[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 145 (Tuesday, October 13, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H10813-H10814]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           PUT THE DOLLARS IN THE CLASSROOM, NOT BLOCK GRANTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Hawaii (Mrs. Mink) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Speaker, as the previous speaker indicated, 
I, too, am advised that the budget negotiators have come to an 
agreement as to the overall additional funds that are to go into 
education. I commend them for the initiative that they have expressed 
in allocating these additional dollars.
  I rise here tonight because I am somewhat concerned that in agreeing 
to the overall dollar allocations to education, and seemingly in 
agreeing to the 100,000 new teachers that will be placed into our 
school systems across the country, that in fact what they are talking 
about is putting these monies into what is known as title VI.
  Title VI is a block grant provision that exists in current law, so if 
we put this extra money presumably for 100,000 new teachers into a 
block grant provision, there is absolutely no assurance whatsoever that 
the monies will be utilized for the hiring of additional teachers.

[[Page H10814]]

  The primary objective that the President and those of us who served 
on the Committee on Education and the Workforce and who have headed up 
the task force for the Democrats on this side, the gentleman from North 
Carolina (Mr. Etheridge), who will be speaking very shortly, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), the three of us have served as 
task force cochairs. We were primarily concerned about the needs of our 
school districts. We want to make sure that the funds that are 
allocated go directly to the schools.
  The irony is that we have had legislation come before this body 
called Dollars to the Classroom, because there is an intended 
assumption by the Republican majority that monies ought to go directly 
to the classroom.
  If that is their policy and their thinking, why do they not earmark 
the monies that are being allocated for the 100,000 new teachers 
directly for that purpose? Instead, they are putting it into Title VI, 
which has, by inference and by some specific language, a flow-through 
to the States, where the States are permitted to retain 15 percent of 
the funding for administrative purposes. And there is a long list of 
ways in which the monies that flow into Title VI can be spent, not one 
of them specifically having to do with hiring teachers and lowering 
classroom size.
  If one is not convinced that the public schools in our country are in 
need of additional schoolteachers and construction funds to replenish 
and rebuild their schools, I suggest that the Members look through the 
mail that they have been receiving this week.
  There is one particular one, in a whole batch of things on education, 
from the American Association of University Women. They point out an 
alarming statistic which I think has probably floated around many times 
before, but has not quite been absorbed.
  What they say in the second paragraph of their letter is that by the 
year 2006, enrollment in our public schools is expected to reach 54.6 
million, surpassing the number of students in the baby boom years, 
where the number reached 51.7 million.
  We have all talked about this terrible thing about the baby boom 
crisis and how that is going to impinge upon social security, and we 
are working to try to meet the crisis that this very large population 
that came on board in the fifties makes. No one is paying attention to 
the fact that we have right now in our system an impending burgeoning 
number of students.
  So if we do not meet this challenge right now by providing the 
incentive for school construction and the hiring of teachers, we are 
never going to solve the problem of a classroom ratio that can meet the 
needs of independent special treatment for the students who need that 
kind of instruction.
  The whole fallacy that has been presented by the majority in debating 
Dollars to the Classroom has to be pointed out. They talk about 
directing 95 percent of the funding to the classroom. Yet, in the 
proposals that are floating around for the utilization of the 
additional monies in education, they are putting it into a block grant 
provision, Title VI, which has a 15 percent reservation to the States. 
So the classrooms across the country, if they get any for teachers, 
will be only at 85 percent, way below what the majority has been 
talking about.
  So it seems to me we ought to get beyond the rhetoric, follow the 
policy, put the dollars in the classroom, and enhance the teachers by 
giving their school districts the additional monies for the 100,000 
teachers.

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