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It is too early to measure Gross's success, but he has certainly set a new tone in New York City. He started off facing a double crisis that threatened to collapse the school system on opening day in September: civil righters were set to boycott schools in protest against de facto segregation, and the militant teachers' union was hellbent for a massive strike. Won over by Gross's tough minded sincerity, Negroes put off their boycott; softened by his ability to com promise, the teachers accepted a face-saving settlement.
Better yet, the union settlement produced something unheard of—what Gross is pleased to call "a sort of alliance between teachers and administrators." For the first time in its hoary history, the board of examiners has consented to hold exams outside the city; in the drive for more Negro teachers, it is setting up shop this month in Washington, D.C. Beginning teachers with a master's degree will get $6,425 a year—the nation's top lure for career teachers.
For the first time in 50 years, half of the city's first-graders are getting a full school day; elementary schools are team-teaching 7,500 pupils; 10,000 slow readers are launched on programmed-learning books. Starting next month, reading will be tackled at after-school study centers, and a new "sequential" system is aimed at forcing pupils to master specific reading steps before drifting upward. Gross has submitted a record one-year building budget of $223.8 million that calls for 37 new schools by 1965. And by 1970, he hopes to overhaul the entire school plant to the tune of $1.17 billion.
Unburied Bodies. Even the scandals have taken a different tone—now they crop up because Gross & Co. are deliberately unburying the bodies. To the shock of shoddy contractors, the city's able new school building boss, Eugene E. Hult, recently ordered a half-built $2,500,000 Queens school to be partly dismantled because of weak concrete. Hult also publicized the quaint fact that school custodians, who get lump-sum maintenance funds and are allowed to socket unspent money, have been geting rich in the process. Bushwick High's D. Paul Bishop reportedly got $53,000 ast year, topping Gross's salary by $13,000 and the mayor's by $3,000. The word is that the next overspending to be exposed is on chartered school buses. 'I'm delighted," says Gross. "The system is beginning to use initiative and muscle."
It is indeed, which supports a surging lope among New York's parents that "maybe this Dr. Gross really can save he schools." Gross himself says: "I can't claim I've done a damn thing, really, but I see the potential for getting a lot done. This town is full of great teachers who deserve recognition. It could have a really efficient and powerful school system. What I want is to get things to a point where a parent can't ake his child out blithely. I want him to lave to think mighty hard about what lis child is missing."