Quad-City Times from Davenport, Iowa • 76

pS The vl A factors they document is that big cities face a big enrollment drop and soon. Between I960 and 1970, Pittsburgh. St. Louis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Boston, Cincinnati and Buffalo all had a 20 per cent or more drop in their preschool (0-4) population. Another dozen cities had a drop of ten per cent or more in the same age group (Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, San Francisco, Kansas City, Baltimore, Newark, Minne-apolis-St.

Paul, New Orleans, New York, San Diego). Suburbs in general will see the school decline a bit later, although a few are affected already. Plain-view, N.Y., for example, was one of the fastest growing suburban communities during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1953, the Plainview school district provided schooling for only 1,600 students. By 1966, 12,000 pupils jammed the schools which were built to hold only 9,000 at the time.

Then, enrollment began to dip, as is the case with many "bedroom communities" that is, communities where people reside but work elsewhere. Now, there are classrooms for 11,000 but there are only students. By 1979, firm predictions place enrollment below 6,000. Nationally, about $5-billion a year in tax money goes to build, maintain and equip public schools. But even though the number of students is dropping, the tax dollars to support buildings are rising.

It will be a long time, if ever, before there will be a significant drop in taxes for this purpose. But at least the rate should tend to level off. hardly seems like surplus space at all. During earlier, crowded days, many programs not essential to Ihc basic 3-It's were shunted aside. Now that class space is becoming available, schools are able to round out their music, athletic and art departments.

And there's room for principals and teachers anxious to try experimental techniques like open classrooms and team teaching. PRESCHOOL, Head Start and kindergarten programs have been inaugurated in many school districts which previously had to do without. In Michigan, education for the mentally retarded was shifted from the Department of Health to the Department of Education. That move utilizes many otherwise unused classrooms some school districts would now have. In Freeport, N.Y., excess space in one elementary school is being converted into an experimental play are.

Teachers themselves are doing the conversion. Teachers are apt to be converting their jobs, too. As enrollments drop, so does the need for teachers. Wherever a school system faces an overabundance of classroom space, un-tenured teachers are complaining about how hard it is to find or keep jobs. Most school administrators are reluctant to let go of teachers or excess classroom space.

Many of them remember how far off doomsday predictions of the past have been. They're not willing to make major decisions in the face of what's so far a minor trend. Also, in a country where people move so much, one new factory in town might create a need for new classrooms and" new teachers. It's hard to find both overnight. Altanta, recently leased four of its unused schools to private, non-profit agencies.

By leasing the schools instead of selling them outright, Atlanta officials will be able to use them again quickly in case of a major new influx. With the same kind of uncertainty in mind, half of the 100 school administrators representing 40 states who responded to a recent survey reported they had put one or more unused schools into "mothballs." The small expense of maintaining a boarded-up building looks better to them than the prospect of building a new school from the ground up in case their school population takes a sudden turn upward. AN EXTENSIVE new study by Educational Facilities Laboratory, a Ford Foundation funded organization, offers the first comprehensive look at the problem of surplus school property. One of the many SCHOOL authorities may be a little slow in gleaning the full implication of the pupil drop, according to statistics compiled by Dr. Vance Grant of the U.S.

Office of Education. Dr. Grant's figures show that throughout the 1960s about 70,000 classrooms were built a year. Currently, he estimates the rate ot about 60,000 a year, which is still three times as many as are taken out of service annually due to abandonment or obsolescence. Notes Dr.

Grant. "At the peak in 1970-71. there was an average of 24 pupils per classroom in America's public schools. This school year, there are only 22 per classroom." Dr. Grant feels that the subject of under-utilized school space is likely to mushroom from a local phenomenon into a national concer.

It's not his job to find uses for the excess desks, but he's sure that a lot of people, from plain taxpayers to college presidents, are going toyhave a lot of ideas on the subject. The Local Angle By Sieve Baker ists in Davenport schools, where enrollment decline is low compared to most other Iowa communities. There aren't exactly any empty Davenport classrooms, according to Wallace Wood, director of instruction. In fact, 40 mobile, and makeshift classrooms are currently being utilized by the Davenport system. During the baby boom years, Davenport did not go overboard in turning out new classrooms.

"We didn't go nearly as far (in building) as other school systems did," Wood said. The Three Missing Men Behind The Locked Door One of the eeriest unexplained disappearances on record is that of three lighthouse keepers on one of the Flannan Isles who vanished from behind a locked door. The Flannan Isles lie off the northwest coast of Scotland. Chunks of rock, the tips of undersea mountains, they jut out of the ocean some 20 miles east of the island of Lewis, largest of the Hebrides. On the west, the bleak Atlantic stretches endlessly.

It is one of the loneliest and most desolate places on the globe. In the year 1900, there was a small lighthouse on the biggest of the Flannans, which was merely a piece of rock 500 feet long and not so wide. THE SEVEN Hunters Lighthouse, as it was called, was staffed by four men who trimmed the wicks, oiled the machinery, and kept the tower in repair between visits ofthe supply ship which came every six weeks. In late December 1900, there was a tremendous storm of several days duration. The lighthouse was pounded by mountainous waves that would have swept it away if it hadn't been built on solid rock.

The supply ship, delayed by the storm, arrived after it had subsided, on Dec. 26. Aboard was Joseph Moore, one of the four regular light-keepers who was returning from a two week vacation on the mainland. Moore had left behind at the lighthouse his three co-workers Thomas Marshall, James Ducat and Donald McArthur. However, no trace of these men could be found.

Moore, with the ship's crew, made an exhaustive search of the lighthouse and the tiny island. The three mens' boots and oilskins were found in place. Strangely enough, the lighthouse door was barred from the inside, indicating that the men were indoors when they disappeared. THE ENTRIES in the lighthouse log gave no clue as to how and why they had vanished. On Dec.

12, the entry read: "Storm raging." That was odd since according to all reports from ships in the area there had been no storm on that date. The entry for Dec. 13 said: "Storm continued through night." The last entry, on Dec. 14, said simply: "Noon. Gray daylight.

Me, Ducat and McArthur prayed Joseph Moore, the returning light-keeper, said his companions weren't the praying kind unless they were awfully afraid. He didn't think a storm could scare them that much. And where had the three men vanished to? They couldn't have been swept into the sea because the lighthouse door could only be bolted from the inside. And there was no other means of entry or exit. The fate of those three men on the Flannan Isles is unexplained Empty schoolrooms and downward enrollments aren't the trend in Davenport and in some Scott County districts, but districts on the Illinois side of the river have seen declining numbers of students! in recent years, and Bettendorf sees a drop of 300 students by 1979.

While school administrators say new industry in Scott County is expected to actually boost some school populations, the hope in the Illinois Quad-Cities seems to be stabilization. A Rock Island school district spokesman said an overall five-year decline "on the magnitude of 800 to 1,000 students" is now showing signs of "tapering off somewhat." There's been no real move to close classrooms, particularly with the continued grow th in enrollment south of the Rock River, spokesmen say, and the overall loss amounts to "less than two students per room." BOTH EAST MOLINE and Moline officials report they've had elementary enrollment declines in recent years, with East Moline Supt. James Williams noting an average daily attendence drop of 235 last fall over the previous year was "larger than I thought it would be." But Williams said possible building projects on the city's south slope area might bolster the school population. Moline spokesmen said incoming elementary classes have apparently "stabilized" at about 800 pupils in the past three years, following several years of reduced enrollment trends in elementary schools. A junior high school bulge in population has yet to hit the Moline high according to the spokesmen, while officials say they're currently preparing a four-year projection of enrollment trends.

A SIMILAR JUNIOR high school level bulge ex ACCORDING TO Wood, the Davenport schools show the least decline of the largest 20 school districts in Iowa, with less than a one per cent overall drop in the past three years. Projections show a "fairly even" enrollment for the next few years, with a possible slump predicted after that. Meanwhile, spokesmen at both the North Scott and Pleasant Valley school systems foresee, no decline and a probable increase during the next few years because population movement into the area will probably offset what Pleasant Valley Supt. Robert Wagstaff called "smaller-sized families." Enrollment reached its all time high in Pleasant Valley earlier this month, while North Scott officials predict a jump of 100-200 pupils during the next few years because industrial development, such as the new John Deere Co. plant.

A FIVE-YEAR projection released last month in Bettendorf, however, predicts school enrollment might drop nearly 300 pupils by 1979. Supt. Ray Stensvad noted that a 1969 study predicted the district might have 7,400 students by the 1974-75 school year. That projection overshot the actual current enrollment by ubout 1,700, he said. FOCUS FEBRUARY 9, 1 975.