Des Moines Tribune
Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa
1941

THEY LIKE IT HERE

State legislators' children from out of town who are in Des Moines schools temporarily while their fathers debate on Capitol Hill hae one thing in common.

They're smart - they refuse to comment on whether studies here are harder or easier, as compared with conditions back home.

One youngster, demonstrating he was a true 'chip off the old (politician's) block,' would speak off the record.

"Gosh," he said, "but the teachers here are old.

"I like them young and pretty . . . like they are at home."

The Tribune interviewed five children of senators and representatives who will be in Des Moines schools for the duration of the 1941 state legislative session.

As a courtesy to the visiting legislators, the school board admits their children, without tution, to any school the parents may choose, regardless of their residential location in the city.

School officials said there are probably at least 20 to 25 of these children here but since no record is kept of their attendance except at individual schools, the exact number is not know.

  

Over in the adjoining buildings which comprise Warren Harding Junior High school and Saylor elementary school are Jeanne [sic, Jean was known as Jeannie] PRENTIS, 14, and her brother, Raymond, 10, children of X. T. PRENTIS, representative from Mount Ayr, Ia. Raymond thinks the schools are "O.K." but Jeanne misses her friends. "I suppose I'll like it better when I get to know more people," she said.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, June of 2010