[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 142 (Saturday, October 10, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12275-S12276]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  EDUCATION AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to respond briefly to the 
comments made by the majority leader earlier this morning on the 
subject of education.
  I have great respect for our Senate majority leader. He and I agree 
on some things and disagree on others, but I always have great respect 
for his opinion. But on the issue of schools and what kind of, if any, 
involvement the Federal Government shall have on this issue, I think we 
have a very substantial disagreement.
  State and local governments, especially local school boards, will 
always run our school system, and that is how it should be. I don't 
suggest, and would never suggest, that we change that.
  However, there are some things that we can and should aspire to as a 
nation in dealing with education. One is to improve and invest in the 
infrastructure of our schools. I have spoken on the floor a good number 
of times about the condition of some of the schools in this country. I 
won't go into that at great length, but let me just describe a couple 
of them.
  At the Cannon Ball Elementary School in Cannon Ball, ND, most of the 
children going to that school are Indian children. There are about 150 
students who must share only two bathrooms and one water fountain. Part 
of the school has been condemned. Some of those students spend time in 
a room down in the older part of the school that can only be used 
during certain days of the week because the stench of leaking sewer gas 
frequently fills that room with noxious fumes that requires it to be 
evacuated.
  They can't connect that school to the Internet because the wiring in 
that 90-year-old facility will not support technology. The young 
children who go through those schoolroom doors are not getting the best 
of what this country has to offer. And that school district simply does 
not have the funds on its own to repair that school or build a new one.
  I challenge anyone in this Congress to go into that school building 
and say no to young Rosie in third grade who asked me, ``Mr. Senator, 
can you buy us a new school?'' I would challenge anyone to go into that 
school, and decide whether that is the kind of school you want your 
children to go to. Can you say that your children are entering a 
classroom that you are proud of? I don't think so.
  That school district doesn't have the capacity to repair that school 
on its own. It has a very small tax base that will not support a 
bonding initiative for building a new school. There are schools like 
that--the Cannon Ball Elementary School, or the Ojibwa Indian School on 
the Turtle Mountain Reservation--all over this country, and we ought to 
do something about it. We can do something about it we enacted a number 
of proposals on school construction. That ought to be a priority for 
this Senate. So, too, ought this Senate have as its priority trying to 
help State and local governments and school districts reduce class 
size. It makes a difference.
  I have two children in public schools, in grade school. One goes to 
school in a trailer, a portable classroom. The other is in a class with 
28 or 29 students. And it has almost always been that way. Would it be 
better if they were in schools with class sizes of 15, 16 or 18 
students? Of course, it would. Does a teacher have more time to devote 
to each student with smaller classrooms? Of course. Of course. Can we 
do something about that? Only if this U.S. Senate determines that 
education is a priority. Only if we decide to do something about it. I 
am not suggesting that we decide that we ought to run the local school 
systems; that is not

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the case at all. But we should decide that we as a nation have the 
capability and the will to modernize and help construct the kind of 
schools that all of us would be proud to send our children to.

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