[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 117 (Monday, September 8, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H7000-H7005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION AGENDA: SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to continue discussing the 
Democrats' education agenda. Last week, I was joined by a few of my 
Democratic colleagues on the floor to discuss the success the Democrats 
had in getting education tax breaks for middle and lower income 
families in the budget deal. We also discussed goals we were likely to 
pursue in the coming weeks as the budget deal has been signed into law.
  This evening, Mr. Speaker, I want to address specifically the issue 
of school construction. There clearly is a dire need to invest in the 
physical structure of our schools. That is a matter that every Member 
of this body has become very familiar with in the last several days.
  At this point I would like to yield such time as she might consume to 
the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Lowey], who has been a leader on 
this issue and has introduced legislation that I believe would go very 
far toward solving this very pressing need.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey, and I 
appreciate the gentleman's help as a cosponsor of this bill. I do hope 
that working together, and I would hope that more of my Republican 
colleagues can join us, we can truly get this bill passed.
  Mr. Speaker, when we introduced this bill, frankly to provide for a 
partnership between the Federal, State, and local governments on school 
construction, I really thought it would be a win-win for everybody. I 
was so pleased when the President and the Vice President of the United 
States began talking about the importance of rehabilitating our 
schools, and I was delighted to know that it had a good chance of being 
a part of the budget agreement.
  Frankly, I could not believe what I heard. I could not believe that 
Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich made a point of saying school construction 
support cannot be in this budget. In fact, in the letter that the 
leader of the Senate and the leader of the House sent to the President, 
they were absolutely explicit in saying school construction could not 
be part of the budget agreement.
  Well, frankly, it did not make any sense to me at all. I have visited 
many schools in my district in New York. We have worked with Senator 
Carol Moseley-Braun in the Senate, and all throughout this country. 
Whether it is the city or whether it is rural districts, there is a 
tremendous need for partnerships between the Federal and local 
governments in helping to rebuild our schools. We are talking about 
computers. We are talking about repairing infrastructure in our 
schools. How can we install computers in schools that are really 19th 
century schools?
  Mr. Speaker, I have seen youngsters in classrooms that were 
originally meant for cafeterias, for restrooms. They are so overcrowded 
that the youngsters who are supposed to be studying computers are going 
to schools that go back to the 19th century.
  So, on the one hand we are talking about the 21st century, moving us 
forward, understanding the value of computers, making sure every 
schoolroom has computers. And, yet, there are some schools that are 
still being heated by coal, where there is plastic on the walls. I have 
visited schools where there are tremendous leaks and the walls are 
crumbling and there are big sheets of plastic holding the walls up and 
our kids are supposed to learn in those kinds of schools.
  Now, we understand that this is primarily State and local 
responsibility. We understand that. But there are many things that the 
Federal Government gets involved in to help be a partner. And in our 
billions of dollars that we spend for a wide range of programs, what 
can be more important than making sure that every youngster has a 
classroom in which they can learn, a classroom in which they are safe?
  Our parents are worried, whether it is in New York or Connecticut, 
which is represented by the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro], 
and New Jersey, parents are worried when they send the youngsters to 
school because they are not safe. They should feel good about it. They 
should feel the children are going there to get the best education they 
can.
  What our bill provides for is $5 billion for 5 years to encourage 
local school districts to encourage States to invest in rebuilding our 
schools.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey very 
much. I really appreciate the gentleman's work and I appreciate this 
special order tonight. And I know that my colleague from New Jersey, 
and my colleague from Connecticut, will continue to explain to the 
American people how important it is for the Federal Government to be a 
partner so we can work together to make sure that every youngster has 
the best education they can, every youngster can leave in the morning, 
go to a school that is in good shape, have the best computers, the best 
books so we can continue to be competitive and that the United States 
of America can be proud that our youngsters are getting the very best 
education they can.
  What is more important? Education is the future. Education is the key 
to the future. Our school buildings have to be safe and secure so our 
teachers and our youngsters can work together to make sure that 
education is the priority that it should be.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I look forward to gathering more support in this 
Congress and this country for school construction.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, really, again, I do not think anything is 
more important right now in terms of our education agenda than the need 
to address the state of our schools, the infrastructure, the 
overcrowding, the issues that this bill would address.
  What we have stated before, and we will state again tonight, is that 
in this case a relatively small amount of money in terms of the overall 
Federal budget can really go a long way toward helping the States and 
the municipalities in dealing with this issue of overcrowding and 
crumbling schools effectively.
  I also think it is particularly important that the gentlewoman talked 
about the need to upgrade the infrastructure in terms of the electrical 
wiring. A lot of people do not realize that many of these schools are 
not equipped

[[Page H7001]]

to deal with computers and the other high-technology needs. So even if 
we had the money to do that, how do we put it in if we do not have the 
money for basic infrastructure? That is why I think this is such an 
important part of the Democrats' education agenda.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I 
am sure that the gentleman from New Jersey and the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut agree with me that the Speaker, Mr. Gingrich and the leader 
Trent Lott must have made an error. I do not understand how anybody 
could be against school construction. And when we are talking about a 
budget, it is just impossible for me to believe that anyone could be so 
forceful in saying the school construction money could not and should 
not and we will not agree to a budget in which there is school 
construction money.
  So I would really call on the Speaker and the leader in the Senate 
and all my Republican colleagues and Senate colleagues, we now have 
about 110 cosponsors, to join us in this bill. Let us do it in a 
bipartisan way and work together to improve our schools.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield now to the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro] who, again, has been stressing and 
formulating a lot of the Democratic policy agenda on education.

                              {time}  2200

  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I am 
pleased to join with him tonight and my colleague, the gentlewoman from 
New York [Mrs. Lowey] for her leadership on this school construction 
issue. It is remarkable. It is a small amount of money that can help to 
leverage a lot of money in terms of the ability to use this so that 
municipalities can pay interest on their loans in order to get those 
bonds and to get those loans in order to rebuild crumbling schools in 
struggling urban areas.
  I am so pleased, I understand our colleague from North Carolina is 
going to join with us as well this evening, to rise, to stand up for 
America's middle-class families. These are families who work hard. They 
play by the rules. They want what every other family wants in this 
country, a shot at the American dream, the chance to make their kids' 
lives a little bit better than their own.
  We all know that in America it is education that can make the dream a 
reality. Education has truly been the key opportunity in our society. 
It is now more true than I think in any other time in terms of a new 
global economy, which we are faced with, and this kind of an economy 
requires up-to-date skills and lifelong learning.
  Our public school system desperately needs our help. Young people 
need to be able to attend a school in safety, without fear of violence 
and drugs in the hallways, or whether it is on the playgrounds and, as 
we have been starting to talk about tonight, America's children need to 
attend schools that are structurally sound and that are not crumbling 
around them.
  There was a recent report, I know my colleagues know this, a recent 
report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. And it found that one-
third, one-third of America's schools need extensive repair.
  In May, just a few months ago, I visited the Fair Haven Middle School 
in my home town of New Haven, CT. Like so many schools around the 
Nation, Fair Haven was built over a half century ago. Consequently, 
like anything that would be a half century old, it needs repairs, and 
it needs an overhaul of its electrical, of its plumbing system.
  I walked down the corridors and the pipes are exposed. Now, I know my 
colleague from North Carolina was a school principal, has been engaged 
in the school system and knows and has watched kids on a day-to-day 
basis. I do not know any group of kids that walks down the center of a 
corridor and never hits up against the side of the walls. That is not 
my experience with kids. But when it is wintertime in a place like 
Connecticut and the heat is on, those pipes are hot. What happens? A 
kid comes along, his friend, kidding around, or her friend, kidding 
around, you give them an elbow, you nudge them, boom, into the hot 
pipe. You have got some kid with a burned arm.
  We are looking at the health and safety of our youngsters in schools.
  I went into the auditorium of this school. It was like a bat cave. 
The lighting was so poor that, in fact, they could not hold the kinds 
of events you hold in an auditorium because you cannot see. You just 
cannot see. It is not a question of turning the lights down for the 
performance. The lights are down. They do not go on.
  The heating system, the air-conditioning system, just decrepit and 
need to have repair.
  Nobody is asking for bells and whistles. We are just asking for an 
environmentally sound area, an environment, if you will, in which our 
kids can go to school.
  Last year in the school lunch debate, the American people 
acknowledged that children whose empty stomachs are growling cannot 
focus in school and they cannot learn. Why do we think that our kids 
can be in schools that are falling down around them and believe that 
they can succeed?
  As my colleague from New York, Mrs. Lowey, pointed out, there are 
some Republicans, some on the other side of the aisle, who have 
repeatedly blocked Democratic efforts to help schools find the 
resources that they need to repair and to rebuild. I find it almost as 
outrageous and unconscionable as she did. And I know my colleagues here 
tonight find it unconscionable that the Speaker of the House of 
Representatives, that the leader of the other body would specifically 
single out school construction as the area to apply the axe and to cut 
out that $5 billion, a small amount of money, which does not in fact 
pay for these repairs. Essentially, what should be understood, it 
allows for school districts, for municipalities, for States to 
alleviate the interest on the bonds that they have to float in order to 
do these kinds of repairs. It just makes good sense.
  I would just like to say that I have been concerned about this issue 
of crumbling infrastructure and I have introduced something called the 
National Infrastructure Development Act, introduced it in the 103d 
Congress. It is an innovative, creative financing mechanism that brings 
private dollars and public dollars together to raise capital to invest 
in our schools. It also is for roads and bridges and deep water ports, 
but one of the cornerstones is to be able to invest in our schools. It 
just makes good sense. That is what we ought to be about in terms of 
trying to meet the needs of our kids, of our schools, and particularly 
to alleviate the concerns and fears of the mothers and fathers who send 
their kids to school every day and know that they are in a safe and a 
healthy environment.
  I am really delighted to participate in this effort tonight.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman.
  I had some interesting statistics about school conditions by State, 
which maybe I could just use our four States as an example just to give 
you an idea, because we come from different States and different 
environs.
  But, for example, in my home State of New Jersey, the share of 
schools with at least one building in need, this would be an individual 
school district or municipality, the share of schools with at least one 
building in need of extensive repair is 19.1 percent. In Connecticut, 
it is 30 percent. In New York, it is 32.8 percent. In North Carolina, 
it is 36.1 percent. So regardless, just in our own States, those 
figures.
  Then it is even higher, if you look at the number of schools with one 
unsatisfactory environmental condition. This goes back to whether it is 
air quality, whatever it happens to be. For New Jersey, it is 46 
percent. For North Carolina, it is 58 percent; Connecticut, 60 percent. 
The list goes on.
  Probably the worst example right now is the District of Columbia, 
where we are tonight, because a lot of us are aware of the fact that 
the schools are actually not open in the District of Columbia because 
of the fact that, I guess it was a judge that ruled, as a result of a 
case, that the schools were in such bad condition physically that it 
was unsafe to open them until they did the repairs.
  My understanding is that it may be at least 3 weeks before they open 
the District of Columbia schools, which means they may not be going to 
school

[[Page H7002]]

until almost the end of September or early October.

  I just wanted to mention that one of our colleagues, the gentlewoman 
from the District of Columbia [Ms. Norton], actually started a program 
where she is encouraging high school students in the District to come 
and work as interns in our office while the schools are closed so that 
they are not sitting around idly.
  I happen to have this one guy, Andre, who is in my office now, at the 
Duke Ellington School in Georgetown. I guess that is the school for the 
arts. And he has been doing a very good job and helping around the 
office. But it just reminds me every day, when I see him when I come in 
in the morning, this guy should be in school. He should not be here 
interning in my office. I am glad he is here, but it is not just the 
District of Columbia, it is throughout the country. This is just 
getting worse and worse all the time.
  I want to thank the gentlewoman.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, just to point this out, this $5 billion 
that the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Lowey] has been talking about, 
just for the schools in the New Haven area, they would receive $17 
million, again, to help cover the interest on the loans. We are not 
talking about creating a wild-eyed bureaucracy. It is to meet the kinds 
of needs that the gentleman has identified.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to yield now to the gentleman from 
North Carolina [Mr. Etheridge], who is, I think it is fair to say, our 
education specialist within the Democratic caucus.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for 
organizing this special order. I think it is important, what we are 
about, and the gentlewoman from Connecticut touched on something I want 
to expand on, if I may.
  As you are talking about school quality and quality of the air in the 
buildings, I think a lot of our people who are looking in tonight 
around this country many times do not think about the energy crisis we 
went through over the last 15, 20 years. In many of the buildings we 
now occupy, the quality of the air is not what it should be because 
buildings were not built to be as secure as we have those buildings in 
a lot of places across this country today.
  So we closed the buildings. We have done a lot of things to save 
energy. But in the process of doing that, we have cut out a lot of 
cross ventilation where we do not have air-conditioning, where we do 
not have air moving in those buildings. If you are in after lunch and 
the child has had lunch, and that is true of us as adults, if you have 
lunch and you go to a place where the air is not moving, guess what is 
going to happen? You become sedentary, you nod off, you get sleepy. You 
do not pay attention.
  We wonder why children are not as alert as they should be. That is 
why in most of schools now, your toughest courses, they organize them 
so you can have those early in the morning.
  And the point you talked about, it is so true, we have a lot of 
inadequate facilities all across this country, depending on where you 
are, rural areas or in urban centers, for that matter, where the tax 
bases have been stretched. We have not had the resources in recent 
years.
  And I mentioned this last week, and I believe it very strongly, I 
have been in probably more schools than anyone who is currently serving 
in Congress, but certainly over the last 8 years, on a regular basis, I 
was in the public schools in North Carolina. And I have yet to have a 
child come to me and ask me who paid for their school building, who 
pays their teacher or buys their books or anything else. They only know 
what they get.
  I think we have to get beyond that. We have a responsibility for all 
the children. And the responsibility is great, I think.
  But when we look at the facilities, we need to look also at the 
growth areas of this country, because I went into a building today in 
my State. I looked at the list. California is projected in high schools 
to grow 36 percent in the next 10 years. North Carolina, a 27-percent 
growth in high schools. That is not speaking to the problem in 
kindergarten through the eighth grade.
  What is really happening is this is the echo of the baby boom. In 
other words, the baby boomers are now having babies. And when they have 
them, they tend to show up in school eventually. When they show up in 
school, they are allowed to have good facilities.
  What is happening, we have not been able to build those 
infrastructures because of a number of issues over the last several 
years. But as you look, I went into a school this morning, a new 
elementary school that is in its third year. Nice school, the kind of 
building with all the modern conveniences, computers, et cetera, that 
you would want. Did not have enough. The school was built for less than 
600 elementary children, a community that is booming. And that is true 
of a lot of places in North Carolina because of the economic growth in 
the research triangle.
  This school has 1,200 children, 1,200, an outstanding principal, a 
great staff, but they have 18 portable classrooms on that school 
ground. They have expanded the physical properties twice in terms of 
permanent buildings. And one of the teachers showed me one of the 
classes where they were teaching art and English, and it was in the 
hall of a new building.
  Some of this money could have made a big difference in buying them 
bonds so they could expand. This county just passed the largest bond 
issue in their history. Our State, last November, on the general 
election ballot passed a $1.9 billion bond issue, largest bond issue in 
our State's history and, I might say, by the largest majority. And that 
would not come close to meeting our needs.
  I think that could be repeated 50 other times across this country, 
whether it be urban or rural. The point is that, as the gentlewoman 
from Connecticut has pointed out and our colleague from New York, not 
only do we have inadequate facilities that need upgrading, refitting, 
prepared for computers that are not there, and have air quality that is 
substandard in a lot of cases, but we need buildings for children who 
are showing up at schools that do not have buildings, do not have 
desks, and a lot of other things.
  I would acknowledge that, by and large, historically that has been a 
local or State issue, but I come back to the point at one time that was 
also true of water and sewer in this country. And then we realized that 
there was a national responsibility to leverage and we leveraged.

                              {time}  2215

  And there are a lot of other things we leverage to make a difference 
when it becomes a national priority.
  As the gentlewoman from Connecticut has so adequately pointed out, I 
do not know of anything that is a greater national priority today than 
to have a well-educated citizenry to occupy the jobs of the 21st 
century, when roughly two out of three will require education beyond 
high school.
  And if it is going to require education beyond high school, it seems 
to me commonsense dictates we should get them through high school 
first. And to get them through high school we have to start them right, 
encourage them, get them reading and doing math and a lot of those 
things that have been talked about. It will not be easy, but it is a 
tremendous investment in the infrastructure of this country that will 
make a significant difference for children.
  We have talked about the numbers, and it is repeated. I was looking 
at some statistics today in terms of different States, of how the 
growth is growing. It is not even, but the States that tend to be 
growing faster were States that have had some economic opportunity. But 
the problem we have is it is growing so rapidly in many of those States 
they have a difficult time keeping up with the infrastructure, too. So 
I think if we could help, we could leverage that.
  We had an opportunity with the budget deal that did not happen, but 
we have not adjourned yet. Last time I checked, we have not adjourned. 
We still have an opportunity to correct some of those problems, and I 
trust that we will. Because there are going to be a lot of young 
people, and I think a lot of voters will ask us when we go home, what 
did we do on this issue that we left hanging. And I trust we can say to 
them before we adjourn, in October or November or whatever it is, that, 
yes, we were good stewards; yes, we did

[[Page H7003]]

leverage; yes, we did realize there was a tremendous need. We did not 
stick our heads in the sand and say it was someone else's 
responsibility, it was someone else's duty. We did do our part on it. 
And I trust we will.
  As for me, as the old saying goes, as for me and my house, I plan to 
vote, if I get a shot at it, as I did before, because I think our 
children are waiting for us to take that action.
  I thank the gentleman for putting this special order together because 
it is important.
  One final point I will make, my colleague from Connecticut touched on 
it, and that is this whole issue of infrastructure in the buildings, of 
computers, and we talked about the Internet. We have so few schools 
today that have the wiring, as she has pointed out, but more 
importantly, we do not even have the telephone lines in a lot of cases 
to carry that Internet access that is so important that each of us in 
this Congress has access to.
  If it is important for those of us who are making public policy 
decisions, I think the Vice President was right, and the President, 
when they said we want to make it available to the schools, because it 
is available in a lot of our schools that have money. It is true in 
most States around this country.
  If it is true for those that have the resources, then certainly it 
ought to be true and the opportunity ought to be there for every single 
child, because who knows which ones will the doctors, the lawyers, who 
will find the cure to the problems in the world; and we need to give 
them the same opportunity no matter where we live.
  I yield to my colleague from Connecticut.
  Ms. DeLAURO. That really is, I think, a critical point. I have spent 
a lot of time in schools and I got very, very much involved in the 
connecting up of schools in my district to the Internet. I worked with 
the business community, and a number of them sponsored the cost of the 
wiring, et cetera.
  And in fact in a number of these schools the fact was that the actual 
physical plant did not allow for the wiring up, and that is one set of 
the problems, some of which we are talking about here tonight.
  But just as in the past, education in this country has been the great 
equalizer, that is, public education has been the great equalizer, so 
that no matter what our station in life, no matter what our social 
status was, or is, that we could achieve success based on our God-given 
talent.
  Now, I think that that is what needs to be preserved in all of this. 
And when we talk about some places, and now that we have moved into 
this technological age, we have to view the opportunity for the use of 
the Internet and computers and the ability of the physical plants of 
our schools, like a Fairhaven Middle School, which is a half century 
old, being able to accommodate that.
  Because then, in fact, what we are going to do, if we are not 
vigilant about this and if we do not put the resources necessary into 
infrastructure and into making sure that we have the phone lines and 
the computers, then we will create a stratified society where those 
places that can afford to have this kind of technology and this kind of 
access are going to get the benefits of it, and those that cannot are 
going to be held back from their ability to compete, their ability to 
succeed in this new global economy.
  The vistas and the potential of the computer and the Internet of just 
exponentially expanding horizons and opportunities for knowledge, we 
have to be very careful that we do not set people back in this process 
but have to be really guardians of that concept of public education.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. If the gentlewoman would yield, the point she has made 
is so well taken. Because really what she is talking about, there was a 
time, and many people like to talk of it as if it were yesterday, but 
it has been a little more than that, but the truth is when the textbook 
was so important, that was the one thing we had to pass knowledge on to 
the next generation, if we did not have the one-to-one ratio.
  As I have said, the best learning takes place when the teacher is on 
one end of the log and the student on the other. But we have to have 
more than that today. But the truth was, it was the textbook. Then we 
added the video to the classroom. But today the Internet provides an 
opportunity.
  We really do not know what the dimensions of it really are because we 
have not had the opportunity to access that in a classroom. The schools 
that have it, by and large have it in a media center, or what we used 
to call a library. Some have it in the classroom, depending on where 
they are, but very few. But that, with broadband networks available to 
transfer a tremendous amount of information for long distances, will at 
least allow a classroom, a group of students to be in a classroom in 
the most remote part of this country, and they can access information 
anywhere in the world they can receive.
  As a matter of fact, just this spring we had a four-school hookup, 
one in Massachusetts, one in Ireland, one in England, and I forget 
where the other one--oh, it was in Swift Creek Elementary in Wake 
County. Each group of students, rather than just hook up and chat, had 
a research project on the Internet. They had already had the access to 
the Internet, had done their research project, then they put the 
project up on the Internet and shared it with the other three schools, 
two in foreign countries; and then other schools did it, who took it to 
Australia, et cetera.

  The point being these students were dealing with some very 
complicated things, I mean the European Common Market. I am not talking 
about high school students, I am talking about elementary school 
students, 5th and 6th graders. Well, these were 3rd and 4th graders.
  Now, they were communicating, some of them, with a group. I said in 
Ireland; it really was in Brussels, because I remember at the end, the 
students in North Carolina had done research on lighthouses along the 
eastern seashore, and particularly the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, about 
its getting pretty close to the edge and a lot of debate about how to 
move it.
  The point being they had done it, but the youngsters in Brussels, 
when they finished their dialogue on their projects, they started 
communicating back to the students in the United States in French.
  We are talking about something that is so vast, and the point the 
gentlewoman was just making, how important it is that no child, and 
this happened to be a school that had a lot of business partnerships.
  What about those communities that have no business partnerships, that 
have no large corporate sponsors? Whose responsibility does it fall 
upon then to make sure that that child in that community has access to 
the same kind of opportunities? Because they are as much a citizen of 
the United States, or whatever State they may be in, as these other 
students are. And if we deprive them of that opportunity, I think we 
have cheated ourselves.
  And that was the point the gentlewoman made so well is how we level 
the playing field and provide the opportunity for the child and 
families in the future to move into the middle class in America. And 
education is the only way we will do it unless they come from privilege 
and money to start with.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I just want to make the point, because all this is by 
way of saying no one is suggesting that we bankrupt the Federal 
Government to do this; that this is going to be this giant program to 
use Federal dollars for this. Simply spoken, it is that a small amount 
of money in partnership with the cities and towns and local school 
districts where the money is leveraged so that there is a small 
participation by the Federal Government that allows these projects to 
go forward.
  That seems to me to be an appropriate function for government. It is 
not only appropriate, I think it is what we need to do as people in 
public life. It needs to be our responsibility to make sure that we are 
providing these kinds of tools in order for the schools that can do 
this and that the kids can learn, and that the parents receive the 
benefit of this effort, as well, in terms of seeing what happens with 
their youngsters.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. If the gentlewoman will yield, what we are really 
talking about is making funds available for buying down the interest, 
which will, in turn, encourage that local jurisdiction, State or school 
district to proceed with a bond issue, or

[[Page H7004]]

however they want to do it, then to acquire resources to do what they 
want to do right now, but because of the extra costs are unable to do 
so in many cases, for a variety of reasons.
  It may be a community that has seen industry move out over the last 
several years. It may be a community does not have the tax base to be 
able to do it, but if we leveraged it and brought the interest rate 
down, it would be to a point they could do it.
  And ultimately, the gentlewoman knows as well as I do, if we have a 
good strong education system in a community, economic growth will 
follow. As sure as the sun comes up tomorrow morning, we will see 
economic growth and prosperity will move very quickly.
  Ms. DeLAURO. And I emphasize public education because it is critical. 
The gentleman made the point before, my colleague from New Jersey has 
made the point, we need to invest in public education and that is where 
we need to put our resources, because that is where we maximize and 
level that playing field so that all youngsters can take advantage of 
this opportunity.
  I am not denigrating or I am not putting aside private education. 
Believe me, they play a tremendous role. But there are, in a number of 
instances, resources that can be brought to bear, and what we should 
not do is to create a world of education and opportunity that was once 
before only the purview of the rich and the privileged.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I agree.
  Mr. PALLONE. I think what both my colleagues are talking about is 
equal opportunity. That is really what it is all about. We just want to 
make sure there is equal opportunity.
  And I wanted to mention, if I could, the way this is financed, again 
I am looking at the bill that was supported by the President and that 
our colleague, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey) has 
introduced, and it says that the Partnership to Rebuild America's 
School Act would provide up to a 50 percent subsidy of interest or the 
present value equivalent of other financing costs to a school district. 
So basically a leveraging, as the gentleman said, to lower the interest 
costs.
  And of course these States and the local localities have to 
contribute money, and it is basically a partnership with the Federal 
Government.
  The money can be used for a number of infrastructure needs, whether 
it is fixing or upgrading classrooms, building new schools, addressing 
health and safety, problems with air quality, plumbing, heating, 
lighting, or electricity.

                              {time}  2230

  I just wanted to mention because the gentleman from North Carolina 
pointed out about the fact of why we have this overcrowding because of 
what is happening with the baby boomers' children basically, and also 
the gentlewoman from Connecticut talked about the need with regard to 
the Internet and computers. The statistics we have show that 46 percent 
of schools lack even the electrical wiring necessary for computers in 
their classrooms and a mere 9 percent of classrooms are currently 
connected to the Internet. More than half the Nation's schools lack the 
needed infrastructure to access the Internet or network their 
computers. It is a question of the ability to buy the computers but 
also the infrastructure needs before you can even get them in place.
  The other thing is in regard to the overcrowding and the fact that we 
need more schools and more classrooms. I have to be honest, until I 
started looking into this, I had no idea about what kind of increased 
school population there was, particularly on the high school level 
where a lot of times the costs are the greatest because of all the high 
tech or other needs that come into play. But just to give some 
statistics here, it says that the school enrollment this year broke the 
all-time record set by baby boomers in 1971. These are the baby 
boomers' children.
  It says that demand for school facilities will continue to be high. 
School enrollment is projected to continue to climb over the next 
several years growing from 52.2 million in this school year to 54.6 
million over the next 5 or 6 years. High school enrollment is 
increasing even faster than elementary and secondary. The crisis and 
the need for new classrooms is centered in the high school. It says 
some States in particular are projected to witness astronomical 
increases in high school enrollment. There is where the gentleman said 
about how it varies from State to State. Just to give a few states, 
California will experience an increase of 35 percent in high school 
enrollment over the next 10 years. North Carolina, the gentleman's 
state, will experience an increase of 27 percent in high school 
enrollment over the next 10 years. Rhode Island, one of the New England 
States, 21 percent in high school enrollment. Texas, 19 percent.
  Although it varies from State to State, we can see that regardless of 
the region, we have the phenomenon. One of the places with the biggest 
problem of overcrowding is right nearby here, in Virginia. Many of the 
cases that keep coming up are in Virginia. There is a case here with 
Salem High School in Virginia Beach. It was built in 1989 at a cost of 
$20.8 million and was designed to accommodate 2,000 students. Today 
only 8 years later, in 1997, the school's population stands at 2,615 
students and is climbing. In just 5 years, they exceeded their 
enrollment projections for their new school. I am sure there are a lot 
of cases we could cite around the country where that is the case.
  Again, when we talk about this bill, it is only $5 billion. Of course 
we could obviously do even more than that. I am just amazed again at 
how our colleagues on the other side of the aisle excluded this from 
the budget. We talked about it quite a bit during the whole course of 
debate on the budget. I guess to this day we do not know exactly why 
they insisted on it.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I find it interesting, again what I do not understand is 
why this program so specifically, it was almost singled out, as we 
know, ``Under no circumstances are we going to allow for this school 
construction funding.'' I do not understand it. I cannot explain it. I 
suppose it would be an interesting conversation to have with our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I do not think it is all of 
them. I think it is just some. I do not know. Maybe they think that 
helping to pay for the interest on this stuff is too much meddling. I 
truly do not understand it. Or that the schools are in good shape or 
that we do not need it. I do not think you can go to any district 
whether it is an inner city or suburban school that is not facing the 
same kinds of problems. It is a question of degree maybe in some areas, 
especially, and I go back to the Fair Haven Middle School, it is a half 
century old versus a school that is 20, 25, 50 years old, there is a 
different state of repair. But I have been to schools in inner cities 
and in the suburbs in my district and again I say they have all of the 
same kinds of problems. My hope is that we are able to come to a 
meeting of the minds on this in a bipartisan way where we focus in on 
public education and in the direction of putting more of an investment 
in public education today, whether it is on the issue of the 
infrastructure which we have been talking about, the overcrowding issue 
which we also have been talking about. We also want to make sure that 
our children can read by the third grade, that they are literate. Again 
in today's economy, my God, they cannot survive. They will be left in 
the dust. The whole issue of safety in addition to safety because of 
the physical plant but their safety from drugs and from violence. These 
are critical issues that face us in public education. I am quite proud 
that Democrats I think have taken the lead in these areas and want to 
make sure that we do have a sound and a strong and a true commitment to 
public education in this country. It has served us well.
  Mr. PALLONE. If I could just add, because I know that we do not have 
a lot of time left, our whole purpose really in coming to the floor and 
starting this education initiative again after the budget is to try to 
get our colleagues on the Republican side to come together with us on 
some of these issues. That is how we started out with many of the tax 
credits and the plans that ended up in the budget that improve access 
and affordability of higher education and ultimately if we keep at it, 
we hopefully can get the Republican leadership, the majority leadership 
on the other side to come together on school construction and the 
overcrowding issue as well, as well as the need for national standards 
that we talked about last week.

[[Page H7005]]

  Mr. ETHERIDGE. It actually accentuates the fact that there is 
considerable need. It is going to continue. We have just passed the tax 
credits and other things for young people to make it beyond high 
school. But the point is that we now have an opportunity to go back and 
rework that foundation. No house is ever stronger than the foundation 
you put under it. We have a chance to really strengthen that 
foundation, provide for some infrastructure needs that are badly 
needed, and I would agree with the gentlewoman from Connecticut. All 
these things are important and we must do them. But certainly children 
being able to read, compute, do math, safety, those are givens. We all 
agree that has to be done. But I hope we can now do some of the same 
things for the other needs that our K-12 children have that we were 
able to force together for those beyond high school and provide that 
dream of an educational opportunity. I think to do it we have to keep 
reminding people that the job is not finished, that we did not get done 
just because we went home in July and took a break. We have got a lot 
yet to do. It is going to be here next week, next month, next year. 
Until we get the job done, we are going to still be there knocking on 
that door, and the children are waiting for us to take that action.

  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleagues joining me 
tonight. As I said, we talked about the need for national standards 
last week. We talked about school construction needs tonight. There are 
a lot more educational priorities that we as Democrats are going to be 
discussing over the next few weeks.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I think that it is not each of the individual pieces, 
but it is where our values and our priorities lie as a country. I think 
we truly are in a defining moment about who we are and what we stand 
for. I do not think we can do enough in terms of the kind of commitment 
that we can have to these standards and values. I think it will set a 
tone and a direction for what the 21st century is going to be about. We 
talk a lot about bridges and all that, we can do it in hardware, 
software and so forth, but that is not the point. The point is 
fundamentally what kind of time and effort and resources do we commit 
to providing the opportunity for our youngsters, our kids, to really 
learn, to be able to expand their minds with what we are learning about 
zero to 3 and when kids start to learn. These are exciting times, I 
think, for us, exciting times for us to serve where we can truly make a 
contribution to a future generation, because so many did it for us.
  Mr. PALLONE. The gentlewoman is just talking about equal opportunity, 
and that is what it is all about. We want any kid regardless of where 
he or she is to be able to have the equal opportunity. They will not be 
able to unless we encourage some kind of standards and at the same time 
we improve the infrastructure.
  I want to thank both my colleagues for joining me and the gentlewoman 
from New York [Mrs. Lowey] before. We are going to continue pressing 
this education issue over the next few weeks and over this Congress.

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