who stand in line to get their hot lunch in the cafeteria are all "reliefers," they are the welfare cases. Mr. SCHEUER. Actually, they have a much better lunch and a more nutritious lunch than the kids who don't need it and who get out and get their soda pop and potato chips. Mr. PUCINSKI. That is not the point. The point is the tremendous damage that we do to the dignity and honor and the self-respect of a youngster, who at that age is very sensitive, by stigmatizing the youngster, by writing across his forehead that this youngster is a "reliefer." Mr. SCHEUER. The point I am making is that both groups of kids would be better off. The stigma would be removed from the lowincome kids and the middle-income kids would be far better nourished by a good noonday meal. Mr. PUCINSKI. I want to show you what happens in the District of Columbia and what I am sure happens throughout the country. Here we have in Shaw Junior High School 380 youngsters who are entitled to a free lunch. But, because everybody in the school knows that only the kids who get the free lunch, in a dismal cafeteria, are children of parents on relief, so the kids who are entitled to this lunch and who could get it free don't show up because they are too humiliated; they are too embarrassed; they have been stigmatized. As a result, here you have these meals ready and available to these youngsters who don't have the money to go out and get a bottle of pop, french fries or a hamburger, but they go hungry during the lunch hour simply because they are on relief and they don't want to be so identified. The point I am making here, Mr. Stanley, is that your organization, I hope, will become even more determined in this activity of extending the lunchroom program to all children in the school, forgetting about the money. So that every youngster can walk into that cafeteria, pick up a tray, get that balanced meal that we are talking about, spend that hour in the cafeteria, or 45 minutes, in communicating with his fellow students. Put some jukeboxes in there if they want to, so that these youngsters will make lunch in that cafeteria the social period of the day, where all the youngsters of the community can assemble and do whatever the youngsters want to do in a fine manner, instead of hanging around corners during the lunch break, smoking cigarettes, and perhaps getting into trouble. A lot of these kids unfortunately are the targets of "pushers" of marihuana and goof balls and various other things. I just want to congratulate you and your organization on developing this theme. Of course, I want to join my colleague, Mr. Scheuer, in commending you for bringing us this rich, historical background of the Federal Government's participation in education and the free lunch program. I think if we could develop this program further and develop the concept of free lunches for the entire country, you would find that this could make a great contribution toward cultural enrichment, development of good eating habits, development of manners and social graces during the lunch period. Such a program would start teaching these youngsters these things at their earliest age and I think we can find the whole system more practical. Mr. STANLEY. You are absolutely right. We support it not only for those reasons but one other reason. You know one of our problems in desegregating schools is frequently caused by the existence of ability grouping. Those who come from culturally deprived areas have been resegregated in the classroom on the basis of ability and frequently are not given an opportunity for total socialization with the entire context of student body members unless it is something that is constructed like a compulsory lunch period where they are all eating together and there is an opportunity, without the ability grouping and the grade level on which one is functioning, to get together. This is a very strong program that you are suggesting and one that we would not have any difficulty in helping you with and in proposing in the right places and hoping to get it accomplished. The only thing I think you are about to accomplish in what you are proposing here for the summer is part of a bigger issue that maybe you have not completely identified but something that we would like to suggest to you. As you know, we have been faced for the last 3 or 4 years with the explosive problems of the ghetto area in the summer. You know that we have been proposing time after time and working hard to implement programs and to a large extent the Poverty Office has taken on a rather aggressive kind of approach to it. The Department of Labor has taken on an aggressive approach to the problems of the summer. Where we have not gotten a total commitment and very aggressive action has been on the part of public education to make the summer school program attractive, exciting, the kind of thing to do, so that young people become involved, not only for remedial purposes but even to get interested in some of the course studies. We need public education to join hands with poverty and the Department of Labor so that we have a massive comprehensive attack upon the idleness that develops during the summer. I think by your adding this component to the overall summer program it certainly forces public education to come to a point where we may be able to continue to do our work with all the educational organizations we are working with so that the public schools become known as the oasis for hope where the slum ghetto has no hope, it becomes known as the oasis for democratizing an area where the area is not democratized any other way. It becomes a place where one enjoys being human because one is learning, one is developing, and one is living in a new kind of atmosphere. This program goes a long way in making a significant contribution and step toward that. I personally want to congratulate your thoughtfulness, your time and your efforts, and to know that we stand ready to be of any continuing service to you that we may. We hope that your proceedings will go as successfully as I think they are going and we hope that you will call upon us again. Mr. PUCINSKI. You know, you have brought up an aspect of this bill that we had not frankly considered and I am very grateful to you, the last point that you raised. It has been a source of great concern to me ever since I have been on this committee that the average school, instead of being a functional part of the community; being a catalyst that brings together a community; being a settlement house the school closes down at the end of the schoolday. This country was built around "settlement houses"-I grew up in two of them and I am sure that many others did I believe that our schools should be all these things, a school should be the nerve center of the community-yet you and I know that in city after city at 3:15 or 3:30 or at 4 o'clock that school becomes a tomb, all the doors are locked. I don't know of any greater waste of taxpayers' resources than the limited use of these buildings and facilities. Of course when we try to use these buildings for other purposes and are advised of the cost, it becomes prohibitive. I know that we used some of our schools in Chicago for elections, and it has cost of us a fortune. You would think we were dealing with a foreign country or something. When they give us a bill for the use of a school building they charge us for the lights, for the heating, for custodial care and for cleaning up. They even charge us depreciation for the 12 hours that we use the building. I am sure this is true in New York and is true in Washington. As a result, there is not that rapport between the community and the school that should exist. I think your point is well taken, that this program here, in some small way, can build another bridge between the community and the school. Our problem, though, of course, is in convincing our colleagues. That is why I was very happy to have you outline this historical example for us. I think it is a very fine message. Mr. Stanley, I want to congratulate you again for your great interest in this lunch program. I know of the great work your organization is doing. It is always a sense of comfort to me to know that these private organizations can find time to cover so much of the vast field of America's needs. Mr. Scheuer, do you have anything to add? Mr. SCHEUER. No. Your testimony was just great, Mr. Stanley. We are grateful to you. Mr. PUCINSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. Stanley. Mr. PUCINSKI. The committee will stand adjourned. |