Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill Relating to the Shaw Junior High School in the District of Columbia.

September 13, 1966

I AM happy to sign H.R. 15858, authorizing the D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency to acquire real property for a new Shaw Junior High School, prior to the adoption of an urban renewal plan for the Shaw area.

My pleasure in signing this bill is tempered by the fact that it helps only with the replacement of the Shaw school, and that even as to Shaw, the students who entered the school last week will probably finish their junior high school work in that same inadequate structure. Ways must be found to speed up the replacement of the antique and often overcrowded buildings to which so many of the school children of the District of Columbia are assigned.

For Shaw Junior High School, this bill provides an alternative method of acquiring a new site. By reducing site costs, it will increase the range of available locations.

It is my hope, too, that with this additional assistance, the Board of Education will give serious consideration to making the new Shaw Junior High School an integrated part of a center which would provide a variety of services to the community around it. Inner-city schools, particularly those at the junior high school and senior high levels, face many new challenges and provide many new opportunities. There could be no better place and time to demonstrate, through the Shaw replacement, the potentials of creative planning.

Note: As enacted, H.R. 15858 is Public Law 89569 (80 Stat. 758), approved September 12, 1966.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill Relating to the Shaw Junior High School in the District of Columbia. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238629

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