Public Schools: Model Use of Money

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At 92, his blue eyes are a bit misty, but when the school board of Flint, Mich., considers its annual budget, Philanthropist Charles Stewart Mott focuses on the figures as critically as an IRS agent checking a casino tax return. "I'm a nut on this sort of thing," says Mott by way of explanation.

His nuttiness would be welcomed by any school board in the country. In the past 33 years, Mott has pumped $42 million into the public schools of Flint to keep them open evenings, weekends and summers for an improbable array of community activities. This year 92,000 residents of Flint (pop. 200,000), more than half of them adults, have signed up for extra curricular educational, recreational and civic programs in the city's schools. Including 47,000 school-age children, well over half of Flint's residents are involved in some form of school activity.

Slave or Free? One of the founders of General Motors and until recently one of its biggest stockholders (he has given away all but 92,000 shares), Mott funnels his millions through the Mott Foundation (TIME, June 28, 1963), which considers itself the nation's fourth largest foundation (assets fluctuate with market values, but the Ford, Rockefeller and Duke philanthropies are undoubtedly larger). It contributes directly to the school board ($3,477,141 this year)—but only after Mott and his aides study and approve of the board's plans for spending the money. "Let's not kid ourselves," says a Flint attorney. "We want the money and are willing to make some concessions to get it."

The concessions boil down to a willingness to conduct any kind of activity in the city's 55 public schools that Mott Foundation officials feel will contribute to "the total education" of the city. In adult courses, that means lessons in everything from breast feeding to small-boat handling, from arithmetic to advanced cake decoration. A Sunday "coffeehouse" lecture series takes up such questions as "Why does love escape us?" and "Am I a slave to circumstance or free?" There are discussions of race relations (Flint is 22% Negro) and such religious questions as "Is God dead?"

The schools are also thrown open for family roller skating on Sunday afternoons (plastic skate wheels protect gymnasium floors). There are classes in bowling, bridge, badminton and ballroom dancing. The Mott approach is to use recreation as a lure to coax people into continued learning. "You bring people in for a little knitting class," explains Frank Manley, executive director of Mott Foundation projects. "Then you get a little serious sewing—then you build on that, and first thing you know you've got a terrific home economics course going." All the newer schools have a built-in "community room" open to meetings of clubs and civic groups.