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Show DO YOU OR DON'T YOU . Friday, Dec. 14, Beaver County taxpayers will go to the polls and say they want or don't want safe, modern school buildings for their children. They will vote on a proposal to issue $550,000 in school district bonds, 'for the purpose of constructing new school buildings to replace antiquated structures, and modernize other buildings which can economically be made satisfactory. The newest school building in Beaver County is older than some of the teachers employed on the instructional staff; some are older than the parents of the children who attend to assimilate assim-ilate their share of knowledge. We think no one in Beaver County will contend that our school buildings are adequate, or satisfactory, or even acceptable. The present school building needs of Beaver County call , for an expenditure of more than one million dollars. That amount will be required to build a new Milford elementary school, a cottage-type school .at Minersville, a new wing for the Belknap elementary at Beaver, a new gym at Beaver, remodel re-model and modernize the Beaver high school including the auditorium, and remodel and modernize the Milford high school. At present, the Board of Education is collecting 10 mills for school building purposes. This is the top limit on taxation taxa-tion for school construction, and under this method it will take TWENTY YEARS to raise enough money to pay for the PRESENT needs. And we'll still have inadequate school buildings, because during that 20 years other buildings are going to be needed. So, it is evident that there is no way to finance construction of the absolutely necessary school buildings build-ings except a bond issue. The $550,000 asked by the Board of Education will not finance fi-nance the needed construction, but if the bond issue is approved, ap-proved, Beaver County will then be eligible to receive monies from the state emergency fund which will be set up by the legislature, to convene in January. Unless the bond issue is approved, we cannot receive any state aid. And another point we wish to emphasize, is that approval of the bond issue will not cost the taxpayer anything additional in taxes, at the present time. The 10-mill lev', assessed this year for school building purposes, will be used to retire the bonds. The levy was made on a five-year basis, and the bonds , will be retired over a period of 13 years, so the levy will continue con-tinue for eight years longer, but there will be no additional levy to retire the $550,000 in bonds. Just one thing more. Take another look at the illustration illustra-tion by Graham Hunter at the top of this page. Russia is training 130,000 new scientists and engineers this year, while '.in the U S we are graduating only 70,000 just a little over half as many. We are not in a shooting war with Russia, but we are, and have been for many years, fighting a cold war with the inhuman inmates of the Kremlin, and the war is just as much a war for survival as an atomic shooting war would be. ' Wars are fought by scientists and engineers. - Nations :re led and "run' by scientists and engineers. Scientists and engineers are graduated from colleges, but first they must be trained and prepared for colleges in elementtary and secondary second-ary schools. A good kindergarten and first grade background, received re-ceived in a modern, properly equipped school building, is of major importance to a future scientist or engineer. Without a good elementary school English and mathematics background, back-ground, very few college students can complete an engineering engineer-ing or science course. Children learn very poorly under adverse conditions in unpleasant or inadequate surroundings. The taxpayers of Beaver County owe their children, their state, their nation and the free world a "Yes" vote on December 14. |