[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 76 (Thursday, June 5, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3553-H3559]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE CONTINUING EDUCATION DISASTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we have had two important pieces of 
legislation in the past few days, one related to disaster. As the 
gentlewoman from Texas has just related, we had a bill to deal with the 
disaster relief. I think the whole bill is about $8 billion, and $5 
billion of that was for disaster relief for places that are very much 
in need of help and they need it now. We recognize in this Nation and 
repeatedly the Congress comes to the aid of any States, any communities 
that have natural disasters.
  Today I want to talk about the continuing education disaster that 
many of my colleagues, Democrats as well as Republicans, who just do 
not believe that we have an education disaster raging in our big 
cities, our inner city communities, and New York is just one, but 
Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, all over, 
you have a problem that cannot be resolved or solved with business as 
usual.
  We have a disaster. It is a man-made disaster, but it is a continuing 
disaster in that we are not providing education of the kind that is 
needed in order for young people to cope with the 20th century demands, 
let alone to go into the 21st century.
  We talk a lot about the need for computer education, computer 
literacy. We applaud the fact that telecommunications are being 
introduced, and now at an affordable rate in schools. Recently we had a 
landmark action by the Federal Communications Commission where they 
followed the mandate of legislation that we had passed, and they 
created a universal fund for schools and libraries so the schools and 
libraries can get at a 90-percent discount in the poorest areas the 
wiring for telecommunication services, computers, even just more 
telephones, and they can have a 90-percent discount indefinitely. They 
will be able to pay a telephone bill that costs $1 with 10 cents. That 
is what a 90-percent discount means.
  The poorest districts in America will have a 90-percent discount, and 
even the wealthiest districts in America will have a 20-percent 
discount. That is a major piece of government action that creates hope. 
But in the big city school systems there is not enough in place at this 
point to take advantage of this new revolution in the provision of 
assistance for telecommunications to schools and libraries.
  The education disaster is there now, the education disaster grows 
worse because of demands on our school systems and the need for 
education and the complexities of the kind of education needed are 
increasing while our schools are falling further and further behind.
  I want to speak in particular about New York City because we have 
just returned recently from a recess where I had the opportunity to get 
closer to problems in my district, problems that I thought I understood 
very well before. I find that they are even worse than I have imagined, 
that there are problems with dimensions that shock even myself, and I 
have been in Congress now for 15 years. Before that I was an elected 
official in the New York State Senate, and before that I was an 
official in the New York City government. But the magnitude of these 
problems in New York City education are staggering, and an experienced 
observer is shocked by some of the things that happen, and I want to 
talk about that.
  Just first a footnote on the two important pieces of legislation that 
passed this past few days. One, the budget conference report that 
passed today where the Senate and the House now agreed on a budget, and 
basically I think the White House has agreed on most of the elements of 
that budget too.

                              {time}  2000

  It is important to note that that budget agreement does not have to 
go to the White House for the signature of the President. Budgets do 
not have to go to the White House. They are agreements between the 
Senate and the House.
  The President started the process with his budget. In this case, the 
President sat in with the representatives of both Houses and they 
reached an agreement. I did not vote for that agreement because there 
were a lot of things missing there that I felt ought to be there.
  One of those things, of course, is the $5 billion for construction 
initiatives for schools which was proposed by the President to help 
stimulate construction of new schools or to renovate existing schools 
or to rehabilitate existing schools, to remove the danger of safety 
hazards from schools. If schools have asbestos problems, if they have 
lead pipe problems, any of those problems could have been taken care of 
in this $5 billion initiative.
  Now, the President initiated this, and we thought that in the budget 
agreement this would be a major item that would emerge intact. But 
unfortunately, Members of Congress, either in the House of 
Representatives or the other body, insisted that the $5 billion 
initiative for school construction be taken out. They were adamant, and 
the President finally yielded. Many of them insisted it should be taken 
out because they want to make the argument that local governments, the 
cities, the States, and the citizens of the States must be fully 
responsible for school construction.
  I want to just quickly note that they would still be mostly 
responsible, no matter what the Federal Government does. A $5 billion 
initiative to help with school construction would be just a tiny 
portion of the amount of money needed. The General Accounting Office 
estimates that we need $135 billion to bring our schools into the 21st 
century, $135 billion. So if the Federal Government is responsible for 
just $5 billion, it will not begin to solve the problem, but it will be 
a stimulant, and evidently, because we continue to fail to make the 
necessary promises at the State and local level, we need this Federal 
stimulant.
  So it is unfortunate that the budget conference report that went 
forward today does not have that $5 billion for school construction.
  We will not cease the fight, we will not give up. We are not elected 
to give up, we are not elected to stop the fight. Between now and the 
time that we adjourn sometime in the fall, we will continue to fight. 
The members of the Congressional Black Caucus have made this a priority 
item. We appeal to all of our comrades, all of our colleagues, to make 
certain that they keep sight of the fact that this is a major item of 
the budget.
  There is a bill that has been introduced by my colleague, the 
gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Lowey], and 190 signatures were on that 
bill to carry forward the President's $5 billion construction 
initiative. So we think

[[Page H3554]]

there is enough support to keep this item on the agenda. We think that 
it is not incompatible with the budget agreement that has already been 
made.
  Within the context of that budget agreement there is room for the 
school construction initiative to be revitalized. In the area of 
capital gains tax reductions, maybe corporate tax credits, corporate 
tax writeoffs of some kind could be used as a device to return to some 
kind of school construction initiative of an appropriate magnitude.
  We also passed the supplemental appropriation that I just mentioned 
before, which contains the disaster relief for communities that are 
suffering from floods and from exorbitant amounts of natural disasters 
that have occurred in the last 6 months. We think that is very much in 
order, but as I said before, disaster relief of another kind is needed 
in our big cities.
  Mr. Speaker, I have no problem with voting for disaster relief. I 
voted for $8 billion for California with its earthquakes and mud 
slides. I voted for $6 billion when we had to give money for the 
hurricane that took place in Florida, and $6 billion for flood relief 
in the Midwest several years ago. We apportion large amounts of Federal 
resources into helping people who need help.
  Of course, Mr. Speaker, New York does not have earthquakes, it does 
not have floods. We have not had any mud slides. So New York is a donor 
State. We continue to pay more into the Federal Treasury than we ever 
get back, so we deserve some consideration, and probably most of the 
big cities deserve some consideration in terms of another kind of 
disaster relief. First of all, of course, our colleagues here in the 
Congress have to recognize that it is a disaster. What is happening in 
our big city schools is a disaster.
  I had a discussion with one of my Democratic colleagues just 
yesterday who insisted that we should not have the Federal Government 
involved in school construction. It is a disaster. We find no other way 
to relieve the disaster. Bad decisions have been made, the wrong 
decisions have been made by local officials in some cases and by State 
officials. We have unfortunately allowed a situation to develop which 
is so far out of hand now that it has to have help from the outside, we 
must have help from the outside.
  Most of the help, as I said, will not come from the outside, but we 
need the stimulus. We need every public official at the city level, 
county level, and the Federal level, every public official should be 
put on the spot by having the Federal Government say, ``Here is part of 
the money, a small part of it. If you will just match it, if you will 
show some incentive, some initiatives, then we can go forward and 
provide the additional share to accomplish the task.''
  I am not apologizing at all for local officials or for State 
officials. The mayor of the city of New York cut the school budget by 
more than $1.5 billion over the last 3 years. Part of the cuts that 
took place there were cuts that had an effect on the budget for 
renovation and for repairs and for school construction. So decisions 
being made by local elected officials are part of the problem. The 
State has not come forward with any great new initiative on 
construction in a long time. Decisions being made at the State level 
are part of the problem.
  Recently we had a State environmental bond initiative on the ballot, 
and the Governor came out and campaigned for that, identifying with the 
environmentalists, whom he had previously called beatniks and in 
various ways ridiculed, but suddenly the power of the environmentalist 
vote led the Governor to come out and campaign. The Senator from that 
State came out and campaigned, and they all are now on the 
environmentalist bandwagon.
  We are happy about that. We passed the bond. I was happy to note that 
in that bond issue they specifically said that they would give some 
small amount of the environmental cleanup money to New York City so 
that New York City could get rid of its coal-burning schools. Coal-
burning schools in New York City. We still have coal-burning schools.
  They said in the brochure that urged people to come out and vote that 
funds would be available for 30 schools to change their boilers from 
coal-burning boilers to gas or oil boilers, eliminating the coal dust 
in the air that is perpetuating and increasing epidemic asthma and some 
other respiratory diseases. So we were proud of the fact that 
specifically they had mentioned relieving us of coal-burning furnaces.

  Despite the fact that I have been in New York a long time, I thought 
well, that would be the elimination of a major problem, 30 coal-burning 
schools will be no longer there. I did not know it at the time, but 
throughout the city we have almost 300 coal-burning schools, almost 
300, and 30 means that we are going to eliminate 10 percent with this 
environmental bond issue.
  I know the numbers, when we start talking about New York City, always 
people's eyes glaze over or they just lose track because the numbers 
are so great. We have 1,100 schools in New York City, 1,100 schools 
serving nearly 8 million people, so the numbers are great. But out of 
that 1,100 schools, we have some which are way back in the previous 
century. They burn coal, and that coal in a city of 8 million people 
living in a relatively small space, we can see how the coal dust alone 
is a major environmental hazard being perpetrated at a place where 
young kids congregate on a regular basis. So we are creating a major 
problem. It is a disaster.
  If one will not accept the general condition of the school system as 
a disaster, then at least accept the fact that when it comes to safety 
and health, we have a disaster in 300 schools that burn coal. In our 
Federal construction initiative, if nothing else, the Federal 
construction initiative should set us free from those coal-burning 
schools, but that is not the case.
  We have in the budget conference report a proposal for tax cuts, and 
some colleagues have said well, since we did not get the President's 
initiative in terms of the budget as an outright item, then let us look 
at the tax cuts that are proposed in the budget agreement. There is a 
provision for 85 billion dollars worth of tax cuts over a period of 5 
years, $85 billion in tax cuts are part of the agreement, and $35 
billion of that $85 billion are related to education, related to tax 
credits for tuition, to merit scholarships, to a number of items that 
are important, and they belong in there and they should be in there.
  However, in addition to that, we ought to have at least $5 billion 
more of that tax cut dedicated to doing something to deal with the 
construction crisis, the school facility crisis, the safety and health 
crisis in our schools with respect to the big cities. Fifty billion 
dollars in tax cuts, somehow there ought to be created an imaginative 
way to get corporations and businesses involved to the tune of $5 
billion in tax writeoffs or tax credits, or some way to have $5 billion 
of that $50 billion in tax cuts contributed toward solving the 
construction problem, the facility problem, contributed toward being a 
stimulant to solving the construction and facility problem in our 
school systems.
  Construction is a major kingpin in the whole effort to improve our 
schools. Construction is at the core of it in the sense that if we do 
not have buildings that are adequate, then nothing else that we do will 
have the proper impact. If children are in overcrowded schools as they 
are in New York City, we had a finite, very dramatic example of what 
the problem is last September, when on the day the school opened 91,000 
children did not have a place to sit.
  Now, it did not mean that we did not have 91,000 seats, but it meant 
we had a lot of the 91,000 with no place to sit anywhere. No matter how 
much we adjusted the system, transferred the schools from one community 
to another, busing youngsters further away, we still had large numbers 
who had no place to sit and places had to be found in hallways, places 
had to be found in storage rooms, places had to be found in corners of 
cafeterias, in assembly halls, all kinds of places that were not 
classrooms.
  In addition to that, we had to increase the size of the classes. Even 
if we had the money for additional teachers, we did not have a place 
for the teachers to teach, so the number of children in each class had 
to be increased. So all of the classes in certain areas of our city 
have more children than they are supposed to have according to the 
agreed-upon contract with the teachers. Instead of 26 at certain

[[Page H3555]]

grade levels, you have 35. That is a big difference in terms of the 
quality of teaching.
  So just the magnitude of the problem that you see in numbers and in 
overcrowding creates a situation that makes it harder for the teacher 
to do their job. But of course if you add to that the safety hazards, 
the asbestos that is a problem that we still have not dealt with in 
many of the schools, and we add to that the lead poisoning, lead being 
in some of the pipes and the paint.
  We add to that of course the fact that some schools are so old that 
the top floor, they have two floors, if one goes up to the second floor 
one will find that the walls of the classrooms on the second floor are 
continually shedding off because of the dampness, and the roofs that 
have been repaired over and over again no longer can be repaired to 
keep the water out, it just keeps coming in, or the money needed to 
properly repair the roofs and the walls is just not there.
  So we have manifestations of a physical problem that directly impacts 
upon the children in the school. If the walls of the room are damp, 
there is a health hazard and a distraction. If windows are knocked out 
and not replaced right away, that is a distraction. If the lighting of 
the school is improper, that is a distraction. We know what good 
schools look like. We can travel from New York City to the suburbs and 
find what good schools look like.

                              {time}  2015

  Even within the city we have a two-tiered system. There are some 
neighborhoods that have excellent schools that would pass muster 
anywhere, but there are too many that have schools that belong to 
another century. Instead of carrying us forward to the 21st century 
they are still lingering in the 19th century.
  So we have right now a window of opportunity to do something about 
education in general, and the effort to improve education in general 
has to start specifically with the physical facilities, or the physical 
facility improvement becomes symbolic of what we really want to do. If 
we are not willing to do the basics, if we are not willing to give a 
child a comfortable place to sit, a place to sit which is conducive to 
learning, then the other efforts become a little ridiculous.
  We talk about all third-grade children should learn to read and be 
reading on third-grade level when they get to third grade. We talk 
about the fact that we want all students when they graduate to be able 
to measure up to certain standards. We want to be first in math and 
science. We have six goals that became eight or nine goals. They are 
all laudable goals, but how do you recognize these goals when you 
cannot provide a safe place to sit? How do you talk about a national 
curriculum, we would impose a national curriculum, where every subject 
of five or six subjects will be more or less taught the same way and 
have the same outcome aspirations, the same attempt to get to certain 
levels? When we talk about that in the context of falling schools, 
walls crumbling down, leaking roofs, and asbestos in the wall, you 
begin to generate cynicism and hopelessness.
  We have a revolution going on with telecommunications, but if you 
cannot bore a hole in the wall because when you bore the hole the 
asbestos comes out, then we cannot wire the schools that have the 
asbestos problem. So construction becomes a symbol. It becomes a 
kingpin.
  Construction of facilities, if they are not proper, then we usually 
find that other matters are not being taken care of either. Where we 
have construction problems, when we start asking questions, we find we 
have other problems. If we do not have school facilities that are 
proper, then usually those same schools do not have adequate supplies. 
The same schools have broken machinery or broken equipment. The same 
schools do not have quality teachers.
  In my district, one of the districts that we have, they have the 
largest number of substitute teachers in the city, teachers who are not 
really certified teachers. The requirement is that you be certified, or 
the requirement is that teachers have to meet certain standards, but if 
they are not there and you have to hire substitutes, you take people 
who are not well trained.
  This problem takes place in the same places where you have the space 
and facilities problem. It is symbolic. Communities that do not take 
care of their schools physically are not doing other things that are 
necessary to promote opportunities to learn.
  Opportunity to learn standards, as I said before on this floor many 
times, is a set of standards that nobody wants to talk about. Everybody 
wants to talk about new curriculum standards, all across the Nation to 
have the same set of curriculum standards. They want to talk about new 
testing standards, where we test students across the Nation and compare 
their achievements. But in order to have students master the new 
curriculum, in order to have them pass the test, we need to create an 
opportunity to learn. It is simple common sense and simple logic. Part 
of the creation of an opportunity to learn, of course, is they have to 
have a safe place to sit, a place that is conducive to learning.
  So cities are neglected. They are neglected partially for racist 
reasons. Large numbers of minority groups are congregated in cities. 
Cities are neglected partially because of income numbers. Large numbers 
of poor people are congregated in cities. Poor people do not vote in 
the same percentages as other people. It is a political problem. It is 
a problem that local officials and State officials have neglected.
  How do we break out of it? Large percentages of our population live 
in cities. Large percentages of our population that are the work force 
of tomorrow are not being appropriately educated. We have an anti-city 
bias in this country. The anti-city bias is played out in the 
compromise that we have to make on the Constitution.
  The Constitution appropriates Representative's seats by population, 
so that is a one man-one vote ratio. Places which have the most 
population get the most power, the most votes in the House of 
Representatives. But the great compromise was that each State should 
have two Senators. No matter how small the State is, they have two 
Senators, so we have Senators in large numbers who are elected by rural 
and suburban constituencies and they do not have big city populations, 
and the policy-making in this country has gone that way over the last 
50 years: more and more neglect of big cities by the Federal 
Government, and the same pattern is played out often at the State 
level, where you have Governors being elected by non-city populations 
also.
  So we have a problem that cries out for resolution. We have a 
disaster that needs attention. We have a window of opportunity now. I 
am standing here because I will not give up. I hope my colleagues will 
not give up. I appeal to everybody out there with common sense to 
understand this magic window of opportunity.
  The cold war is over. We do not have to dedicate large amounts of 
resources to fighting the evil empire of the Soviet Union anymore. We 
have a President who wants to be known as the education President. He 
has put forward a very progressive, a very comprehensive program.
  We have the leadership of the majority in the House of 
Representatives stating that they are committed to the improvement of 
education in America. There is a disagreement on how we should approach 
it, but we can resolve that disagreement probably sometime in the 
future, maybe, but the important thing is that both parties, both 
houses of Congress and the White House, are committed to improving 
education.
  We have a window of opportunity. There is a need for people to come 
to this floor and talk specifically about how we take advantage of that 
window of opportunity. There is a need for us not to allow a Potemkin 
Village approach to be taken to education; that is, we have a few 
outstanding examples of what is happening that is progressive and 
positive in the country, and we hold up those examples and say, great, 
we are doing a great job, and we fool ourselves and we fool the 
American people in general, and make them think that we are really 
progressing and we have an appropriate education system.
  Any system of education in America which does not educate most of the 
population is a failure. We cannot exist, we cannot survive if the 
total population is not educated. The elite

[[Page H3556]]

education may be the best in the world, the education of the graduate 
students and the scientists and technicians at the very top. The Ph.D. 
degrees in our higher education institutions, they may be the very best 
education in the world but they are educating a very small percentage 
of the total population. The world does not run on the basis of Ph.D's, 
top scientists, or top technicians. The world runs only when people all 
up and down the scale have some degree of education.

  The example I have used before is when you get on an airplane, do not 
worry about the pilot. The pilot has the best training in the world. I 
think we spend more to train pilots than we do any other occupation. 
Pilots of airplanes in America especially have the best training that 
you can get, the most up-to-date training. They have rigorous standards 
imposed upon them.
  We may complain about the FAA not being tough enough on airlines in 
terms of certain safety requirements of the planes and certain 
equipment failures, et cetera, but nobody ever complains about 
inadequate training of pilots. So they are well educated.
  But when you get on a plane, you had better worry about the guy who 
put the oil in the oil pits. You have to worry about the man who put 
the gasoline in, if he read the meters right. You have to worry about 
the mechanic who tightened the bolts, and a whole array of people who 
did not go to graduate school, who did not receive very expensive and 
thorough training. All of them, too, they have to be educated.
  It is true of our total society. There is hardly an operation within 
our society where we do not have people all up and down the scale who 
need more education in order to do the job well. If they do not do the 
job well, then we may have some disasters resulting. Serious things 
happen when people who do not necessarily have high education 
credentials do not have the education they need to do their job at 
whatever level they have to do it.
  We have serious consequences when the productivity of the total 
society goes down, because the people who are needed for those 
production jobs at various levels are not there. We cannot exist and 
compete as a Nation if we neglect large numbers of our students in our 
inner-city communities. We need an across-the-board approach where the 
suburbs, the cities, everybody is keyed to being given the best 
education possible. Opportunities to learn and opportunity to learn 
standards have to be important to everybody.
  I want to describe the comprehensive approach that we talked about 
when I was the chairman of the Subcommittee on Select Education. We 
reorganized the Office of Education, Research, and Improvement. We 
said, you have to take a comprehensive approach. I am talking mainly 
about construction and the need to address ourselves to school 
facilities and provide a safe environment, a healthy environment as 
step one. But we have to have an overall comprehensive approach. That 
is basic and that is No. 1. The comprehensive approach means that every 
aspect of the problems related to education have to be examined.
  A comprehensive approach means that Americans should stop 
oversimplifying what is necessary to educate our children. Everybody is 
an expert on education. They think they are experts in education.
  While it is important that everybody be in on the dialogue, because 
the dialogue means that maybe they will wake up to how important it is, 
and when the time comes to vote for elected officials, the time comes 
to select the people who are going to educate our children, we are 
aware; everybody needs to be aware. But let us not assume that 
everybody is qualified to determine how our schools should operate.
  We should not oversimplify. We do not oversimplify in the area of 
defense and armaments. We know experts are needed. All of us have a 
stake in what happens in terms of the protection we receive from the 
Department of Defense, but we do not oversimplify and assume we can do 
it. We should not oversimplify in education. We should understand 
everything across-the-board, and that is one point we tried to make 
when we reorganized the Office of Education, Research and Improvement.
  We called for certain institutes: an institute for the education of 
at-risk students to deal with some of the problems that our inner 
cities face with our students.
  We called for an institute for early childhood education. More and 
more we are learning that early childhood education is critical, 
because children learn more in their early years than we imagined, and 
what happens in those early years can set the tone for the ability of a 
child to learn for the rest of their lives.
  We called for an institute for curriculum improvement. We also called 
for an institute for governance and management. I am going to talk a 
bit about governance and management of schools, because I think that 
governance at the macrolevel, governance at the level of the Congress 
of the United States, means we ought to make decisions here about 
education which are really going to promote the improvement of 
education.
  Governance at the microlevel means that down at the local education 
level, the superintendents of schools, the school principals, we have 
to have the best governance and the best management there, too.
  Although improving facilities and physical environments is critical, 
there are other problems. One of those problems I stumbled upon when I 
was in my district for the past district work period that surprised me 
greatly.
  We have a space problem in New York, as I said before. There were 
91,000 young people that did not have a place to sit when school opened 
last September. As a result of that space problem, one group that I 
worked with, the Central Brooklyn Martin Luther King Commission, which 
is dedicated to improving education in central Brooklyn, that group 
decided to join with me in making a survey of the schools in my 
congressional district.
  We wanted to make a survey to find out who are these schools, which 
schools still have a major space problem, which schools have 
overcrowding to a degree that is unacceptable. As we started to make 
the survey, we started by checking written documents and found that 
they were of little use, because people were not telling the truth. You 
would have a situation where a school would state that they had no 
overcrowding problem, but when you went to the school you found out 
that they had three lunch periods. One school had five lunch periods.

                              {time}  2030

  Why do schools have three lunch periods? Because they are 
overcrowded, and they cannot get the students a lunch period in a 
reasonable amount of time. So instead of having one or two lunch 
periods, there are so many children they have to have three. I found 
one school that had to have five. Most people cannot comprehend this 
because even I find it hard to comprehend.
  I discovered in my district a school where children start eating 
lunch at 9:45. They have to eat lunch at 9:45 because the school is so 
crowded that is the only way they will get lunch served. The last ones 
are served at 2:30. The first lunch period begins at 9:45. It is that 
overcrowded. So no matter what they say on paper about not being 
overcrowded, you can tell by just asking how many lunch periods do you 
have.
  But then you can walk around and find groups of kids sitting in the 
halls. You can find storage rooms which have groups of kids, obvious 
things are happening when you walk around and look that you see that 
indicate that you still have a major overcrowding problem.
  There is one overcrowding problem, there is one aspect of this 
problem that really shocked me that I could not see with my own eyes, 
and that is in one of the districts, district 23. I do not want to bore 
anybody, but in New York City we have 32 school districts which are 
subunits of the local education agency. The board of education 
comprises the local education agency for New York City. It is broken 
down into 32 subdivisions. Each one of the subdivisions has a 
superintendent. And the overall board of education has a chief 
executive officer who is called the chancellor.
  So in my district I have parts, in my congressional district I have 
parts of five subunits, five local school districts. These local school 
districts are all shaped by natural neighborhood

[[Page H3557]]

boundaries so they are not all the same size. But if you have a 
situation in a city as a whole where overcrowding is taking place, the 
last thing you expect is to find any district that does not have an 
overcrowding problem. You certainly do not expect to find a district 
that has empty classrooms, that has a situation where construction is 
not the problem but governance and management are the problem. And 
because of the governance and management of this particular district, 
because of its problems, you have overcrowding increased in the 
surrounding districts. And I am talking about district 23, which covers 
an area that became famous in 1967 and 1968, the Ocean Hill-Brownsville 
District.
  Ocean Hill-Brownsville became famous because it was one of the first 
experiments of community control and the local community control effort 
clashed with the teachers union. And we had a long strike in New York 
City that got national and sometimes international attention. So Ocean 
Hill-Brownsville is the place, a district that comprised the district 
boundary of district 23.
  Our overcrowding survey led to this discovery: that district 23 does 
not have an overcrowding problem but a shrinkage problem, where despite 
the fact that districts all around it are overcrowded and getting worse 
in terms of their population increase, the number of pupils going to 
school at district 23 is shrinking. It was a phenomenon which I decided 
to look at in far greater detail, and you cannot examine the 
overcrowding problems in this district without knowing some of the 
history.
  Ocean Hill-Brownsville had national attention when they had the great 
teachers strike, but then it moved off the front page when peace came. 
There was a settlement. Unfortunately that settlement included a 
takeover by the local political club, the assemblymen of the local 
political club politically moved in in an election and they gained 
control of the local school board. And you had peace, but the peace was 
a peace with corruption, a peace with violence in the schools, low 
attendance. The district became known as a place which was an extension 
of the patronage system, the local clubhouse. It did not matter whether 
people did their job right or not, as long as they were approved by the 
local clubhouse.
  It took a long fight to get rid of the political takeover of district 
23, Ocean Hill-Brownsville. I was a part of the struggle to set the 
district free. We finally freed it of political control, and one of our 
rallying cries was, stop political interference and let the educators 
educate.
  As the State senator for that area, I certainly worked hard to make 
certain that other elected officials would not get involved anymore in 
hamstringing the quality of education within the Ocean Hill-Brownsville 
school district. The problem is that that was a stupid position to 
take.
  Politicians, public officials should never say that they are not 
going to be involved in local schools or education at any level. Yes, 
public officials should not interfere. They should not seek to use 
schools for patronage, but district 23 is a perfect example how when 
the public officials back away, they are no longer looking, leave it to 
the educators, terrible things can happen.
  What has happened in district 23, because we took it out of the 
spotlight for 14 years, minimum political scrutiny, certainly no 
political interference, a superintendent was selected 14 years ago. And 
that superintendent has been there 14 years in a situation which is 
very unusual in New York City. Most school superintendents do not 
survive, do not stay in one place for 14 years. So we have a 
superintendent of this particular district who has been there 14 years.
  The district is so bad, however, parents are fleeing the district. 
They have no overcrowding problem because parents have decided they do 
not want their kids to go to the school, to the district schools. So 
large numbers of schools have empty space in a city which is racked by 
the problem of overcrowding. District 23 has no overcrowding problem. 
The parents are pulling their kids out in great numbers.
  The same district, the State has been observing the quality of 
education there. The overall citywide school board of education has 
been observing and several schools are under probation to make it 
simpler. They call them cert schools, schools which are under review. 
At least five schools are under review. Two schools recently were taken 
over by the chancellor for the overall school system. And the 
chancellor has what he calls a chancellor's district where he has 
created a district out of the 32 districts. Any long time, low 
performing schools are taken and put into a special supervisory 
situation where the chancellor's office oversees these schools. So two 
schools have been taken and at least three more are on the list in 
district 23.
  I am giving you a case history related to governance and management 
and how governance and management in this particular case exacerbates 
our space problem.
  The parents have made a decision. They know what is going on. Instead 
of fighting to improve the school district, they are just pulling the 
children out. Parents voted, nevertheless, to get rid of the old school 
board. They voted out the old school board. So in addition to 
understanding what is going on to the extent where they refuse to let 
their children go to school in the district, they also put forth an 
effort to get rid of the old school board and voted a new school board.

  The new school board now decides that the district superintendent who 
has been there for 14 years has had an opportunity to prove that he can 
educate children and can run a decent system. He can meet the 
challenges of that particular district or he cannot. They assume he 
cannot. Things have steadily gotten worse. District 23 is now at the 
very bottom of the list in terms of math and reading achievement. They 
have citywide tests, and you compare the scores from one district to 
another, this district is on the bottom. So it is pretty clear that the 
superintendent cannot, who has been there 14 years, cannot do the job.
  The new school board votes not to renew his contract. Instead of him 
gracefully admitting he cannot do the job, this particular 
superintendent has decided to wage war against the new school board. 
They voted not to renew his contract. That is the procedure. You start 
advertising for other superintendents and they are in the process of 
doing that. But in the meantime the present superintendent is using the 
resources of the school system, the children, the parents to fight 
against the policy decision of the present local school board and he is 
determined to stay there. They are now reviewing resumes of people who 
want to become superintendents in the district. Among the resumes the 
old superintendent, who has been there 14 years and failed miserably, 
has submitted his resume. The old superintendent, still the present 
superintendent until June 30, also recommended five principals for 
tenure. As he is going on, he recommends principals for tenure. Once 
principals are recommended for tenure and receive tenure, they cannot 
be fired. According to the way the system operates, tenure means you 
are there and you cannot be moved.
  Three of these five principals that were recommended were from these 
lowest performing schools. Again, the new school board decided to meet 
the challenge. They challenged the superintendent's recommendation of 
the five principals for tenure and said these are people who have 
failed and the failure is illustrated dramatically and documented by 
State records and by the chancellor's own criticisms of the district. 
Nevertheless, because of the arcane laws that relate to tenure, they 
will receive tenure, five failed principals will receive tenure. That 
is the way the law is written. If the superintendent recommends you, 
all the years that you have been there he has given you a satisfactory 
rating, there is no way to deny tenure.
  So we are saddled probably with five principals who have created a 
problem by overseeing the lowest performing schools. The majority of 
the teachers in this district are also substitute teachers, because the 
word gets around that it is not a good place to be and it is hard to 
get good teachers to come in. Those old teachers who were there, were 
the best, lured out to other districts or they were even encouraged to 
retire because part of the mayor's reduction of the budget for the 
board of

[[Page H3558]]

education in the past 3 years has been an incentive plan to encourage 
the most experienced teachers and administrators to retire. More 
experienced people make higher salaries. If you get rid of the 
experienced people with the higher salaries, you lower your budget. But 
nobody bothered to use common sense and said, if you get rid of 
experienced people, you also lower the quality of everything there: 
administration, teaching.
  So we have a massive failure that is exacerbated by the fact that the 
city and the State are encouraging experienced people to leave the 
system and new people coming in have no mentors, no way to be trained.
  We have one element after another which piles on this disastrous 
situation within district 23. Most of the teachers who teach math and 
science in junior high schools did not major in math and science in 
junior high schools. You have a situation where there is a total 
collapse. There is a total collapse.
  Education is not taking place in district 23, Ocean Hill-Brownsville; 
11,000 children go to school here. Again, the figures in New York are 
very grandiose figures. This is one of the smallest districts in New 
York City. Each school district is supposed to comprise no less than 
15,000 youngsters. They only have 11,000 because so many have fled. 
They have fled the disaster.
  The district right next to it, district 17, has 30,000 pupils. 
District 18 has 20,000 pupils. They have an overcrowding problem in 
that district because the parents do not want their children to go to 
school in district 23.
  You have a situation where education is not taking place in district 
23. There has been a total collapse. But nevertheless the 
superintendent, Michael Vega--I am using his name because I think it is 
outrageous what is happening there--Superintendent Michael Vega is 
still insisting that he should remain a superintendent. He is waging 
war against the school board that is trying to remove him.
  He is using the resources of the school, sending notes home with kids 
to parents. He has parent-teacher associations that he has cultivated 
over the years, very small groups, only a handful of parents involved. 
But they are the ones who get involved so they are elected. They are 
the officers. He has cultivated them and they are assisting him as he 
wages war against the district to try to remain in the district where 
he has been for 14 years, failed totally. The district has collapsed 
all around him and we have a war going on.
  For that reason, Michael Vega becomes a parasite. Michael Vega in 
that district becomes the enemy of education. All the parents need to 
understand, he is the enemy of education. We have a situation where 
moral indignation is appropriate from every level. We should have moral 
indignation by every elected official in the area.
  The chancellor of the whole school system was given new powers by the 
State legislature just this year in early January. No, late last fall, 
he was given new powers, and he can move in and do things that he could 
not do before in local districts. So the moral indignation of the 
chancellor is needed. The chancellor has criticized the system for its 
failure. Nevertheless, Michael Vega continues to move in ways which 
might result in him being reappointed as the superintendent.
  We have a commissioner of education for the State. The moral 
indignation of the commissioner, the powers of the commissioner should 
be brought to bear to get rid of a situation with respect to governance 
and management which is totally unacceptable.
  We have a powerful United Federation of Teachers, a union. They 
should weigh in against this immoral situation. The mayor should weigh 
in against this situation where because of our arcane procedures and 
laws, a superintendent who has been there 14 years, failed, and an 
attempt is being made by the newly elected board to move him out, he 
still feels that he has the power. And he is still using the resources 
of the taxpayers, the resources of the district to fight the decision 
to be moved.

                              {time}  2045

  I have given this case history example, because I want to admit that 
all of the problems of our schools are not going to be resolved by any 
action by a government at the Federal level or by action at even State 
level. There are problems at the local level that have to be taken care 
of, and we have to deal with them as elected officials by confronting 
our own constituencies with the problems.
  I served as a commissioner of a community development agency in New 
York with responsibility for the community action program, and we were 
major proponents of community control. We pushed hard for community 
control. And when the law was changed to set up community school 
districts, we were the major advocates and major proponents of 
community control.
  What we have witnessed is that when we put local people in control, 
parents of the students in that area, poor people who live in the 
neighborhood, we can have some dramatic results that we would never 
expect. Corruption is not limited to middle class or rich people. 
Corruption takes place quickly also among people who are poor and who 
are local and who have something at stake in the system.
  We were shocked to find that we could have a situation where one job, 
maybe pays $15,000, to get one job secured, a member of a school board 
will move to ruin the lives of 15,000 youngsters. They do not care. 
They logroll with each other about jobs and they put in people who are 
not responsible and they allow all kinds of horrible situations to go 
on when their kids are in the schools and their neighbors' children are 
in the schools. It is shocking. And for that reason, of course, I 
supported reforms which allowed the chancellor to have the power to 
step in.
  Well, superintendents, like Michael Vega, chief executive officers, 
they are paid very well. They are supposed to make certain that laymen 
do not get away with these kinds of excesses. But instead of being the 
force that makes certain that professional education goes on, many 
superintendents become part of the problem. The corruption is driven 
from the office of the superintendent, a kind of corruption which we 
cannot arrest anybody for, a corruption which is an acquiescence to low 
standards, an acquiescence to mediocre, incompetent people in order to 
gain friendships.
  For this superintendent, the most important thing is that he maintain 
friendships with enough people to get the votes he needs in order to 
continue there. And since the votes were taken away and the old school 
board that supported him was thrown out, he now is attempting to go to 
another level and get the power of the parents in each individual 
school, those few that he has nurtured along, and will promote a little 
revolution to maintain himself in power.
  We should not let this exist, and I am taking this opportunity to 
give this case history here because I want to sound the alarm for 
people back in the 11th Congressional District, those who live in the 
District 23 area. The people who live in District 17, which is next to 
District 23, this is their fight too because their district is 
overcrowded as a result of kids fleeing from District 23. People whose 
children go to school in District 18, their district is overcrowded 
because children are fleeing from District 18.
  It is a ridiculous situation, because throughout the whole city we 
have a shortage of places to sit, of classroom space, and District 23 
has a surplus because nobody wants to go to school in District 23. We 
must deal with that situation.
  We have a window of opportunity to really improve education in 
America. From where I stand, from where we are placed in the hierarchy 
of decision-making, the Members of Congress are not to take lightly 
this opportunity. We have a window of opportunity where the Nation is 
not faced with any great crisis, the Nation can focus its attention on 
education in a way it never could before, starting with the Federal 
Government.
  We are not the major players in the education scenario. At best, we 
have only a minor role, but that role is important. The Federal 
Government is the stimulant. The Federal Government pushes things. The 
percentage of money spent by the Federal Government on education at 
most is about 7 percent. States and local governments provide the rest 
of the money for education, but despite this small percentage, Federal 
participation in education, through title I, through Head

[[Page H3559]]

Start, through various programs at the higher education level, Federal 
participation has a stimulant effect that is a very positive one.
  We would not have certain kinds of standards that exist in our school 
settlements if it had not been for the impetus of the Federal 
Government. The education of children with disabilities, special 
education programs, would not exist if it were not for the Federal 
Government. The States and the localities are paying a greater 
percentage of the money, but the standards are being set and the high 
quality of education is being driven by the fact that the Federal 
Government is involved.
  We have an opportunity to take advantage of certain historical events 
that have occurred recently. The fact that the Congress passed the 
Telecommunications Act of 1996 and in that act they mandated that the 
FCC should find a way to give some kinds of special attention to 
schools and libraries with respect to lowering the cost for 
telecommunications by having the providers pay into a universal fund, 
that has happened now. It has come to pass.
  On May 7 the Federal Communications Commission voted to establish a 
universal fund for libraries and schools. That universal fund will 
provide the necessary funding at a 20-percent discount for the richest 
schools and a 90-percent discount for the poorest schools. That is an 
opportunity we should not pass up.
  We have an opportunity in that there is agreement between both 
parties that the Federal Government has a major role in education, and 
in this Congress, the 105th Congress, there is a greater possibility 
that we will have some positive steps taken on a bipartisan basis than 
ever before.
  So let us not fail to understand how serious it is. We have a 
disaster out there. It may not be in all our communities, in the 
suburbs, in the rural areas, but we might want to take a look and 
accept the fact that in the inner cities of our Nation we have a 
disaster.
  We have a disaster that is not unique to New York. It exists in 
practically all of our inner-city communities. We need help. We need 
disaster relief. We do not have floods, we do not have earthquakes, we 
do not have mud slides. God did not do it directly, it is a man-made 
crisis, and partially it is made by bad decisions that have been made 
at every level, bad decisions by the Governors, bad decisions by the 
local mayors, and of course at the local level the school boards often 
make bad decisions also, but the Federal stimulus is the best thing 
that we have to offer, and we should make certain that from where we 
are we continue the Federal stimulus to assist education, starting with 
a revival of the construction initiative that the President put forth 
before.

  Let us not give up. We need the $5 billion construction initiative in 
the Federal budget.

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