[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 80 (Thursday, June 18, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H4724-H4725]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     HELP REBUILD CRUMBLING SCHOOLS

  (Mr. BALDACCI asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BALDACCI. Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge my colleagues to support 
the motion that will be offered later today by the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Rangel) to provide federal assistance for school construction 
instead of providing taxpayer subsidized education benefits for private 
schools.
  Last spring in Maine a commission of school facilities completed a 
comprehensive examination of the physical

[[Page H4725]]

condition of our State's schools. The commission identified safety, 
legal compliance improvements and repairs urgently needed in our 
schools. They identified other repairs and other necessary improvements 
idly waiting funding with faint hope of assistance from State and 
municipal budgets.
  Students cannot learn in classrooms with leaky ceilings, poor air 
quality and wiring that could not support modern technology such as 
computers. America's students would be far better off by adopting the 
Rangel school construction plan than by adopting a misguided proposal 
that will help relatively few families send their children to private 
school.
  I urge my colleagues to invest in our educational infrastructure and 
to support the Rangel motion.

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