AL 93
Interviewee: R. L. Johns
Interviewer: Jeff Charbonnet
Date: July 19, 1984


C: This is Jeff Charbonnet, and I am interviewing Roe Lyell Johns, a professor of
 education at the University of Florida. Dr. Johns, would you please tell me about
 your work with the Citizens Committee on Education?

J: I was a fiscal consultant to the Citizens Committee on Education, which was
 formulated and made its studies in 1946-1947 and made its report in 1947. Dr.
 [Edgar LeRoy] Morphet [professor of education] also worked with me on that
 study. On that report we recommended, among many other things, that each
 county in the state would be required to have a vote to consolidate all school
 districts in the county into one district. We also recommended a great deal of
 other financial equalizations at the state levels, such as the Foundation Program
 and so on. Then I was called upon by the Citizens Committee to lobby for their
 report before the [Florida] senate. Dr. Morphet lobbied before the [Florida]
 House [of Representatives], but I had more friendly relationships with senators
 than Dr. Morphet did. He was a very vigorous individual, and sometimes he
 could be caustic in his arguments for education, which is quite the policy that
 some of the senators have followed. I was a new person in the state. I had
 been in Alabama. Actually, I had been in the army.

C: You came here at the end of the war [World War II]?

J: I came here at the end of the war, within about six months after I got back from
 the army. I was overseas for two years. Incidentally, I was supposed to be in a
 non-combat unit because I am blind in one eye, but I came out of the war with
 three battle scars from a D-Day landing in southern France. That is the army for
 you! I thought you might be interested in that background.

 I have had some very interesting experiences. To come back to the thing that
 you are interested in, we were having great difficulty in getting [state] Senator
 [William A.] Shands from Gainesville to support the Foundation Program. He
 was on the finance committee in senate. LeRoy Collins, who later became
 governor [1955-1961 ], was also on that committee.

C: Senator Collins was the sponsor of the bill in senate, is that right?

J: Well, yes. But now, Shands was planning to run for governor, and LeRoy
 Collins was planning to run for governor, and they were just like that in that
 committee. Get one to agree, and the other would agree. Senator Shands was
 very much opposed to the Foundation Program, while I was advocating it very
 much. He was very, very much [opposed to it]. Everything I would say, he