[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 28 (Tuesday, February 23, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S1773]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 RECOGNIZING THE TUKWILA SCHOOL DISTRICT'S ``NEW FRIENDS & FAMILIES'' 
                                PROGRAM

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, today I recognize the Tukwila School 
District from my home state of Washington and the district's ``New 
Friends & Families'' program.
  The Tukwila School District has seen its ethnic diversity grow by 
more than 1,000 percent in the last seven years. Out of the district's 
2,500 pupils, 50% are students of color, 20% are enrolled in bilingual 
education, and all told, they speak about 30 different languages. To 
meet the challenge of integrating this immigrant population into the 
school system and the community, the Tukwila School District, the City 
of Tukwila, and the local Rotary Club created ``New Friends & 
Families.'' It is a one-night, once a year program designed to engage 
these hard-to-reach immigrant and refugee students and their families 
to make them aware of community services and to encourage parental 
involvement in their children's education.
  Clearly, when more than 20% of Tukwila's students are unfamiliar with 
their new surroundings, they face a serious impediment to quality 
learning. The ``New Friends & Families'' program has met this challenge 
head on with local creativity, local initiative, and local resources. 
This shows that local communities know best how to deal with unique 
local problems. By teaming up with local government and local 
businesses, the school district has found innovative ways to turn its 
challenges into successful education.
  It is programs like ``New Friends & Families'' that illustrate that 
local innovation works in our schools. The answer to improving our 
local schools is not more intrusion and red tape from Washington, DC 
bureaucracies but rather, more freedom and more flexibility for local 
educators to use federal resources to meet the unique needs of each 
community in teaching our kids. During last week's recess, I visited 
Foster High School in the Tukwila District and presented my first 
``Innovation in Education Award'' to Superintendent Michael Silver in 
recognition of the creative work he and his district have accomplished 
through ``New Friends & Families.''
  To recognize the importance of local communities in educating our 
children, I will be presenting this ``Innovation in Education Award'' 
once a week to recognize individuals, schools, and educational programs 
in Washington state that demonstrate the importance of local control in 
education. I will also take to the floor of the Senate every week to 
share with my colleagues these examples of locally driven successes in 
education in an effort to remind all of us working here in Washington, 
DC that local communities really do know best.
  For the past 35 years, Washington, DC's response to crises in public 
education has been to create one new program after another--
systematically increasing the federal role in classrooms across the 
country. While the federal government has a role in targeting resources 
to needy populations and in holding schools accountable for results, it 
should not tie the hands of districts like Tukwila. That only serves to 
stifle the local innovation that is fundamental to educational success. 
I have long been an advocate of local control in education and I plan 
to introduce legislation this spring that will transfer more control 
from federal agencies back to local educators where it belongs.
  (The remarks of Mr. Jeffords and Mr. Specter pertaining to the 
introduction of S. 445 are located in today's Record under ``Statements 
on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

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