Education: Arkansas Travelers

One morning last week residents of Malvern, Ark. (pop. 5,290) were startled out of their swivel chairs and veranda rockers by the unaccustomed blaring of a sound jeep rolling down Main Street. Right behind came a caravan of 30 bright orange school buses and eight heavily loaded trucks and trailers. Posters plastered on the buses said: Watch Arkansas Climb the Ladder of Education.

Other signs informed Malvernites that the Arkansas Education Caravan had arrived to show them how to have better local schools. A caravan crew of 30 piled from the buses, began filling schoolrooms with up-to-date equipment, setting up shining new swings and jungle gyms in dusty playgrounds. In the next twelve hours, local educators and laymen got a whirlwind course in modern educational improvements.

Eyes & Purses. Malvern was the first of 15 Arkansas cities and towns to get a look at the caravan. The state-sponsored trek, proceeding with all the hoopla of an oldtime circus, was meant as both an eye opener and a purse opener. For years, Arkansas has missed being at the bottom of the U.S. list in educational expenditures only because Alabama and Mississippi have usually spent less.

Last January when energetic, 37-year-old Sidney McMath became Arkansas’ governor, he decided to do something about it, called his good friend and former school chum, Alfred Bryan Bonds Jr., home from his job as training director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to help out as State Education Commissioner. Already Arkansas had passed a referendum which cut the state’s 1,500 school districts (many with less than 350 pupils) to an economical 428, abolished the 18-mill maximum on property taxes which had hamstrung most efforts to increase school allotments. But something had to be done to convince Arkansans that they should up their local school taxes, thus pay for the improvements which would push Arkansas up the education ladder.

Bonds thought the caravan might be the answer. For the past week, he and Governor McMath have spelled each other giving pep talks to local school boards and citizens, pleading for higher taxes, better wages for teachers, adequate facilities for Negro and white children.

Soft Blue Walls. Between lectures and educational movies, wide-eyed mothers & fathers stared at the refurbished classrooms with their soft blue walls and off-white ceilings, newly varnished floors, took in the fluorescent fixtures, sleekly comfortable seats and desks. Comparing them with the kerosene-lit, bench-lined rooms still familiar in Arkansas’ rural areas, they asked: “Why can’t we have this all the time?” and “How much does it cost?”

Whether they would get the new-fangled equipment would depend on the caravan’s success and the local voting on tax rates next month. One Malvern businessman said, “If folks could see for themselves what is available for schools, it wouldn’t be hard to create interest in school support.”