[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 7 (Thursday, February 5, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H373-H374]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1545
                   EDUCATION AND SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rogan). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Sanchez) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Ms. SANCHEZ. Mr. Speaker, education, education, education. I sit on 
the Committee on Education and the Workforce. Now, Mr. Speaker, it is 
interesting to hear so many people this year talk about education. In 
particular, when I see some of them were the ones who were cutting the 
school lunch program for our children just a few years ago. And I 
remember that, because I sat on the other side of the television 
watching and hearing what was being debated. Today, when we were 
talking about national standards, something we had already resolved 
last year, I thought, this is not doing any good for our children. So 
let us talk about issues that really matter to our children.
  For example, school construction. Now, this past couple of months, 
every weekend when I have gone back to Anaheim and Santa Ana and Garden 
Grove, the areas and cities that I represent, I have been visiting 
schools. In fact, I have probably visited almost 60 elementary and 
secondary schools in my district. And since I went through the public 
school system in Anaheim, I have gone back to many of the same schools 
that I graduated from. Indeed, one of the biggest reasons that I ran 
for Congress was because I wanted the children in Anaheim to receive 
the same type of education that I had received 25 years earlier.
  Well, the biggest problem we have right now back home is that our 
children have no classrooms in which to study. In fact, I visited an 
elementary school patterned exactly the way my elementary school was 
patterned. The same floor plan, where a teacher was holding class in 
what used to be the broom closet for the janitor of our school or, for 
example, I took a look at the classroom that was made from the 
breezeway because we used to walk through a silent tunnel to get from 
one set of classes to the other when I went to school, and now, doors 
have been slapped on the sides and this too has been turned into a 
classroom. And I held a forum just a few weeks ago in my district with 
minority leader Gephardt and Juanita Millender-McDonald, a former 
public school teacher in California, and we listened to parents and to 
children and to school administrators talk about what it feels like to 
be in an elementary school built for 500 with 1,100 children attending; 
with 23 permanent classrooms and 27 portable classrooms on the 
playground, on what used to be basketball courts, on the grass areas, 
and our children are going year-round to school. Even in Anaheim, we 
are contemplating such a shortage of classrooms that we will now be 
considering in July double sessions, which means our children could go 
to school early in the morning and be late getting out in the dark, for 
example.
  So it becomes even more important to address the issue of school 
construction, and we are trying to do that. I have introduced a Rebuild 
America's Schools Act, which would require local parents, teachers, 
taxpayers, to take the responsibility of building new classrooms, and 
we would help them by giving them tax credits for the interest paid on 
bonds they would have to pay, they would have to pass in order to build 
new schools.
  Individuals would have to take local responsibility to ensure that 
children have a place to study, but we need to help them. And in 
California where we are growing by 5, 6, 10 percent a year in the 
number of children who attend schools, we must find a solution. I hope 
that the bill that I have here in Congress now will become law. It is 
patterned after a program we already have on the books, one which we 
passed in August. Mr. Speaker, it is not just urban city children who 
need help. It is children in suburbs who also have many attendees in 
their school districts, it is children that I represent. It is not just 
at-risk kids who we must talk about, because all of our children are at 
risk right now. They are at risk when one child is hungry in the 
classroom and bothering those who are fed. They are at risk when there 
is no band program in the school. They are at risk when PE has been 
taken away because there is no gymnasium and no money to build those 
facilities, and they are at risk when our children have no playgrounds 
because there are portable classrooms sitting there.
  Let us really talk about what matters to our children.

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