[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 38 (Monday, March 1, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S919-S921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NOMINATION OF MIGUEL A. CARDONA
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, after 4 years of Secretary DeVos'
efforts to promote greater privatization of our education system and
dismantle the civil rights of students, Miguel Cardona is the person we
need to restore the promise of America's schools. A former public
school teacher who went on to be a leader in the same district where he
was once an English learner, Dr. Cardona has demonstrated a lifelong
commitment to our public schools and the belief that all children are
entitled to a quality education in a safe and nurturing learning
environment. He also has a proven track record of effectively
responding to the pandemic, helping students overcome the digital
divide, and safely reopening schools as the Connecticut Education
Commissioner.
The pandemic has upended our education system, disrupting learning
and exacerbating inequities. From day one as Secretary of the
Department of Education, Dr. Cardona will need to be prepared to meet
the challenges facing our students and educators, from addressing
learning loss and social, emotional, and mental health to reversing
declining higher education enrollment rates and a sky-rocketing
affordability crisis. Additionally, as deep disparities continue to
shortchange low-income students, students of color, and students with
disabilities, Dr. Cardona will be a key partner in working toward
closing these funding and educational opportunity gaps.
I am proud to support Dr. Cardona's nomination, and I look forward to
working together to at last make good on our promises to fully fund
title I and IDEA, to expand access to quality early childhood education
and community schools, and to ensure higher education is accessible for
everyone.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I rise today to voice my strong support
for Dr. Cardona's nomination to serve as Secretary of Education.
Across the country, students, parents, and educators are in crisis.
Every day without an experienced leader at the Department of Education
is a day that we are losing precious ground. Back in my home State of
Washington, I heard from a mother in Yakima whose children shared one
iPhone to learn. I heard from a father of a high school freshman in
Spokane, worried about the social and psychological toll the pandemic
is taking on his son. I heard from students at the Lummi Nation, trying
to focus on remote classes while in multigenerational households on a
shared, spotty broadband.
I know there are so many similar stories from people in my State and
across the country about how this pandemic is making life harder, the
ways it has set back students from where they would be in a typical
year, denied them access to critical school resources, deepened
longstanding inequities, and so much more.
From early education to higher education, we need to make sure
students and their families have the support they need to not only get
a high-quality education but to make sure every student can try.
Democrats want to get students safely back in the classrooms for in-
person learning as soon as possible. So I am glad the Biden
administration put forward clear, science-based, public health guidance
schools have long needed. There is no one solution that will ensure
safety on its own as our country ramps up vaccine distribution.
Congress has to do its part and pass the American Rescue Plan to
provide vital funding for schools--to secure adequate PPE, to reduce
class sizes to increase social distancing, to improve ventilation and
contract tracing, and to take all the steps they need to do so that
they can safely reopen for in-person learning or provide high-quality
distance learning if it is not safe in their community to return to the
classroom and so that they can assess and address the damage this
pandemic has done, especially the way it has deepened inequities that
have hurt students of color, students of families with low incomes,
students with disabilities, LGBTQ students, women, English learners,
students experiencing homelessness, and so much more.
At this moment of crisis, Dr. Cardona is exactly the leader we need
at the Department of Education to tackle these challenges. During his
confirmation
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hearing in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, he
demonstrated beyond a doubt that he has experience, principles, and the
perspective that we need in this critical role. That is why Dr. Cardona
was voted out of our committee by an overwhelming 17-to-5 margin with
broad bipartisan support.
Dr. Cardona will come to the Department as a proven leader who will
work with students, parents, caregivers, educators, school
administrators, and State, local, and Tribal officials. Just as
importantly, he will come to the Department as a former elementary
school teacher, an adjunct professor, a principal, assistant
superintendent, and former English learner himself who knows we have a
responsibility to make sure every single student has access to high-
quality public education.
At our hearing, he made clear he will fight against longstanding
inequities and for every student, including those who have not had a
champion at the Department for the last 4 years. He spoke about his
commitment to accomplishing President Biden's goal of safely reopening
the majority of our K-8 schools for in-person learning within his first
100 days in office.
He showed he understands the challenge the Department is facing is
larger than just seeing schools and students and parents and educators
safely through this pandemic. It is making sure we come back stronger
and fairer. Accomplishing that means ensuring childcare and early
education is available and affordable for every family; ensuring every
student can get a high-quality public education no matter where they
live or how much money they or their families have; rooting out
longstanding inequities from our education system by tackling racism,
sexism, ableism, and bigotry head-on; and ensuring that higher
education is accessible, affordable, accountable, and safe for every
single student.
We have a lot of work to do for our schools and students. We have an
excellent candidate to get it done, and we have no time to waste. I
urge all of our colleagues who have heard from a parent who wants to
get their child back in the classroom safely--I am sure everyone has--
to join us and vote to confirm Dr. Cardona as Secretary of Education.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. MURPHY. I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks before the
vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I come to the floor to echo Chairwoman
Murray's comments, to suggest and commend to my colleagues the
nomination of Miguel Cardona to be the next Secretary of Education.
There is no one better suited for this job in this moment than Miguel
Cardona, and I couldn't be more excited on behalf of my constituents,
on behalf of the people of Meriden, CT, to be here on the floor to tell
you just a little bit about why Miguel Cardona makes so much sense for
this moment.
As Senator Murray laid it out for us, this is obviously a moment of
crisis in American education. Kids have been distance learning or in
and out of classroom settings for the last year. We have had so many
children fall behind, especially those with learning needs. We have a
lot of kids in crisis. For a lot of kids, home is not a safe place.
There is trauma today amongst America's children, and our education
system is going to have to bear a lot of the brunt of making sure that
these kids are taken care of.
We have a crisis in higher education without students in the
classroom, without sources of revenue flowing into institutions of
higher learning. We need to make sure that we don't lose classroom
slots in colleges and universities, which, of course, is the only thing
that allows us to be able to see a bright economic future for our
country--expanding access to higher education.
Miguel is made for this moment because he knows how important college
is. He was the first member of his family to complete college. He knows
how important community is. He came right back to his community of
Meriden after completing college and went to work serving his community
by taking a job teaching fourth grade in Meriden.
He proved early on that he would go above and beyond the call when it
came to the needs of his students. He was a teacher at Israel Putnam
Elementary School, room 160. If his kids didn't have what they needed,
Miguel would reach into his pockets to make sure they had it. One year,
he spent $450 of his own money--money that he probably didn't have as a
first- or second-year teacher--to make sure every kid in his classroom
had a notebook, a writer's handbook, and a box of crayons. One student
told the story of a classmate who moved back to Puerto Rico and of
Miguel's organizing a packet of letters from all of his classmates to
be sent to him so that he could still have a connection back to
Meriden.
He was such an amazing teacher that he was promoted just after a few
years in the classroom. He was actually Connecticut's youngest
principal when, at age 28, he took over Hanover. Soon thereafter, he
was promoted to help run the city's school district, and he was
promoted again to be the commissioner of education in Connecticut.
It has been his work over the last year that, I think, caught the
attention of educational policy leaders and advocates all across the
country because Connecticut was one of the first States to reopen its
schools. We did it through a consensus-building exercise that
Commissioner Cardona led. He brought together students and parents,
administrators, teachers, and teachers unions to come up with a plan to
safely reopen our schools. Connecticut reopened our schools faster than
many people thought we could, ahead of the curve nationally. He was
able to do that because consensus building is a skill that Miguel
Cardona has been working on for a very long time.
In 2013, one of his jobs, while he was helping to lead the Meriden
school system, was to implement a new teacher evaluation system. You
know this can always be very, very controversial, a new system
evaluating teachers' performances, but he brought everybody to the
table and developed a model that became used statewide. His model and
his consensus approach became the standard in our State. He is the
Secretary of Education we need right now--somebody who has experience
in our classrooms, somebody who knows the value of college, especially
to first-generation college families, and somebody who knows how to
bring people together.
This is an incredibly important moment for America's educational
system. We need to maintain and expand our commitment to equity in our
K-12 system to make sure that every single kid--no matter the level of
income, no matter the ethnic background, no matter the race, no matter
if one is disabled or not--gets a quality education.
This is a moment to invest in accountability in higher education and
make sure that we are not wasting taxpayer dollars funding programs and
degrees that don't work, that may make money for for-profit investors
but that don't end up in skill sets that are going to power our
economy. Miguel Cardona is the right person to meet this moment. He is
whip-smart. He is a consensus builder. He is a passionate advocate for
kids and for teachers and for parents. He is the perfect person for
this job and for this moment.
Lastly, let me just share with you how I got to know Miguel Cardona,
which, maybe, will serve as a final advertisement for his unique
qualifications. This was my old congressional district, and Meriden was
part and is still part of the Fifth Congressional District. One of the
biggest weekends in Meriden has become the Puerto Rican Heritage
Festival, but that festival had sort of hit hard times. It was a decade
ago when, maybe, only a couple hundred people came to it until the
Cardona family took it over. Miguel Cardona and his family took over
the Puerto Rican Heritage Festival in Meriden, CT. Today, 6,000 or
7,000 people come to this festival. You can find Miguel Cardona, on
that weekend, every hour of each day of the festival, driving around on
his golf cart, organizing bus transportation, working on the
entertainment acts, and making sure that Meriden is able, on that
weekend, to be able to celebrate its Puerto Rican heritage but then to
offer something really constructive, really fun, and really empowering
for the community.
[[Page S921]]
Even as commissioner of education, it wasn't beyond him or above him
to invest in his community in that way. It is, I hope, an indication of
who he is and whom he will remain if the Senate chooses to confirm him
into this role, as I hope we will do with a big bipartisan vote today.
I yield the floor.