Statement on Establishing the President's Panel on Non-Public Education.

THE NON-PUBLIC elementary and secondary schools in the United States have long been an integral part of the Nation's educational establishment. They supplement in an important way the main task of our public school system. They provide a diversity which our educational system would otherwise lack. They give a spur of competition to the public schools-through which educational innovations come; both systems benefit, and progress results.

Should any single school system--public or private--ever acquire a complete monopoly over the education of our children, the result would neither be good for that school system nor good for the country.

The non-public schools also give parents the opportunity to send children to a school of their own choice, and of their own religious denomination. They offer a wider range of possibilities for educational experimentation and special opportunities, especially for Spanish-speaking Americans and black Americans.

Up to now we have failed to consider the consequences of declining enrollments in private elementary and secondary schools, most of them church-supported, which educate 11 percent of all pupils-close to 6 million school children.

If most or all private schools were to close or turn public, the added burden on public funds by the end of the 1970's would exceed $4 billion per year in operations and with an estimated $5 billion more needed for facilities.

There is an equally important consideration: these schools--nonsectarian, Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, and other-often add a dimension of spiritual value to education affirming in children a moral code by which to live. No government can be indifferent to the potential collapse of such schools.

In my recent message on education I stated that the specific problem of parochial schools was to be a particular assignment of the Commission on School Finance.

Today, within that Commission, I am establishing the President's Panel on Non-Public Education to be chaired by Dr. Clarence Walton, the president of Catholic University; and with William G. Saltonstall, the former principal of Phillips Exeter Academy; Ivan Zylstra, the administrator of government-school relations for the National Union of Christian Schools; and Bishop William E. McManus, the director of education for the Archdiocese of Chicago, as initial panel members.

In their deliberations I urge the panel members to keep two considerations in mind. First, our purpose here is not to aid religion in particular, but to promote diversity in education within the Constitution. Second, that while the panel deliberates, non-public schools in the United States are closing at the rate of one a day.

The panel is charged with studying and evaluating the problems that confront the non-public elementary and secondary schools, of reporting on the nature of the crisis they confront, and of making positive recommendations to me for action which will be in the interest of our entire national educational system.