[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 145 (Tuesday, October 13, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H10676]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   EDUCATION EMERGENCY ACROSS AMERICA

  (Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, Public School 91 in my district was evacuated 
last Friday as a result of conditions that were deemed unsafe for 
children. You have got lead poisoning, a coal-burning furnace, 
everything you can imagine in that building which was built in 1903. It 
should have been closed a long time ago. But Public School 91 is not 
atypical of the school districts across America. In fact nearly every 
congressional district in America has an equivalent to Public School 
91, a school that really needs to be closed or modernized or 
reconstructed.
  We have an education emergency all across the United States. Why not 
bring our money back to our school districts? All money comes from the 
local areas, anyhow. Bring our Federal money back for school 
construction. One of my colleagues on the Education Committee keeps 
insisting that the school construction bill is tilted toward the urban 
areas. Well, yes, that is where most of the children in America live. 
The Vietnam Memorial Monument, if you look at the names on there, most 
of them come from the urban areas, too. All the wars that have existed, 
while we have not emphasized it, they come from where the population 
is. Schools modernization is needed all across America. Urban areas are 
just the beginning.

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