A Clean Slate

Most of the clatter and crash which culminates next Tuesday in the Cambridge city elections has surrounded the lively battle for City Council seats. This is hardly unusual, but it will be highly unfortunate if the big build-up for the main contest leads Cantabrigians to ignore the equally important voting for School Committee members.

The choice of a group to supervise the city's educational system is, of course, a vital one any year, but this fall's election has a double added significance. In the first place, the outgoing committee, dominated by men who seemed to be considerably more interested in politics than in education, left a stained two-year record behind it. Secondly, the city this year has in the Cambridge Civic Association slate a group of candidates which on the whole is far and away above the normal selection offered for school committee.

For the past two years, the seven-member committee has been under a non-CCA majority. A four-man block, consisting of Alfred Vellucci, John Cremes, Francis McCrehan and James Fitzgerald, has pretty much run the committee as it saw fit. The result has been some examples of plain political skullduggery. The most well known, of course, is last fall's notorious "Family Night," when these four men pushed through the appointments of eight people, half of whom were related to committee members. This move was made possible earlier in the year by the amendment of the committee rules to do away with the necessity for competitive examinations for promotions. In addition, the committee completely ignored such pressing problems as the planning of educational policy for new schools, the badly-needed improvement of recreational facilities and the relation of P.T.A.'s to school administrations.

Luckily, the city has a remarkable opportunity to improve the local school situation in the candidacy of eight highly qualified people on the CCA slate. Seven of the eight are new to committee work, the exception being Mrs. Pearl K. Wise who has been on the group for the past four years. But if they are new to the School Committee as such they are not new to education. Among the seven are Judson T. Shaplin, director of Freshmen Scholarships here and former Assistant Dean of the Graduate School of Education and George I. Rohrbough, also a professional educator and former president of Monticello College, Park College and the Chandler School for Women. Also in the group is Robert G. Conley, a well-known Boston lawyer who served as Cambridge chairman of Volunteers for Stevenson last year. These kind of people obviously are fine material for a conscientious and responsible school board. They deserve to be elected.