[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 150 (Friday, October 31, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H9847-H9853]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              ON EDUCATION

  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. Madam Speaker, as a matter of practice, I never like to 
criticize any efforts related to the improvement of education, whether 
they take place here or at the local government area or in the State 
governments. All efforts to improve education are generally to be 
applauded. As I said before, we need a comprehensive approach to the 
improvement of our schools and almost no attention focused on schools 
is wasted.
  First of all, it is important that the American people, the vast 
majority of the American people, the voters have placed education at a 
high priority position. They repeatedly insist that education is a high 
priority and that Federal aid to education is also a high priority. 
That is consistent and highly desirable. As a result of the general 
public and the voters insisting that education is a high priority, we 
have a lot of attention being focused on education by elected officials 
at every level, both in the Congress, the city councils, and the State 
legislatures.
  A lot of attention is being paid to education, a lot of campaigns 
that are running now across the country for this coming election day on 
November 4, they are not congressional campaigns because we are not 
running for office this year, but municipal campaigns, campaigns for 
Governor.

                              {time}  1330

  Schools are in the forefront in terms of issues that voters care 
about and want to hear discussed. Certainly, in New York City, 
Democratic candidate Ruth Messinger has certainly placed great stress 
on school improvement. The Republican candidate incumbent mayor has 
answered in trying to show a thousand ways in which he helped to 
improve schools and education. And on it goes.
  In another major contest in New Jersey, the very close contest 
between Gov. Christie Whitman and Assemblyman McGreevey, education 
figures as a very important item.
  On the floor of this House, there is hardly a week that goes by where 
education is not dealt with in some form in some piece of legislation. 
Today was one of those days when we had a discussion on education, 
which I must say we do not need. It was a very negative discussion. 
Very negative action was taken today. We focused on vouchers, and we 
are insisting that vouchers must be a part of the Federal effort to 
improve education.
  School vouchers, you know, there is a group here in the Congress that 
insists on pressing ahead with vouchers no matter what the American 
public thinks of vouchers. It is like a dogma at this point. It is a 
religion. Dogmatically, they insisted vouchers must be placed in the 
forefront of any effort to improve education.
  Despite the fact there is so much disagreement about vouchers, there 
are areas of agreement. We agree that charter schools, public charter 
schools, is a concept that might make a real contribution to education 
improvement. We agree on that. We agree that more technology in schools 
might make a real contribution to the improvement of education. We 
agree that teacher training and more funds to make certain that 
teachers get more training would make a great contribution to the 
improvement of education. We agree on quite a number of things.
  Unfortunately, we do not agree on one major item that ought to be in 
the forefront, and that is school construction. The one item that is 
necessary before those other items can be really put in place is an 
effort to help localities and States with the construction of decent 
schools. It is not a problem confined to the inner-city communities 
like mine, the 11th Congressional District of Brooklyn. It is a problem 
which is pervasive all over America.
  There is not a single State that does not have schools that need 
replacement or repair or renovation, not a single State and quite a 
number of school districts out there. The General Accounting Office 
says we need $120 billion to deal with the infrastructure of public 
education. Although, America, if you really dealt with improving the 
infrastructure to bring schools to the point where they are adequate, 
they offer adequate facilities that are conducive to learning, it will 
cost about $120 billion. All the President proposed in his State of the 
Union message was $5 billion. We were happy to hear that because it is 
a beginning. Five billion dollars was proposed to help with school 
construction, $5 billion to be spent over 5 years, maybe not 
necessarily $1 billion a year, but over a 5-year period. That seems 
like much too little as far as I am concerned. But we will be satisfied 
that we have begun.
  However, during the course of the budget discussions between the 
Republicans and the Democrats, that $5 billion construction initially 
was taken off the table. When they did that, they hurt the credibility 
of all the other efforts to improve education. Teacher training, 
technology, charter schools, they become a bit of a joke when we are 
talking to people where the schools are crumbling all around them. It 
is a bit of a joke to say that Washington should have 3,000 vouchers, 
vouchers for 3,000 youngsters, when a school system of 70-some-thousand 
youngsters is crumbling around us. It is a bit of a joke to talk about 
that solving the problem or any other effort we make now at this point 
in the Washington schools to talk to the teachers about the use of more 
technology, computers, videos, whatever; to talk to them about the use 
of these modern aids to education is a bit ridiculous when the schools 
in Washington do not have heat.
  A large percentage of schools now are suffering because they have a 
boiler problem, a heating problem, furnaces are going bad. They open 
late. Three weeks late the schools in Washington open because a large 
number of them had problems with leaking roofs. And because so many had 
problems with leaking roofs, the court ruled that schools in general 
could not open until they were all repaired. They finally, after 3 
weeks' delay, got the schools open.
  Now we have a large percentage of schools that have problems with 
their heating systems and they are closing down the schools that opened 
up 3 weeks late. Every day there is a new headline in the Washington 
paper. I think we ought to stop for a moment and consider the fact that 
this is the Nation's capital. It may be overwhelmingly African 
American. For some reason, that leads certain people to believe that we 
really do not have to take it seriously, what happens here is not a 
mirror of America. But it is in many ways the America we do not want to 
admit. We do not have the high visibility in the rural schools in 
America that may be having leaking roofs or may be having problems with 
their furnaces. We do not know about them because they are off the 
radar screen.
  In big cities like New York, they are so big. Washington has less 
than, I think, about 750,000 people. That may be an optimum size for a 
city. After that, it may be that the cities are too big that go beyond 
that because the communications problems that result are horrendous.
  I am a resident of the city of New York. I serve a congressional 
district with 582,000 people. It is one of 14 congressional districts 
in the city. We cannot get on the radar screen of our local television 
stations. We cannot get on the radar screen of our local radio stations 
with news that is important to my congressional district, made up of 
many communities, planning districts, all kinds of units in a city of 8 
million people. You cannot find out in New York City which schools have 
problems with their furnaces today.

[[Page H9848]]

  I would wager that there are more furnace problems today in New York 
City than there are in Washington, D.C. But it is not news. It does not 
surface. We have more than 300 schools in New York City out of 1,100 
schools. I always have to clarify things when I talk about New York 
City's school systems and make my colleagues understand the numbers. 
Unlike anything else in the country, there are 1,100 schools, 60,000 
teachers, 1.1 million students.
  So, of the 1,100 schools, more than 300, and I was quoted a few weeks 
ago, I said more than 250. I have learned recently from people who are 
very close to the system, custodians' union, that it is more like 325 
schools that have furnaces that burn coal. We still have furnaces in 
more than 300 schools that are burning coal. Coal makes a lot of heat. 
Maybe it makes more heat than oil or gas. But it also makes a 
tremendous amount of pollution.
  New York City is also the city that has the largest number of 
children with asthma. We will not go into what other respiratory 
diseases they may have. Again, it is so big that we have thousands of 
cases that do not even tabulate certain kinds of diseases. Asthma is 
way up there. The number of children with asthma is astronomical. So 
children with asthma is one indication of children suffering from a 
pollution problem.
  So just to get rid of the coal-burning schools would greatly improve 
the physical health of the children and probably a lot of adults, also. 
But that is not on the radar screen. They are not even talking about 
it. I assure my colleagues that schools are breaking down every day 
with furnace problems in New York City.
  But, unlike Washington, the courts and very active parent 
organizations are in constant monitoring. Constant state of monitoring 
has been provided by the courts and the parent organizations of what is 
going on in the schools. They have some other problems related to 
health that are surfacing that may lead to some other shutdowns of 
schools.
  I say this because here we were on the floor of the House today 
discussing vouchers, a rule to set the stage and parameters for 
discussion of vouchers next week. The Republican majority insists that 
we cannot discuss something sensible and something which has achieved a 
great deal of consensus among the Members of Congress, a great 
consensus among the American people as a whole, the public voters. 
Charter schools are looked upon as a respectable effort to improve 
schools. Public charter schools would provide some of what we think is 
needed to improve public schools.
  Most of the children in America are going to go to public schools a 
long time to come. Over the next 20 years, I would predict at least 90 
percent of the children in America are going to still be going to 
public schools, regular public schools, traditional public schools, 
public schools controlled by some central management and governance 
mechanism.
  There is no reason we cannot have some charter schools which offer an 
alternative and may, by example, lead to improvement of public schools 
by operating in a free environment with the ability to innovate and 
ability to do certain kinds of other things, including the ability to 
attract a group of people who are dedicated to education and will stay 
with it over a period of time.
  There are a number of things that charter schools can show us if we 
had more of them. That would certainly not be a big problem. In America 
right now, I think about 86,000 public schools exist, not counting 
private schools, but 86,000 elementary and secondary schools, more than 
86,000, a little more. And of that number, about 800 are charter 
schools. At this point, charter schools are about 800 out of 86,000.
  So we are not going to be overwhelmed by charter schools, but charter 
schools could provide an opportunity to provide us with little 
laboratories of what can happen in a school to deal with the problems 
faced by the traditional public schools.
  We will not be allowed next week to discuss charter schools 
separately by themselves. They must be intertwined, interwoven with the 
discussion of vouchers. That is the way the majority has insisted we 
must do it. So charter schools are going to be tarnished, tainted. The 
whole discussion will be adulterated and emasculated by the shadow of 
vouchers, which nobody really in the Congress has shown great sincerity 
about because they come from districts that do not have vouchers.
  I would challenge every person, every Member of the Congress who 
really believes in the voucher system or somebody else pushing the 
voucher system to go back to their own school districts, the school 
district where their children go to school, and give us a report, 
conduct a survey and give us a report on whether they want vouchers, 
who wants vouchers in their district. In their district, have they 
talked to the local school board and are they in favor of vouchers in 
their district? Have they talked to parents? Are they in favor of a 
voucher system?
  I have heard lately that most of our Republican colleagues come from 
middle-income districts where they have faith in their schools and they 
are not interested in vouchers. They have faith in their schools and 
the schools have done a pretty good job. Well, according to various 
reports that are made, even our best schools in America can stand a lot 
of improvement. Some of our best schools that are very well funded, 
have the best of everything, still have mediocre performances or 
performances that fall short of what we would like for them to be.
  Certainly, we compare our best students in math and science to the 
students in math and science in other parts of the world. Math and 
science is a good place to make the comparison. Because across the 
world, math and science is pretty much the same. It is not like 
sociology, not like literature. Literature and sociology are too 
complex. They take a higher order of reasoning, in my opinion, than 
math and science.

                              {time}  1345

  Math and science is the same everywhere. It is the same set of 
principles you proceed from; the logic is always the same kind of 
logic. The whole notion that it takes geniuses to deal with math and 
science ought to be reexamined. To deal with the swirling, complex 
nature of societies, anthropology, sociology, a number of other things 
out there are much more complex because they are never the same; the 
variables are always moving and changing.
  To deal with literature, the message that literature brings about to 
a particular culture, all those things require a much more complex set 
of reasoning and higher ordered thinking, but I will not get into that 
debate at this point.
  Math and science comparisons are made, and some of our best students 
from our best schools are falling short. I say to every Member of 
Congress, no matter how good the schools are, they would, I think, 
agree they could be improved.
  Would having vouchers improve them? It probably would, according to 
your reasoning. If you say the best schools are the private schools, 
then the best schools in your neighborhood, I guess, are private 
schools, too. The best schools in your State, the best schools in your 
school district, are they private schools too and if that is the case, 
are you pushing vouchers in your district? And what is the reaction of 
your school board? What is the reaction of your constituents? Come tell 
us. Do not tell us that this is a solution for inner city schools, this 
is a solution for disadvantaged African American communities. We are 
going to push this solution down your throat, because we believe that 
this is the way it should go and we are going to make you take it.
  The Washington, DC, appropriation bill that is still in the hopper, 
they are still negotiating and in conference on the Washington, DC 
appropriation bill. What is one of the biggest hang-ups in the 
Washington, DC appropriation bill? The biggest hang-up is the fact that 
the Members of the House of Representatives who believe in vouchers 
have insisted that vouchers must be instituted in the Washington, DC 
schools. Vouchers must be put in whether you like it or not. The people 
of Washington, DC had a referendum, they voted, they do not want 
vouchers. They voted not to have vouchers. This same Washington, DC 
decided to set up a charter school board. I think probably there is no 
other city in the country that has a board for charter schools. They do 
want charter schools. They are going ahead. There are very

[[Page H9849]]

complex guidelines, and they are now in the process of examining 
applications for charter schools. So why not support them 
wholeheartedly with charter schools, members of the Republican 
majority, why not leave them alone and stop trying to impose your 
dogma, impose your religion on the people of Washington, DC, your 
educational religion? Your dogma does not work if people do not want 
it. It is not going well even in your own districts. So why are you 
going to impose it on Washington, DC? Why are you going to offer it to 
frustrated parents in the inner-city communities as a solution when you 
know that only a tiny percentage of the youngsters at best could be 
placed in voucher programs? And when you do that, you are mixing up 
church and State because most of those schools that they find places in 
are church-related schools, and that whole debate and the conflict.
  In New York City it might seem easy as long as you are placing 
children in schools that are Christian schools. But there are also 
Muslim schools there. What about them? There are also Jewish schools. 
What about them? What kind of tensions are you going to create when you 
wade into that problem of replacement of students with public funds 
into religious schools? Are you not going to create a problem which is 
greater than the problem you solve? Those are some of the questions. 
What I want to dwell on here is the fact that this Congress, the 105th 
Congress, with a golden opportunity to really do something meaningful 
about education, is frittering it away, has frittered away an entire 
year around the edges with concepts like vouchers and education savings 
accounts and things that really, if they have any meaning at all that 
might be worthy of consideration, they ought to be referred to the 
Committee on Education and the Workforce for further study and 
deliberation.
  The voucher bill that was presented here for a rule today has not 
been discussed in the Committee on Education and the Workforce. We have 
not even gone through the regular democratic process. It was just 
brought to the floor because the people, the fanatics who believe in 
it, said this is our religion, this is our dogma, we are going to 
introduce it whether you like it or not and we do not need to take it 
through the democratic process while we are frittering away at the 
opportunity really to do something quite significant in the area of 
education. With so many Americans on board, the electorate saying we 
want more attention paid to education, why do we not do something 
really meaningful, why do we not start with construction? Why do we not 
start with a program that the Federal Government can offer that nobody 
else can offer? We are not interfering with the State and local 
governments if we offer assistance with construction. They all need it. 
There is not a single State that cannot use some funds for some school 
in the State with respect to construction, renovation or repairs. So 
why do we not focus on that? Why are we focused on testing?
  The White House unfortunately has gotten locked into its own dogma. 
Testing is the answer, testing above all. I am not among those people 
who say we should never have a national testing system. That is not my 
reason for opposing testing. My reason is that testing is not a 
priority. Testing ought to come in sequence. Testing should be further 
down the line. What are you going to say, Mr. President, to the parents 
of the children whose schools have been shut down for 3 weeks in 
Washington and they started 3 weeks late when they go to take the test? 
What are you going to say to the parents of these same children who not 
only had to start school 3 weeks late but they also have a problem now 
with the boilers and they face shutdowns and busing around, all kinds 
of interference with their schooling since school opened finally and 
the weather began to turn cold. What are you going to say when it comes 
time for them to take the test? Are you going to give them an excuse?
  As I said, in Washington, DC we have a high profile area, a high 
visibility area. We know that large numbers of schools in Washington 
have a problem with the roofs leaking. We have been looking at that for 
some time over the past few months and we hope they have gotten the 
roofs fixed now. We know now that they have a problem also with the 
boilers not working, the furnaces are not working.
  We know that in Washington, DC. What we do not have is a tabulation 
of how many schools across the Nation are also in trouble and they are 
having their youngsters bundle themselves up in the classroom, which is 
not conducive to learning, I assure you, but an invitation to lowering 
their immune systems and bringing on other kinds of problems as a 
result. How many schools are having children bundle up with classrooms 
that have inadequate heating? How many schools out there across the 
country have actually had to shut down for several days, starting with 
New York City? As I said before, you would not know it out of our 1,100 
schools if there were some that shut down yesterday because the heating 
systems were not working. The news is not generated. I do not get that 
news. I do not get any information. The papers do not think that is 
worthy of reporting. It is a humdrum part of the routine. But I am sure 
if I go check today and yesterday, there were schools that had heating 
problems in New York City. How many of those coal burning furnaces, 
furnaces that still burn coal, how many of them are working today, 
spewing their pollutants into the air, causing more children to have 
asthma?

  This is not news, not being discussed, but Mr. President and the 
people who advocate national testing, are you going to take into 
consideration the fact that this is going on? Are you going to have a 
system for excusing the children who have experienced all these 
problems in our school? Not at home. They may have problems at home 
with heating. They may have problems at home with broken families, low 
incomes that cannot afford to provide nutritious food, all kinds of 
problems may exist in a poor neighborhood that we have been talking 
about for ages which impede the school's ability to educate the 
children. But let us put that aside and say that the school ought to be 
an oasis, at least when they come to school they ought to be warm. When 
they come to school, they ought to drink water that is not possibly 
tainted with lead. We have not gotten into that.
  There is a lead poisoning problem in many big cities because the 
older the school is, the more likely it is to have lead pipes and the 
water that children drink every day is flowing through lead pipes. We 
do not even raise the subject officially in New York because we know if 
you go looking, you are going to find too much lead in a lot of the 
pipes. It ought to be examined, it ought to be put on the radar screen, 
we ought to not jeopardize the health of children, because the younger 
you are, the more devastated your brain may be by lead poisoning.
  This is happening, Mr. President, advocates of testing. How are you 
going to compensate for it? How are you going to adjust for it? Why do 
you not take into consideration the fact that this is happening and say 
to yourselves, let us make construction a priority. Let us put the full 
force and weight and credibility of the Federal Government behind a 
program to guarantee every child across the country a decent physical 
facility, a physical facility which is not injurious to their health, a 
physical facility which is secure, a physical facility which is 
conducive to learning. The lighting system, the ventilation, whatever 
is necessary, let us at least provide that. Let us provide them with 
laboratories in those schools which are able to conduct science 
experiments. Let us have every school have adequate laboratories. Let 
us provide them with library shelf space and books in those schools 
which will give them a chance to really study seriously in up-to-date 
books.
  There are still many books in the libraries of New York City high 
schools that are 30 and 40 years old and they are history books and 
geography books totally inadequate, dangerously inaccurate, but they 
are still there. If they took all the old books off the shelves of the 
libraries in New York City's schools, we would have a lot of empty 
spaces that are not going to be filled up soon. But I am not into my 
bill on the Federal Government aiding libraries in schools and 
elsewhere. I just want construction at this point. Let us deal with 
making construction a priority and really be serious about the first

[[Page H9850]]

priority. If you really care about education, if you really think our 
Nation is at risk, if you really believe that an educated society ought 
to be our first priority in terms of national security, an educated 
people, the one way to guarantee that our economy will continue to go 
forward and prosper, an educated people is absolutely necessary in 
order for our democracy to work appropriately. Democracies cannot work 
without educated people. The people must be educated. Even when you 
have educated people in certain societies, they still do not work if 
they do not have democracies.
  As we learned from the Soviet Union, a highly educated society, a 
highly educated people, probably in terms of science and math, there is 
no group of people on the face of the Earth more educated than the 
citizens of the Soviet Union, but an educated people operating in the 
framework of a totalitarian society where they are not able to utilize 
their education fully. You cannot have open exchange, you cannot have a 
utilization of really what is known. If it is bottled up by Neanderthal 
thinkers at the top of the structure, you have a command and control 
society, it does not matter what the truth is. The command and control 
society and the people at the top will issue their own truths and they 
blockade the progress of the society. A total collapse resulted from 
the fact that you had a highly educated society able to produce 
hydrogen bombs, missiles, able to match us in the area of defense 
hardware to a great degree, but the system was no good.
  Democracy first. Nothing works in this modern complex era without 
democracy, the openness and the back and forth, the churning process of 
people who are educated bouncing off each other, the trial and error 
method that takes place in a complex society, all that is inevitable. 
You can almost put it down now like a law. It is going to happen and 
the only way to have it happen productively is to have a maximum number 
of people educated so that what happens is among educated people. They 
will sometimes err temporarily and do strange things, elect inadequate, 
incompetent leaders, even elect demagogues. Occasionally they really go 
off the deep end but the correction will be there as long as it is 
democratic. There was no way to correct what was happening in the 
Soviet Union. No way to correct it, because of the fact that the closed 
society did not allow the churning back and forth and no matter how 
much education the people have, it would not have mattered as long as 
the parameters are set from the top.
  If you really believe in having maximum education in our democratic 
society, then the first thing you ought to put on your agenda is 
construction of schools. Not tests. Not tests. Not yet. Testing might 
make sense 5 years from now; a national test might make sense, but not 
now. Here are some headlines that appeared in the Washington Post about 
D.C. schools October 30, yesterday: ``Anger over Schools Suit Gets 
Personal, Attacks on Parent Leaders Expose Racial Tensions.''

                              {time}  1400

  The back and forth discussion over what is happening in the schools 
and the embarrassment has led to an upheaval that is affecting race 
relations in this city.
  October 30, yesterday also, there was another article about tests 
which indicates that many students in D.C. would not be promoted.
  There is a lot of talk at the White House and our committees about 
social promotion. Everybody is against social promotion. We are for 
motherhood and apple pie and against social promotion.
  Let's be against social promotion, but for the national discussion to 
get off into a discussion of social promotion, of uniforms, of what 
kind of reading approach to use, phonics versus whole words, I think 
that is premature. Let us focus on what the Federal Government can do 
best before we get off into those kinds of micromanaged details.
  We know they need decent places to study, to assemble. We know that. 
So why not focus instead on tests, rather than other problems.
  October 29, Wednesday, Washington Post reports, Washington school 
leaders close minds, close schools. School leaders, parent advocates 
and a Superior Court judge, who together are keeping the D.C. public 
school system in turmoil, are becoming public laughingstocks.
  This article starts by blaming the courts and parents for trying to 
do something about the D.C. schools, because they insist the kids ought 
to go to warm schools; furnaces ought to be fixed. Every day it seems 
they find new ways to resemble the children they are supposed to be 
helping. The consequences of their behavior are no laughing matter, 
however.
  Don't laugh. Because of their failure to reach in the court on how 
schools should be maintained, something as ordinary as opening all 
buildings in the system simultaneously has gotten beyond their reach. 
That is disgraceful. On it goes discussing the fact that even now, 
after D.C. schools are finally open, 3 weeks late, they are having a 
big problem.
  October 29, same day, article, ``Fire Marshal Finds Leaks and Closes 
Eighth D.C. School.'' Garnett-Patterson Middle School students to move 
to facility in Columbia Heights. The D.C. fire marshal closed Garnett-
Patterson school yesterday afternoon because of multiple roof leaks, 
bringing to eight the number of schools closed because of a judge's 
concern about school safety.
  Do you want to have kids in schools where the roofs are leaking and 
furnaces don't work? I don't think any of us want that to happen. So 
why do we not talk about how we move to fix that? There was a 
discussion about the large amount of money spent on D.C. schools. The 
statement I heard on the floor today made was $10,000 per student is 
spent on the D.C. schools. That is pretty high. I heard somebody say 
that is the highest in the country. Well, that is not true. It may be 
the highest of any big city in the country, but there are districts in 
New York State where $20,000 is spent per youngster, per student, and 
there are probably districts across the country that are equally as 
high.
  They are not big city districts. Maybe the Speaker, and it was 
Speaker Gingrich, I think, who said Washington, DC., schools spend more 
than anybody else in the country on their schools per pupil. It is not 
true, Mr. Speaker. The number may be true for big city schools like Los 
Angeles and New York, Philadelphia. New York certainly is not at the 
$10,000 mark. It may be something like $7,000 per child.
  Nevertheless, the governance and management of Washington schools 
have been so terrible until they have all of these problems, despite 
the fact they have been spending a little higher than most cities. In 
those cities, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, I assure all of you, they 
also have problems with their roofs leaking, with their furnaces. It is 
just not on the radar screen.
  On Tuesday, the 28th in the Washington Post, ``Battle over Boilers 
Leaves D.C. students Out in the Cold.'' ``Children Bussed to Other 
Sites as Judge Keeps Schools Closed.''
  October 27, ``Students at 5 Schools to be Bussed to Sites.''
  October 26, ``Contest of Wills Contributes to Chaos in D.C. 
schools.''
  October 26, ``Warm Wishes Not Enough.'' Warm wishes are not enough, 
as several D.C. public schools are being shutdown because of boiler 
repairs last week. I found myself thinking about the Daughters of 
Dorcas, a special group of women in Washington who make quilts. I just 
wished they could sew something for all of those children who are being 
left out in the cold by closed school buildings, as well as for those 
shivering students who will be attending schools that still do not have 
adequate heat.
  I think I made the point, I do not want to go on, but I am 
highlighting what is going on in Washington, DC., because I want you to 
know it is not an isolated case. This city is not alone in facing 
humongous problems with respect to their physical facilities. We ought 
to understand that and move forward to deal with it in this Congress.
  We are irresponsible by insisting on expending a great deal of time 
and energy on peripheral, marginal issues. Education savings accounts 
are marginal, peripheral items. Vouchers are marginal peripheral items. 
They may have some use somewhere, some time, but they certainly do not 
deserve to be discussed in this state of emergency that we are facing 
with our schools.

[[Page H9851]]

  We must go forward in the 105th Congress next year. I understand we 
are closing out on November 7 or 8 probably, and it is just as well, if 
this is the way we are going to approach a basic problem like 
education. We might as well close up the place and get out of town.
  I hope we come back with a different attitude in the second year of 
the 105th session of Congress. I hope the attitude of the 105th 
Congress matches the attitude of the people out there in the 
communities. Our constituents are way ahead of us in feeling that there 
is an education emergency, in feeling that their children deserve the 
best. Our constituents know that their children will not pass this way 
but once. You do not go through schooling but once. You are in 
elementary school, junior high school, high school, college, only once. 
Your life is going on. Your children will not have a second chance.
  So for every parent or grandparent, anybody who cares about children, 
there is an emergency. If your child is not getting the very best 
education they can get, there is an emergency. We ought to feel the 
same sense of emergency.
  I was quite gratified at the way parents responded when I issued the 
call for volunteers to come out on last Saturday, October 25. Saturday 
was Net Day. Net Day was a day set aside for the whole country. This 
was a time to appeal to volunteers to come in and voluntarily wire five 
classrooms plus the library. The wiring is to help set up the 
possibility that the schools' computers can be linked to the Internet. 
So wiring for the Internet of five classrooms plus the library is a 
goal of each set of Net Day volunteers.

  We wired 11 schools in my district. We had a real significant 
response. It was quite inspiring to see how parents responded. We were 
told at first that this wiring is a very simple matter. You show up on 
Saturday and in a day volunteers can wire five classrooms and a 
library.
  It is not that simple. I don't want to discourage anybody, but you 
better have some people that know what they are doing at each school. 
You have got to have somebody who is an electrician or telephone 
repairman, somebody who knows how it is done.
  The parents came out for training. Volunteers were asked to come to a 
2-hour training session sponsored by the local phone company, Bell 
Atlantic. I must say that the wiring of schools in our area was a 
combination of volunteers in the community, the principals, the 
teachers, the parents, and the private sector. The private sector was 
key to our success.
  There was a group called New York Connects in New York City, which 
organizes private sector response to communities that want help for the 
volunteer wiring of schools.
  New York connects did a great job in providing the kind of help we 
needed. Bell Atlantic and Apple Computer trained some of the teachers. 
Bell Atlantic provided a place to train and the trainers and training 
sessions for parents. Various other companies supplied volunteers who 
came out and helped providing pieces of equipment.
  The process showed that even in an inner-city community, you can have 
a response by both the volunteers in the community and the private 
sector which can produce great results, if you focus on a task and a 
mission. I was quite impressed with the fact that the volunteer 
sessions, and the first session I went to, we expected 20 parents to 
show up. There were 45 or 50 parents there. The room was crowded. The 
people up front conducting the training session were white executives 
and technicians who had driven from Long Island through heavy traffic 
to get to the session to train the inner-city parents and volunteers. 
It was a coming together which nobody planned, but as a result of 
focusing on a task which is worthwhile, to carry our schools forward, 
it happened.
  Those kinds of positive things are happening at many of the schools 
where we conducted the wiring. We heard the complaints that we had to 
be asbestos-certified, make sure that the asbestos problem is not so 
great that the boring of the holes would be a problem. Some schools 
where we were wiring for the Internet, some of the principals were 
complaining about the fact they are worried about the old pipes that 
may have led poisoning problems. On and on it goes with top floors 
having indications that the roof is leaking, et cetera.
  Nevertheless, I am here to celebrate the good news, and what I am 
saying is the responsiveness of our constituents, the responsiveness of 
parents for an exercise like Net Day, demonstrates they are way ahead 
of us in terms of believing that makes a difference.
  While inner-city parents in my district, the poorest--some of these 
schools were in our poorest sections, where they are excited about 
wiring the schools so the kids can have the benefits of being linked to 
the Internet. Why? Because their kids excite them. When the kids hear 
about the computers and Internet, the students get excited and the 
parents know it is important.
  The children want to go into the 21st century. There are some people 
who said to me why are you concerned, and Congressman Owens, why are 
you wasting your time and energy for technology for inner-city schools? 
Why are you concerned about the fact that in January 1998, the FCC has 
mandated that the Universal Service Fund go into effect and $2.2 
billion will be available to public schools and libraries. What does 
that have to do with inner-city schools that are suffering from a lack 
of books? They do not have enough books. They do not have enough chalk 
sometimes. Teachers complain about basic supplies. So why do we not 
focus on basic supplies and chalk and books instead of worrying about 
the Internet?
  My answer to people who approach me that way is that what if every 
city in the United States had said we are not going to deal, until we 
fix our sidewalks, until we repair all of our roads, we are not going 
to build airports. If every city in the country said we are not going 
to deal with airports until all the sidewalks and all the roads are 
fixed, we would not have modern airports and modern transportation 
systems. It would come to a halt.
  There are still roads and sidewalks out there that are not repaired 
and in constant disrepair, but we go forward, and our schools have to 
go forward. Our inner-city schools should be no less than schools 
anywhere else, and that is the way I see it, and a lot of the children 
see it that way, and it caught on, because their parents are also 
beginning to see it that way.
  Here is an effort that was not unique to Brooklyn. We wired 11 
schools in my congressional district, but there were other schools 
wired in other parts of New York City on Net Day, and across the 
country we had schools wired on Net Day, and there are other schools 
across the country being wired at other times.
  My colleague, the gentlewoman from Michigan [Ms. Stabenow] is 
involved with the wiring of schools and acquisition of technology. She 
is one example of how Members of Congress want this to go forward.
  Again, we would have more credibility and our effort would have a 
greater result if we had a new initiative to guarantee that the school 
buildings are sound buildings. The wiring is not too old to take the 
new linkages, the phone systems are not too old that we are not going 
to encounter large quantities of asbestos problems, et cetera.
  In keeping with that whole volunteer spirit, I want to announce again 
that I am supporting, and quite happy to be one of the people who are 
spearheading another National Education Funding Support Day. I am 
holding a copy of our poster for this year.
  National Education Funding Support Day is November 19 of this year. 
Republicans, Democrats, everybody is invited to join us in trying to 
demonstrate to the public at large that we are going to provide 
leadership in improving our schools in every way.

                              {time}  1415

  We want to emphasize technology this year. We have chosen to 
emphasize technology this year. We chose that because this is the 
prelude to the opening of the universal service fund for schools and 
libraries. That is going to happen in January 1998. We want schools to 
start getting prepared, and understand that they cannot wait to be in 
on this.
  National Education Funding Support Day is sponsored by the National 
Commission for African American Education. This year's poster has a 
basketball star, Patrick Ewing, of the New

[[Page H9852]]

York Nicks. Patrick Ewing happens to be from this area, the star of 
Georgetown University in Washington, who also now is the president of 
the National Basketball Association, Patrick Ewing.
  I hope next year we can get lots of stars, so in local areas we can 
have different posters with stars of baseball, football, basketball, 
women and men, appealing to youngsters and their parents to look at 
education as belonging to them. We need changes to go forward from the 
masses. Whatever we do as leaders needs to be complemented by 
mobilization in our communities. Our communities need to get more 
involved.
  We have seen this happen in the area of crime. The National Night Out 
Against Crime, for example, is an idea that caught on in our 
communities. Every community has some activities on the National Night 
Out Against Crime. The reason crime is going down across the country, 
there are many factors, but one of the factors is that more ordinary 
citizens, ordinary people, have understood that they should get 
involved in trying to get rid of crime. Crime-fighting is not a 
professional activity that ought to be left to the police and judges 
and the criminal justice system, but every citizen has a role, too.
  Every citizen has a role in education. We are saying that on November 
19 every group should go out and do something in connection with the 
promotion of education, either at day care centers, the public school, 
if you want, at your college, but do something on November 19 in 
connection with National Education Funding Support Day.
  We would like to have two things resonate. One is opportunities to 
learn in the area of technology, and that is what this message is. It 
is Patrick Ewing standing in front of a computer with some schoolkids. 
We want to emphasize that we are on the edge of a great jump start in 
technology for schools. That is going to be provided by the FCC mandate 
for a universal fund for libraries and schools, so technology is 
important.
  The other thing we want to resonate is that construction is 
important. Technology, the training of teachers, charter schools, 
nothing that we do is going to succeed unless we have buildings and 
facilities that are adequate for schools across the country. Every 
State has a problem that would be helped if the Federal Government were 
to take the initiative.
  Let us stop our waste of time on vouchers, on testing, on education 
savings accounts. Let us put them on the back burner, and when we open 
the second year of the 105th Congress, let us look forward to focusing 
on funding for education which provides more technology in our schools 
and also provides for adequate physical facilities for all of our 
schools.
  The National Commission for African-American Education has a little 
brochure. If Members are interested, I think their phone number and 
their address is in the brochure. The chairman of the National 
Commission for Education, for National Funding Support Day, is Dr. 
Edith Patterson, a former school board president in Charles County, MD. 
The number they give, if Members want to contact them directly, is 301-
753-4165 and 301-870-3008. Those are two numbers.
  For more information, the brochure talks about some of the activities 
that Members can sponsor on National Education Funding Support Day. The 
National Commission for African-American Education is located in Silver 
Spring, MD. I do not see the address here. Call the number and you will 
get, certainly, information. Certainly my office is able to give more 
information. It is a way to mobilize the general public. It is a way to 
take advantage of the fact that there is a good feeling out there about 
doing something about our schools.
  In the past we have had all kinds of activities launched by some 
Members of Congress. I think the gentlewoman from the District of 
Columbia, [Ms. Eleanor Holmes Norton] conducted lectures on that day 
last year. Last year we decided to launch an effort on National 
Education Funding Day called NetWatch. NetWatch was designed to wire 
schools in our area, in our district.
  NetWatch proposed at that time to wire 10 schools in 10 weeks, but 
because of the teachers' processes, because of all the complications 
that you run into when you try to wire schools for the Internet, it 
took us until October 25. National Education Funding Support Day last 
year was October 23. We did not get a single school wired until 12 
months later, on October 25.
  The NetWatch activities that were launched on National Education 
Funding Support Day resulted in our Net Day wiring of 11 schools in 
central Brooklyn, my 11th Congressional District. But we are now in a 
position, we have a group of people we are forming called NetWatch 
Fellows. All those volunteers who came out and supported us, parents 
and local residents, we are asking them to stay with us and form a 
group called NetWatch Fellows, so we can move the process from the 
wiring of the school for the Internet right through the process of 
getting more computers, of getting all the connections they need, of 
getting software, of getting program materials, and of helping teachers 
get the training, so that the final result of our efforts are not in 
vain, the final results are that in the classroom the curriculum is 
effective and youngsters will find a more exciting way to get 
knowledge, to be inspired, and to learn whatever they have to learn. 
That is our goal. Our NetWatch Fellows will carry us to that process.
  We had 11 schools in the 11th Congressional District, and we had 
great cooperation from the principals. There is an organization called 
the Hussein Institute of Technology, founded by a gentleman who, in 
private industry, does computer networks. He has founded a school for 
free to train people on how to use computers, both adults and 
youngsters. Mr. Hussein and the Hussein Institute of Technology has 
sort of been the backbone of the effort of NetWatch in the 11th 
Congressional District.
  Again, we had at the top level the New York Connects, a similar 
organization, private entrepreneurs and technicians and executives in 
the area of technology who provided invaluable assistance in the effort 
to wire schools on October 25. The board of education is to be 
commended because it cut through a lot of the usual problems that you 
encounter in a large organization like the board of education, and they 
provided us with the personnel, help, and they attended the meetings. 
They made things happen.
  The board of education, New York Connects, NetWatch, all came 
together with the volunteers in our community to make things happen in 
terms of wiring 11 schools on Net Day.

  There are many schools that have contacted my office and said, when 
is it my turn? My answer is that we hope to provide a movement. We have 
started a process. This core of volunteers in some cases will be able 
to go to other schools and volunteer and help them move forward. In all 
cases we are trying to change policy, routines, management practices in 
the board of education which will accelerate this.
  There is a technology plan. The board of education has a technology 
plan. What we want to do is accelerate the implementing of the board of 
education's technology plan so our schools are not waiting 10 years 
from now for the technology that many suburban schools enjoy today in 
great abundance.
  In summary, what I am saying is that testing, for all of those who 
think that testing is important, testing may be important 4 or 5 years 
from now. Let us put it on the back burner and deal with it then. 
Vouchers may have some merit, but they are only a tiny pebble when it 
comes to dealing with the problem of improvement of education in 
America.
  It may be that vouchers should be left to private industry. New York 
City has a model. The mayor of New York got scholarships for 1,000 
youngsters, vouchers for 1,000 youngsters, by raising money in the 
private sector. Private industry, private people, donated money, so 
they have 1,000 youngsters who have vouchers to go to nonpublic 
schools.
  That is 1,000 youngsters out of 1.1 million. We have 1.1 million 
students in New York City schools. I am happy for the 1,000 if it leads 
to success, and I see no reason why private industry cannot supply the 
money. Many of them will be going to parochial schools. Many of them 
will be learning religion as well

[[Page H9853]]

as other things. That is all right with private money. Their parents 
took the private voucher money, they decided to send them, and that is 
quite all right. Parents have that right. We do not get into a debate 
about church and school.
  I would say to those who want to push vouchers, why not let the 
private sector raise the money for the vouchers and demonstrate the 
utility of vouchers in solving problems, if that is the case. If we are 
going to launch a voucher program to demonstrate that it can help solve 
the problem, then let us use private sector initiatives and private 
sector money for vouchers.
  Let us return to charter schools as another clear way to offer an 
alternative to traditional public school education. Charter schools can 
offer competition. Charter schools can develop innovations that might 
be replicated in the public schools. Charter schools can offer a great 
deal.
  In New York City, we have something else called the alternative 
public schools. Alternative public schools fall in between charter 
schools and traditional schools. Alternative public schools are 
basically run and controlled by the central board of education, but 
they allow a great deal of leeway and latitude in the local group that 
wants to operate that alternative school. That is another possibility.
  Of course, as I said before, we cannot let up on the process of 
hammering away at the big school systems in our big cities. They are 
going to be the system that provides most of the education for inner-
city children for a long time to come. We cannot let them off the hook 
with governance, management.
  The scandal in Washington, DC, that a command and control system, a 
centralized system, has allowed to happen should not be allowed to 
happen again. We should keep a vigilant watch on all of our school 
systems, but most of all, the Federal Government should send a message 
across America that where it hurts most, or where we can be most 
helpful, in the area of school construction in 1998, we are going to 
come together and make that the backbone of the effort to improve 
education in America, the Federal aid effort to improve education in 
America. Construction comes first.

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