[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

[[Page S920]]

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.