Education: Principals Pale

As old-fashioned as the Saturday Evening Post's idea of a teacher (see p. 30) is the conception of a school janitor as a humble worker, patronized by teachers, bedeviled by pupils. In New York City a head janitor may make up to $64,500 per year, depending on his own acumen and parsimony. Instead of being paid a salary plus expenses he is allotted a lump sum with which he hires assistants and buys supplies, pocketing what is left. That a janitor is no personage to trifle with has twice been discovered by New York's fiery Mayor LaGuardia: once, when the janitors threatened to disrupt his program of free school concerts by demanding $15 fees for services; again, when one of them refused to let him move a voting booth into a school-house after hours.

Well primed was the Mayor last week when a representative of the United Parents Association appeared at City Hall to protest that school washrooms were shy on soap and towels. Blazed the Mayor: "Any time the Board of Education has the courage to cut out its rotten, dishonest custodian system, we'll be able to give the children what they need. Go to any principal and point out uncleanliness in a school and he'll turn pale and say 'My God, I can't help it. I have no power over the janitors.' I never saw such a gang running anything."