ustxtxb_obs_1967_12_22_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

Also on hand were State Sens. Ralph Hall and Oscar Mauzy and people from the ranks of organized labor and the beer and liquor industry, among others. V While in Fort Worth Barnes made several appearances, including one before a Negro women’s organization, where he said: “The Negro may receive complete legal and formal equality, but to give him a genuine opportunity to participate in American life will require much more subtle and much more difficult effort.” V It is likely that Barnes has the sup port of a majority of state senators. The Observer understands that he has the support of the liberal bloc, though the nature of this support is unknown. Does this mean that the senators will actively campaign for Barnes, work quietly behind the scenes, or just be neutral in the lieutenant governor campaign? Of particular interest to the liberal senators was Barnes’ pledging his support to changing some of the senate’s procedural rules, it is said. Miscellaneous Notes v The overwhelming success of the city sales tax \(in 131 of 149 municipal elec rise to speculation that these “referenda” prove that the sales tax is among the less objectionable forms of taxation in Texas. There is some talk now that the sales tax supporters will use the elections to support an increase in the state sales tax, from 2% to 3%, during the special legislative session next year. State Rep. John Traeger, Seguin, who pushed the city sales tax through the House this year, says “the legislature is not going to overlook this,” referring to the city sales tax elections. Governor Connally says increasing thestate sales tax would raise more revenue than he believes will be required to balance the state’s books in fiscal 1969, but he says he won’t close the door on any potential revenue source in the coming session. V In other items that may come before the ’68 legislative session, the Texas AFL-CIO plans to push for changes in the workmen’s compensation legislation, a piece of business that got bogged down this year when the Trial Lawyers’ Assn. failed to approve a compromise that was being worked out in advance of the bill’s coming to the House floor. V Another matter due consideration next year is taking Texas off of daylight saving time. V Among candidates announcing for elections next year is Price Daniel, Jr., Liberty, the son of the former governor. V Gen. Preston Weatherred, Dallas, the noted Texas conservative business lobbyist, died. V The constitutional revision commis sion has hired a San Antonio lawyer, Robert J. Derby, as its director of research. Derby, a retired Texaco vice president, is to receive $1,579 monthly. The governor’s office has promised to put up part of the salary if the House of Representatives can’t meet the payroll. V The Nation, national liberal weekly journal, reports it has information that the Brown Foundation of Houston \(established by the Brown brothers of money to at least one Central Intelligence Agency conduit foundation and to at least one organization at least partly supported by the CIA. Nine other Texas foundations were named earlier this year as involved in passing along CIA funds \(Obs., March V Persistent reports from Texas A&M have it that the university is to be placed on the list of censured institutions by the American Assn. of University Professors. V A San Antonio auto salesman took out a three column by seven inch ad in the local paper to advise the public that he is not related to a young man of the same last name who, facing the draft, has claimed conscientious objector status. Problem Solving in Grand Prairie Grand Prairie A tense drama is taking place in the Dallas-Tarrant counties suburb of Grand Prairie. A community of some 42,500 persons located midway between Dallas and Fort Worth, Grand Prairie for some reason is thought of as the shabby sister of the mushrooming bedroom communities of metropolitan north central Texas. It’s hard to determine why this is so. Maybe it’s because of the proliferation here of hillbilly music joints and pawn shops, or the town’s large low-income population, increasing now as the main industry, ican-American laborers from the Rio Grande Valley to supplement a sagging work force. Grand Prairie is known as a blue collar community; nothing could be worse in the white collar Dallas Fort Worth area. To attack one of the problems many people feel is responsible for Grand Prairie’s sagging prestige, the educational system, a group was formed last May called “Views of Interested Citizens for Education,” VOICE, for short. It was patterned after the League for Educational Advancewas able to break the 17-year control of Mrs. Estes is an Observer contributing editor. 6 The Texas Observer the Establishment by electing two of its endorsed candidates to the Dallas school board. Heading up VOICE is a dynamic young attorney, James S. Vecchio, who, as the father of four children, two of them of Sue Horn Estes school age, is vitally interested in Grand Prairie’s educational setup. His group initiated a study of the Grand Prairie school system to compare it with other suburban school systems in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The findings were disquieting. Grand Prairie came out badly in every case. Guidance and counseling services are inadequate \(one counselor for every sion for children with physical, emotional, or mental handicaps \(a 13-year-old Negro boy was permanently expelled from school, without any testing, for being schools are unaccredited; library facilities are poor; teachers are treated unprofessionally and even told how to vote in school board elections; no local funds are used to hire badly needed teachers to improve the teacher-pupil ratio. If the state doesn’t provide funds through its minimum foundations program for teachers, they are not hired and pupils are put in what are called “split classes,” a sort of return to the old days of country schools where two or more grades are combined in the same classroom. Taypayers’ money which normally, would go to hire extra teachers \(most other school districts use a portion of their into a bank account which is used to pay cash for school , “needs.” One of these cash payments was over a million dollars paid recently for a new school auditorium. AS VOICE studied the situation, even more disturbing facts ‘became more widely known, such as Supt. H. H. Chambers’ m a k in g available supplementary material of questionable objectivity on how to teach Americanism in classesbe they history, mathematics, or whatever. This material urges teachers to propound theories representing big government, particularly big federal government, as dangerous; welfare programs as evil; the profit motive and free enterprise as the most worthwhile of economic aims; and man as undeserving if he doesn’t work. VOICE also learned that bids are never let in school construction. All contracts automatically go to a Grand Prairie firm closely connected with the conservative