[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9693-9694]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                       THE JUVENILE JUSTICE BILL

  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on a bill that we 
have been addressing and that I think we have made some good progress 
on, the juvenile justice bill. But I rise today to encourage, to plead 
with both sides of the aisle, with all of my colleagues in the Senate, 
that we remember what it is we are here to address, and that is the 
well-being of our children; that we put down and put aside all of the 
other things to really focus on what it is we are here to do, and that 
is to address the well-being of our children in this country.
  I think it is so important that we do not lose sight of the tragedies 
we have seen that have presented to us the agony which has brought us 
to this floor and to this debate to try to do something to correct 
those tragedies and, more importantly, to prevent any others from 
happening in the future.
  It is so easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. If we 
continue that in this debate on juvenile justice, we will have done a 
true disservice to the children of this Nation.
  I will speak today on an amendment which will be offered, which I am 
joining two of my colleagues in offering, Senator Harkin and Senator 
Wellstone. We think it will help to reduce crime and violence in our 
Nation's schools by preventing it before it ever happens, and that is 
exactly what can be the most important tool in this Nation in providing 
safety for our children.
  It addresses the issues of the children's emotional well-being and 
providing schools with the necessary resources to help our children 
deal with the complicated problems that today society brings them.
  Students bring more to school today than just backpacks and lunch 
boxes; they bring severe emotional problems. Our children in today's 
world come to school with problems far more severe than we can imagine, 
and certainly far more severe than we may have experienced ourselves. 
And 71 percent of the children ages 7 to 10 are worried whether they 
will be stabbed or shot while in their school. This is inexcusable in a 
country like ours, that that many children are frightened to go to 
school and they are frightened of what they will be up against.
  The Department of Education reported that in 1997 there were 
approximately 11,000 incidents nationally of physical attacks or fights 
in which weapons were used. We can no longer continue to look for a 
solution which is only a Band-Aid. We must look at the source of the 
problem. Preventative medicine rather than a haphazard Band-Aid 
approach is something that is absolutely essential to the emotional 
well-being of our children today and the future of our country. 
Theodore Roosevelt said: To educate a man in mind and not in morals is 
to educate a menace to society.
  It is so absolutely essential, in today's society where we are 
blessed with so much advanced technology, that we remind our children 
that their emotional well-being, that the friendships and the 
fellowships that they must build with their fellow students is 
essential to the safety of mankind and the future of this country. 
Isn't it great that my children and other people's children, one day 
when they are older, will be able to communicate on the Internet to 
children in France and other countries across the world?
  But let us not forget that we must encourage them also to walk out 
the back door of the house and to talk over the back fence again with 
their neighbors and their neighbor's children so they know who their 
friends and their neighbors are and so they are less likely to violate 
them.
  It is absolutely essential that we do not lose sight of what it is we 
are here to do on behalf of our children. Improvements, changes in 
accountability, are absolutely essential in our children's education. 
Metal detectors and surveillance cameras in schools won't get rid of 
the root of the problem. They will help us in dealing with what we have 
to deal with right now, but the most important thing we can do is 
provide our children with the kind of counseling and background to deal 
with the severity of problems they are coming to school with at a 
younger and younger age. We must minimize access to guns that can 
address the means to act out, but it doesn't address the illnesses that 
we begin with in our children's minds.
  I have traveled across our State of Arkansas, and in absolutely every 
school I have visited, every teacher and administrator has said the 
same thing

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to me--we do not have adequate counselors and trained professionals to 
deal with the severity of problems our children are coming to school 
with today in K through 3. We do not have the appropriate resources to 
give to our teachers and our administrators to help them recognize the 
problem in these children.
  It is absolutely essential that we give them that resource in 
counselors and professionally trained individuals. The National 
Institutes of Health estimates although 7.5 million children under the 
age of 18 require mental health services, fewer than one in five 
receives it.
  All of us have our own personal stories to tell of a relationship or 
something we have heard through the education process. One of my older 
sisters was a teacher in the public schools. She had a classroom of 31 
students, 6 and younger. She said that wasn't the biggest challenge in 
her classroom. The biggest challenge in her classroom was that those 
students came to school hungry and sick and, most importantly, 
frightened.
  We have a severe crisis on our hands in the fact that we now, in our 
State of Arkansas and in other States, have no young people going into 
the teaching profession. Less than 25 percent of the teachers in the 
State of Arkansas are under the age of 40. We will hit a brick wall 
soon, because no one is going into the teaching profession. My sister 
is a great example. One of the reasons she got out of teaching was she 
said she couldn't handle bus duty when she had it, because there were 
students that clung to her leg and said, please, don't make me go home. 
It is essential that we deal with the emotional well-being of our 
children.
  I rise today in support, with two other colleagues, of an amendment 
we will offer to this juvenile justice bill when we get beyond the 
forest and we start to recognize what it is we are here to do; that is, 
the details of dealing with the well-being of our children.
  The details of the Harkin-Lincoln-Wellstone amendment are basically 
to put $100 million in authorizing funds for fiscal year 2000. The 
first $60 million must be spent for counseling services in elementary 
schools where the illness and the problem begins, before it grows into 
the problems that we deal with in terms of guns and violence in later 
grades. Only qualified mental health professionals may be hired with 
this funding. The funds are eligible to urban, suburban and rural local 
school districts, knowing that every school is suffering from these 
problems. Some more than others, but all of them equally in need.
  It is absolutely essential. The benefits of what we are proposing are 
to treat the emotional problems before they are out of control, to work 
hand in hand with an advisory board of parents, teachers, 
administrators and community leaders to design and implement counseling 
services, because we know that the most important part of any child's 
well-being is their parental and family involvement. It is essential in 
what we are doing.
  We know that when we involve the parents in the child's life, it is 
far more productive. But involve the parents of the children who 
receive services so that the parents can be more involved in the 
development and the well-being of their children, so it is not just one 
shot at trying to fix the problem, but a continuing of trying to fix 
the problem both through the counseling services to the children and 
assistance with the parents.
  Teachers focus more on a student's skills at writing and arithmetic, 
rather than their potential for violence, because they do not have the 
support that they need, because their classroom sizes are too large, 
and they don't have the time to devote to it. I plead with my 
colleagues that we must get back to the business at hand, and that 
business is the well-being of the children of this country who are our 
future.
  I urge Congress to act quickly, and I certainly want to devote the 
time to this important issue that we have begun to do and I hope we 
will continue. I just plead with my colleagues to remember that what we 
are dealing with in this legislation is our Nation's greatest 
resource--our children.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio is recognized.

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