[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 18 (Friday, January 27, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H481-H484]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        REMEMBERING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF HANS ``HARRY'' FRISCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Rutherford) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. RUTHERFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and 
legacy of a giant of a man in Jacksonville and in northeast Florida, 
Mr. Harry Frisch.
  Many knew Harry as a very savvy businessman and compassionate 
philanthropist, but I had the great privilege of getting to know him as 
a true friend. Harry was the epitome of the American Dream.
  He was born July 5, 1923, in Vienna, Austria, and at age 14, he fled 
the Nazi takeover, traveling to Czechoslovakia and then later fleeing 
to Israel, where he worked as an auto mechanic and met his loving wife 
of 68 years, Lilo.
  Harry and Lilo then relocated to Jacksonville--with their two sons, 
Ben and Karl--where Harry began working at his mother's fish business 
to make ends meet.
  Through his diligent work ethic and his warm personality, Harry grew 
Beaver Street Fisheries into one of the largest seafood processors and 
distributors in the United States.
  Harry's joy was contagious. He felt a deep sense of appreciation for 
all those who had helped him along the way and made a point of being 
authentic with everyone that he interacted with.
  That is the attitude that helped him develop deep roots across 
northeast Florida and led him to give back wherever and whenever he 
could. Harry supported many local nonprofits, like the River Garden 
Hebrew Home, and several local hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic, 
St. Vincent's Hospital, and Baptist Hospital.
  His reputation earned him a multitude of awards, including a place in 
the First Coast Business Hall of Fame.
  Above all, Harry was a devoted son, brother, husband, father, 
grandfather,

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and great-grandfather, and he was known to treat his Beaver Street 
Fisheries family as part of his very own family. He loved them, and 
they loved him.
  At 99 years old, Harry lived a life of purpose and faith that sets an 
example for us all. His philosophy in life and business was: ``If you 
can't handle the business, you don't need to be in the business.''
  Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: The purpose in life is not to be 
happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to 
have and make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
  To the entire Frisch family, I will use Harry's favorite line, ``Let 
me put it to you this way'': Harry Frisch lived a life of immense and 
positive impact for an unmeasurable number of people. As Ralph Waldo 
Emerson would say, he lived well.
  On behalf of Florida's Fifth Congressional District, I offer my 
prayers and sympathies to the Frisch family and his Beaver Street 
Fisheries family. Harry's life and legacy will not be forgotten.


                A Nation Without Borders Is Not a Nation

  Mr. RUTHERFORD. Mr. Speaker, a nation without borders is not a 
nation.
  Since President Biden took office, we have seen a record number of 
illegal border crossings at our southern border. This has led to more 
drugs and fentanyl entering the United States, increased crime, and a 
demoralized Border Patrol.
  Instead of solving this crisis, the President and House Democrats 
have turned a blind eye. They continue to double down on their radical 
open borders policy that focuses on processing illegals faster and 
moving them throughout the country.
  To this President, there is no crisis at the southern border. This is 
his policy--until now. We saw the President visit the border for the 
first time this month, and now the Biden administration wants to be 
focused on solving the issues at the border. Well, he is about 2 years 
too late.
  Instead of taking responsibility for this national security crisis, 
the President is shifting blame to us here in Congress, claiming House 
Republicans have failed to take the necessary steps to defend our 
border.
  Mr. Speaker, that is absolutely astounding. Since President Biden 
took office, CBP has recorded 4.5 million illegal border crossings. 
That doesn't include their estimated 1.2 million got-aways.
  Under one-party Democratic leadership, ICE removed, last year, only 
72,000 migrants, down from 186,000 removals in the final year of the 
Trump administration.
  In December, under Speaker Pelosi's leadership, we saw a record for 
the most illegal crossings in a month, ever. The tenth month in a row, 
more than 200,000 immigrants were apprehended at the southern border.
  How did the administration respond? By releasing more than 1 million 
people into the country's interior last year, only a third of which are 
under ICE supervision; by building an app for immigrants to schedule 
their illegal entry into the country; they responded by creating parole 
programs that bring tens of thousands of migrants into the country 
without a pathway to legal status; finally, by cutting ICE detention 
beds last budgetary cycle.
  Eleven thousand beds were cut by ICE, decreasing our capacity to 
detain migrants, not because border crossings are down, but because, 
with this administration, negligence is preferable to accountability.
  Make no mistake, we are in the middle of a historic border crisis 
because of President Biden and House Democrats.
  During my trip to the border last spring, I met with discouraged 
Border Patrol agents overwhelmed by the influx of migrants attempting 
to cross our border, with absolutely no relief in sight.
  While these agents do their best to handle groups of hundreds and 
sometimes thousands of people, the cartels are taking advantage of the 
holes in our border to smuggle in dangerous drugs like fentanyl and 
dangerous people. Hundreds of terrorists, known terrorists, on 
the watch list have come into this country.

  Every State has now become a border State under this administration. 
By failing to enforce our laws and secure the border, this 
administration is incentivizing illegal entry and encouraging more 
people to come here and then overstay their visas.
  This national security and humanitarian crisis has gone on long 
enough. Since I came to Congress, I have been fighting to secure our 
border, working with my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to 
help secure over $5.8 billion for a border wall since fiscal year 2017.
  This Congress, House Republicans are committed to securing the 
border, ending catch and release, reinstating the remain in Mexico 
policy, requiring proof of legal status for employment, and eliminating 
welfare incentives.
  We owe it to the communities that we represent to take these issues 
seriously and to hold this administration accountable. House 
Republicans will take the necessary steps to ensure America is a nation 
that is safe.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Kiley).


                     Celebrating School Choice Week

  Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, this week, we celebrate School Choice Week, 
and it certainly is something to be celebrated.
  Across the country, school choice has been an abundant source of 
opportunity and force for good, lifting the life prospects of millions 
of students.
  It is important to recognize at the outset that for a particular 
group of people across this country, school choice exists to the 
fullest extent. Those are the families who are fortunate enough to have 
the financial means to create choices for themselves by moving into a 
community that has good public schools or by sending their kids to 
private schools. This form of school choice exists in all 50 States.
  When it comes to everyone else, there is a stark difference among the 
50 States. You see, there are some States that have decided that school 
choice should be available not just for some but for everyone.
  For example, you have States like Florida that have offered a variety 
of different school choice options. In fact, Florida is ranked number 
one in the country when it comes to educational freedom and, not 
coincidentally, also ranks near the top when it comes to the 
performance of their kids ranked among the States across the country.

                              {time}  1445

  But then there are other States that have opted to have a two-tier 
education system, where they say we will have school choice for those 
that can afford it, but everyone else, they say, we are going to tell 
you where you will send your child to school. You will have one option, 
and they will go to that school whether your child is learning or not; 
whether they are learning how to do math or not; whether they are 
learning how to read or not; whether they are being prepared for 
success in life or not.
  This is the two-tiered education system that prevails in far too many 
States in this country, and perhaps nowhere more so than in my home 
State of California, where it has become a business model--a perverse 
business model of keeping kids trapped in failing schools, which each 
year is further entrenched by politicians and the special interests 
that support them.
  No individual personifies this two-tiered education system more than 
the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom. Soon after taking office, 
Governor Newsom enacted an aggressive, anti-school choice, anti-parent, 
anti-student agenda that went after charter schools, and was condemned 
by civil rights groups like the NAACP and the Urban League.
  After the COVID-19 shutdown began, Newsom and the California 
legislature went even further trying to reduce the number of options 
that parents had from one to zero.
  At the beginning of the shutdown, with schools not operating at all, 
many lacked even a distance learning option. Parents started enrolling 
their students in charter schools that already had well-developed, 
personalized learning models.
  Newsom and the California legislature passed a bill to stop this: to 
defund these charters, to deny them funding for any new students so 
that kids would remain trapped in schools that weren't even offering 
Zoom school at the time.
  In the months ahead, Newsom, and his allies in California realized 
that the

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COVID shutdown presented an opportunity to further entrench their 
business model of keeping kids trapped in failing schools without even 
having to run schools at all, all the while taking in billions and 
billions of extra dollars in funding.
  California would have the longest school shutdown of any State in the 
country. Newsom as Governor assured California was 50 out of the 50 
States in resuming in-person instruction.
  He claimed again and again that it was necessary to keep schools 
closed for the safety of students, but he knew that wasn't true. The 
reason we know that he knew it wasn't true is that at the same time he 
was sending his own kids to in-person private school.
  This, by the way, is a pattern across the country, where some of the 
most strident, anti-school choice politicians embrace school choice for 
themselves: President Biden, Vice President Harris, former Speaker 
Nancy Pelosi, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, North Carolina Governor 
Roy Cooper, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Illinois Governor J. B. 
Pritzker, as well as, of course, Newsom. They all fight against 
education options for families while enrolling their own students in 
private schools.
  The consequences of California's school shutdown, as well as other 
States that kept their kids out of school for far too long, are 
starting to come into focus. The National Assessment of Education 
Progress, a test administered by the Department of Education, released 
scores in the fall of 2022, showing that students in California had a 
five-point drop in reading and a seven-point drop in math.
  California already had among the worst education outcomes in the 
country. Before COVID, we ranked 49 out of 50 when it came to education 
outcomes for kids in low-income communities. Now, thanks to the longest 
school shutdowns in the country, those achievement gaps have been 
widened significantly.
  This doesn't even account for all of the other dimensions of harm 
that were done to kids in terms of their mental health and in terms of 
their social development and so much more.
  We have so much work to do now to try, as much as we can, to help 
students recover from learning loss and get them back on the road they 
need to pursue their goals and to have success in life.
  The good news, though, is that the experience of the last few years 
has catalyzed a movement of parents across the country that is starting 
to develop into a Renaissance in school choice, as we are seeing more 
and more pro-school choice, pro-kid, pro-parent legislation pass in 
States all across the country.
  California has been an exception. If anything, there has been a 
retrenchment, as those who are currently in power see the threat that 
this movement of parents proposes or presents to their business model.
  As we pause for a moment this week to celebrate and commemorate 
School Choice Week, I would want to offer a few ideas for the forms of 
school choice that this movement of parents can be channeled into.
  The first is choice within the traditional public education system, 
which isn't discussed as much in the context of school choice, but 
which is very important and very powerful.
  So this means, number one, allowing schools within a district to have 
the freedom to present different types of offerings, different types of 
schools, such as vocational schools, or emergent schools, in order to 
serve different types of students and to cater to the learning 
modalities of different types of students.
  Allowing enrollment freedom within the district so parents can choose 
a school within the school district which is right for them, as well as 
offering the option of transferring to another school district if there 
is a school in that district that serves their child better.
  Even in California, where we have among the worst school choice 
offerings in the country, one of the few options that does exist is 
called the District of Choice program, which enables families to 
transfer into a neighboring school district.
  A study by the State's nonpartisan legislation analysts showed that 
for students who participated in the District of Choice program and 
transferred to a neighboring school district, their education outcomes 
improved. But not only that, the districts that they were transferring 
out of realized they needed to take action to prevent students from 
leaving. They started offering new courses. They started offering AP 
courses, and the level of achievement in their schools improved as 
well.

  That is the beauty of school choice, it lifts all boats. As we 
develop more programs for choice within the traditional public 
education system, it should be coupled with ease of enrollment, 
transparency to parents as far as what options are available, and easy 
websites where you can see the schools that exist within a district and 
can see your enrollment options. There are many districts across the 
country that develop these platforms that serve students and families 
very well.
  The second form of choice that is continuing to expand across this 
country are charter schools, which are about 30 years old now in the 
United States.
  What charters do is they essentially flip the typical education 
paradigm on its head. They enable a great degree of freedom to school 
leaders to run the school however they see fit, and free the charter 
school from the constraints of the State's education code. They are far 
less regulated and have far fewer mandates.
  In turn, charters are not assigned students like your typical 
neighborhood school is, they have to attract students to proactively 
enroll, and then not only that, but they also get reviewed every few 
years and assessed on the bases of their learning outcomes, and that 
determines whether the school will continue to operate.
  Now, this combination of innovation and accountability has a 
tremendous track record after just a few decades in existence. For 
example, one study by Stanford's Center for Research on Education 
Outcomes showed that after 4 years in a charter, urban students learn 
about 50 percent more than demographically similar students in 
traditional public schools.
  New Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, became a 100 percent 
charter district. You saw test scores, graduation dropout rates, 
college-going rates, independent studies, all showing that the city 
schools have doubled or tripled their effectiveness over the course of 
a decade.
  Charter schools are another key tool in the school choice toolkit, 
and should continue to be encouraged as an option for parents and 
families outside of the traditional public education system. Although, 
it is important to note that charters are public schools, they are 
free. They have to have a blind admission system that is non-
preferential, where if they are oversubscribed then they are subject to 
a lottery.
  A third form of choice then is opting out of the public education 
system altogether. It should be noted again that this right does exist 
in every State across the country, but the means to do so only exist 
for a certain segment of society.
  Again, it is the Gavin Newsom's of the world that have the ability to 
withdraw their kids if they so choose from the public education system. 
But a lot of families just don't have the financial resources to do 
that, even if they believe that that is the option that is right for 
their kids.
  So what you are seeing to solve this problem and to tear down this 
two-tiered education system and have one where school choice is open to 
all is many States are passing legislation to create education savings 
accounts or other mechanisms where funding follows the child.
  You take the amount of State-funding that is given per pupil--and in 
some California districts this is over $24,000 per pupil--and at least 
give a portion of that to the parent to send their child to a private 
school or to hire a tutor or to find the option that is right for them.
  It should also be noted, by the way, that protecting homeschooling is 
now more important than ever. We have a wonderful homeschool community 
in the district that I represent. Given the experience of public 
education in California and across this country in recent years you 
have seen, by some estimates, homeschooling doubled just over the last 
few years.

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  This is an option that needs to be available to every family in this 
country as a matter of right and as a matter of giving parents the 
ability to control the education of their child.
  Those are just a few of the exciting things that we see going on 
across this country in at least some States when it comes to expanding 
school choice, to having not a two-tiered education system, but one 
where opportunities are available for all.
  I actually worked as a high school teacher in inner city Los Angeles 
where I worked on a direct level on a small scale to try to close the 
achievement gap for my students. I am now honored to have been 
appointed to the Education and Workforce Committee here in the House of 
Representatives, where I am going to be working to do that on a larger 
scale to expand school choice as much as we can, and to pursue the goal 
of assuring that every child in this country has the opportunity for 
the education they deserve.
  Mr. RUTHERFORD. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________