[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
[[Page S12276]]
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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