About a year ago Dr. Max Rafferty, well-known school administrator – turned columnist, wrote a hard – hitting column on how to cut school spending, With everything expanding including school building costs, salaries, administrative expenses, curricula, etc. – this seems a good time to reiterate some of Dr. Rafferty’s recommendations. Doubly so in view of the present tax crunch. The educator-writer didn’t mince words as he replied to the plaintive inquiry of a school board member who wondered how to cope with inflation, especially since the voters wouldn’t approve a tax increase or bond issue. First, Dr. Rafferty said, in his copyrighted column distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and published locally by the Salt Lake Tribune, he’d eliminate study halls, whose value he discounted. Then, wrote the columnist, he’d tear out the intercoms, electronic monitors and two-way talk systems, sell them on the open market, and replace them with dittoed bulletins “handput into the teachers’ office boxes.” This would cut the utility bills and “save an incredible amount of value classroom time currently wasted” on frequent announcements. Next, Dr. Rafferty declared, “l’d declare a five-year moratorium on all educational conventions, conferences, conclaves, buzz sessions, convocations and pow-wows to which teachers, administrators, and school board members are sent at the expense of the school district budget.” He said he’d been to many of these “expensive sittings” but never “learned a confounded thing at any of them that I couldn’t have learned staying home and reading the mimeographed minutes two weeks later.” Warming up to his subject, Dr. Rafferty said his next step would be to fire “every other one” of the district’s deputy associate, or assistant superintendents and administrative assistants. Some further suggestions: – Socalled “innovations” such as “open space schools, unstructured leaming, modular scheduling, and ungraded classes,” would get a critical eye. – Closed circuit school television, “which accomplishes expensively only what can be accomplished just as well by a cheap 16-mm film projector,” would go. – Buses, with their costly equipment, garages, and operating expenses, would be drastical y scaled down, “Unless your school district is located in a big city positively dangerous for students to traverse on foot, let the teenagers walk,” said Dr. Rafferty. “Horace Mann walked to school. Abe Lincoln walked to school. Shucks, even I walked to school.” Finally, the curriculum would be re-evaluated, with such “Mickey Mouse courses” as “student leadership, personal grooming, and how to relate successfully to one’s peers” being amputated. Some of Dr. Rafferty’s suggestions might be considered extreme in some circles. But he writes with some good, oldfashioned common sense, and makes some good points that ought to shake people up a bit. In summary, he declared: “So you see, school board members across the lad, it can be done, and without hurting in any way what’s really important in your school program. If you still need money after all this rat-catching and weed-chopping, tell your voters what you’ve done. THEN ask for the extra dollars.