Federally employed teachers face major status change

Abstract

A major change in the status of federally employed teachers is scheduled to go into effect beginning with the 1962-1963 school year. The exact number of professional persons which will be affected in the change-over is not known by the writer but an estimate of the total number of teachers employed in federal schools within the United States and abroad is placed at approximately 6,000. A small percentage of this group is already on civil service status but the vast majority has been classified as federal civilian employees rather than civil service employees. According to the results of a survey of more than a dozen federal school systems in six southern states, plans are now underway to bring most, if not all of the professional personnel employed in federally operated schools under civil service status at the beginning of the 1962-1963 school year. On the basis of information received from fourteen federal school systems scattered throughout the states of Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, teachers in three of the systems answering the questionnaire are already covered by civil service or some modified type of civil service. Of the eleven systems not under civil service regulations during the 1961-1962 school year eight indicated that it is being made mandatory that teaching personnel go under civil service status effective July 1, 1962. This would leave teaching personnel in three of the fourteen school systems covered in the survey on their present status as federal civilian employees during the next school year, unless the systems merely failed to report the expected change. Although the survey covers only a small portion of the schools or school systems now being operated in the U. S. and abroad at defense installations it is safe to say that the results indicate a move by those in authority to place most, if not all, of federally employed teaching personnel under