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.4 • NEW CASTLE NEWS, FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 1951 \Let us not say it cant be done. Let's do it.\ Issued every Friday at Chappaqua, N. Y. Telephone CHappaqua 1-0443 Leverett S. Gleason Publisher Louis A. Brennan Editor Charles English Business Manager Printed by Lev Gleason Printing Service, Inc. Single copies 10c. Subscription rates: 1 year $3.50—2 years $5 NATIONAL , EDITORjAl As |oc(i^T0N school Sunday should be reason for quiet self-congratulation, for a prayer breathed at the good auspices vouchsafed the school venture, and most of all, for a feeling of enrichment. We here use the word in the restricted sense of material wealth. Though nobody will go home Sunday from his bui.ding inspection with two nickels to jingle more than he came with, he ought still to indulge himself in sentiments of prosperity. For, as a taxpayer, he has stabilized for himself the value of his property as 1 long as the local school system is administered well. The desirability of real estate within a sjhool district where the school facilities are above standard does not decline, and desirability of residence is the only value a house has. There is nothing in the law which says a man has to pay an owner that price for his house which he invested in the first place; the only law is desirability. In a general price slump that property slumps last and least which is most desirable. Taxpayers can count the Roaring Brook school a solid property value insurance. It is blindness to this plain fact of economics which surprises us in taxpayers who, as they did in Ossining recently in an af fair that vitally affected our Town's West End, bluntly defeat sa>es to bu-id new s hools. As a result of the Ossining vote ( I * I I NEW BOOKS at the LIBRARY .*»-^_«»-^_« »-\^_« »-^~« »-^-»* -^_* »-\ me I I V F Ml Entered as second class matter at the Chappaqua, N. Y., Post Office under the Act of March 3, 1879 Vol. 6 No. 21 Friday, March 16, 1951 OPENING DAY One of the real mysteries of civic existence these days is the resistance of taxpayers to the construction of new schools. Within the last two weeks communities in this vicinity have routed at the polls two attempts to secure approval for school projects the need for which was never seriously challenged, though many taxpayers without children were piously quick to point out that they didn't need new schools, being already literate, and in the loose construction of the word, educated. Other attempts have been defeated already this year and still further attempts of the clear-seeing and open-minded will be defeated by those who prefer to save the five or ten dollars it will cost them in taxes for private expenditures which, fortunately for the reluctant taxpayers, cannot be held up to public comparison with the finer merchandise of education. In tacit, reproving contrast to this state of affairs generally is the magnificent new Roaring Brook plant of Central School District No. 4 the completion of which will be marked by its dedication Sunday, March 18, and its throwing open to its new owners, the taxpayers, for inspection. That the inspection will hearten and make them proud no one will doubt who has watched the building during the progress of construction and has been at all conversant with the intelligent decisions that went into its planning. The evidence will be before every body's eyes Sunday in every line, in every facility of the new Roaring Brook building. There will be some one on hand to tell the public how enough was saved by not plastering the walls to pay for the sinks and cabinets in each room; why the sinks and cabinets are desirable; how a non-plastered wall is more economically and satisfactorily maintained than plastered walls; how this conclusion was arrived at not by theorizing but by inspection of schools where non-plastered walls were on display under usage; how light reflective rather than light absorbing colors were used and blended; how economically the brick was purchased, yet used to pleasing decorative effect; how the absence of expensive extraneous decoration has not detracted from the handsomeness of the building. We can think of nothing that would be more fascinating to the public than a diary written by the School Board of its negotiations and proceedings in the gigantic task of putting to gether the factors out of which the Roaring Brook school bui'd- . ing emerged. The huge grant of money which the public placed at the disposal of the School Board has been spent with a shrewd ness jealous of its trust and a vision jealous of its reputation. Such a diary would be the final argument to the dubious that public funds are not always spent with a large allowance for mismanagement and incompetence. Luck—and the School Board will be the first to tell you this— was with the new school from the beginning. But it was such luck as often attends the courageous, and is the result, not the cause of an intelligent determination to do what has to be done. The contracts were bid in on the building, for instance, at the very low point of post-war construction costs, without any at- j tempt to \play the market,\ that is, to guess what tomorrow would bring. The bonds were soM in a favorable borrowing sit uation, again without attempt to be speculatively shrewd; and, finally, by the time. the. Korean crisis brckr, ••vith its price as censions, its scarcity of purchasable necessities, and its vague- future delivery dates, everything for the new school had been bought, timely delivery date uncancellably set by contract, and prices pegged before their unseemly soaring. The result of this is a school building very likely to become a show place in educational budding on the Eastern seaboard, erected at a cost and within a construction period unthinkable now, and for probably a decade to come. The School Board de serves all the accolades that will undoubtedly be rendered it for this service. But it would be too easy to forget that the Board itself is the Board the community deserves, that it is the instru ment in kind of the community's cultural vitality. Wherefore, what the\ community sees at the Roaring Brook the West End wants to leave the Ossining school district, and with as good a reason affecting the value of its property as a rea son affecting the desirable educational environment of its chil dren. The Ossining property owners who defeated the new North Side school did it in the belief they were saving themselves money. True, their tax bills will not be as high next year, but there will be no profit to be reaped on the saleability of their property either. Nor does a section where property value are sagging help the tax burden either. In a district where value are up and assessments are fair the burden is spread over wider total valuation, whereas a depressed district rarely produces its own maintenance costs, which are always abnormal. The New Castle News gave stout initial support to the con struction of the Roaring Brook school, and, as far as commu nity benefits are concerned for the reasons just given. Nothing need be said about the educational reasons, for nobody dis agrees, in theory at least, with the dictum that a community cannot afford to have its children educated at standards less than the best. As staunch partisans of the new school, then, we offer our congratulations to the School Board, its District Principal Grafflin, and all assistants to these; for the gift to the community of a very fine job. It has been said that Chappaqua's principal industry is educa tion. This should be true of all communities, for the prepara tion of its young for living is all any generation can hope to ac complish. But in Chappaqua the principal is recognized as guid ing, and is worked at. What could be a better augury for the prosperity and continued community health here, then, than the opening of a new plant designed for the housing of the prin cipal industry, and fitted out to perform according to the most advanced processes? Fiction—Trouble in the GJer Maurice Walsh; Rather Co^^ol Mayhem, Laurence G. Blockr^fc- Henry Gross and His Dowslr >• Rod, Kenneth Roberts; Glencan- non Meets Tugboat Annie, Guy Gilpatric & Norman Raine. Non - Fiction — Draggerman's Haul, Ellery F. Thompson; Eyes of Discovery, John E. Baseless; Art of Wrapping Gifts, Drucella Lowrie; Textbook of Anatomy and Physiology, Diana Kinder and others. w Young People — Margaret, Jeanette S. Lowrey; The Mid night Horse, Monica Edwards. Children—B a r n e y Hits the Trail, Sara and Fred Machetanz; Patsy and the Pup, Hilda van Stockum. COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIPS Keystone Junior College, La Plume, Pa., is offering deserving high school students in this area an opportunity to compete for Charles S. Weston Memorial Scholarships at the college, Blake Tewksbury, president of Key stone, has announced. High school students, who must prove that they need the finan cial aid in order to go on to col lege, will compete for the awards in examinations which are being given at the college. The schol arships will be awarded only to those students who rank highest in the examinations, which in volve general aptitude and in telligence tests, Keystone's prasi- dent noted. Value of the awards will range from $50 to grants of full tuition for two years. To be eligible to receive a Wes ton Scholarship at Keystone Ju nior College, a student must rank within the first 20 percent of his high school graduating class Competition will be limited to the first 100 qualified students who complete the examinations. All candidates must file applica tions and complete the necessary tests not later than April 1, 1951. Awards will be announced by April 15, 1951. NURSE SCHOLARSHIPS New York girls who will be graduated from high schools this year, and who are interested in increasing the number of nurses in their state, are being offered an opportunity through five scholarships which will be awarded by the School of Nurs ing at Adelphi College, Garden City, N. Y. The scholarships, simi lar to those which have been of fered by the college each year since 1947, are granted for one year, but may be renewed for the three remaining years necessary for the college degree, if academic standing is maintained. One scholarship is for $550, or a total value of $2,200; one for $300, or a total value of $1,200; one for $200, or a total value of $800; and two for $100 each, or a total value of $400 each. To the Editor: Permit me to wish you much luck in your acquiring the Hy phen Printing Service. I am also glad to learn that hereafter the New Castle News will be printed in its entirety on the same good paper as the.-iir.st pages. As a matter of fact you changed the printer a| sorted to a cheaper kind per, particularly the pages on which the editorials appeared, the printing was so mediocre that I could hardly read it. While every intelligent reader would like to see his daily as well as his weekly paper prosper, at the same time one loves to see that his daily as well as weakly should be community-mirraed, civic-minded, and that it should mold public opinion in a demo cratic manner and try to work for the greatest good of the com munity at large, that it be free to express its own opinion re gardless of where the chips may fall. While you and I know that the editorial comment of a nap- paper is really the soul of a pub lication, it is also important to encourage and stimulate letters from your readers, because dif ference of opinion makes the world go 'round. Thus and only thus can you feel the pulse of your readers. Harry Weinberg Miami Beach, Fla. YONKERS RACEWAY* SUBSCRIPTION ORDER I wish to subscribe to the New Castle News for 1 year at $2 • 2 years at $3 • Enclosed is $ to cover the cost. (Please check here if you are already a subscriber and this an extension of your subscription • Name Address The trotters and pacers start moving in this weekend at Yon- kers Raceway to prepare for the opening of the American trotting season here Monday night, April 16. More than 1,000 stall reserva tions have been received from stables set to compete during the first two of the three meets scheduled for 1951. The SpSng session runs from April 16 through May 19, the Summer meet from August 15 through August 28. The final meet is scheduled for September 24-Oc- tober 27. With all stakes filled, a total of 970 entries for the early clos ing events of the spring and sum mer meets was announced by Ted Gibbons, racing secretary. additional 20 were filed for a Fall feature. Save your paper for the Scout paper drive. It helps the Scouts and it helps the country.
