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Show i Ixclfemenf Over Mml lunch Prcgram Unnecessary; Lobby Method Criticized Reported use of school pupils as "agents of lobbyists" drew sharp criticism this week from members of the State Legislative Council and the State Public School Survey Commission. The criticism came as the result re-sult of notes sent home by students the past week, purportedly at the request of the PTA, urging parents par-ents to immediately contact their legislators and voice their opinion on a bill to hike the price of school lunches. In the unsigned anonymous anony-mous notes sent home to Springville Spring-ville parents, even the price to which the lunches would jump, was given, together with other information stating that parents should phone their opinion as they didn't have time to write. The matter came up at a meeting meet-ing of the Council at which it wa.i decided to hold off any legislature action on the School Survey Commission's Com-mission's report on educational needs in Utah until after the Council Coun-cil had made a careful study of the report. One recommendation in the report re-port is for the state to stop contributing con-tributing to the financial support of the school lunch program and this evidently gave rise to the alarm. Although no bill incorporating this recommendation has been introduced in-troduced into the Legislature, various var-ious legislators last week were flooded with protests against any alteration of the existing school lunch program. Dr. Adam S. Bennion, chairman of the Commission, said the report had been made after - a careful study of facts over a period of 18 months. Any action taken by the Legislature, he said, should be based on the facts presented to it and not on the "pressures" exerted ' by any organized group. Referring to the flood of letters let-ters that swamped legislators last week, he said: "If that is the way we're going go-ing to proceed then I think those of us who feel something should be done about the school lunch program could flood you (legislators) (legisla-tors) with another 5,000 letters. Allan M. West, executive secretary sec-retary Utah Education Ass'n, said the letters, whose senders were concentrated in a few areas, had not been initiated by his organization organiza-tion or the schools. Several members of )Jie Council said they had heard that the letters let-ters were encr.nragcd by the Parent-Teacher Association. Dr. Bennion said some leaders of that organization had told him that they would see that the legislature legis-lature was flooded with letters. Rep. C. E. Peterson (R., Utah) said that if the P.-T.A. uses school i mimeographs to get out its mes-! mes-! sages and teachers distribute them I to pupils for delivery to their parents, par-ents, then the schools are acting as a lobby. Sen. Clifton G. M. Kerr (R., Tremonton) observed that teachers teach-ers also should be advised not to tell their pupils that "we don't know how much longer the school lunch program can continue." This he said amounts to an effort to use school pupils as agents of a lobby. |
