[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 4059]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        ON EDUCATION PRIORITIES

  (Mr. GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the greatest gift a parent or 
elected official even can provide our children is a quality education. 
Education is one thing that nobody can ever take away from someone. For 
years we have debated on this floor the most effective way to provide 
our children with this gift. Later today we will likely pass the ed 
flex bill that allows States the opportunity and the flexibility in 
spending their Federal education dollars. Since my home State of Texas 
already participates in this program and has a great deal of success 
with it, I support the bill.
  However, the benefits of all of the flexibility in the world will be 
limited if we do not modernize our schools so our children can have a 
safe learning and clean environment, reduce the class size for each 
child so they can get the attention and the guidance they need, provide 
state of the art technology so that all students can benefit from 
today's best tools in education, and finally we have a responsibility 
to know that each State is meeting the needs of their students. This 
can be done by supporting the Miller-Kildee amendment later today and 
not forgeting that the original reason for Federal assistance for 
education was to help those children most in need.

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