[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 7490]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



       CLEVELAND PASSES ISSUE 14; A BOND TO FIX CRUMBLING SCHOOLS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, May 8, the voters of the 
City of Cleveland did a great thing. They voted overwhelmingly to pass 
issue 14, a bond issue needed to fix our crumbling school buildings.
  This was our T-shirt. It said ``Safe schools for Cleveland's 
children. The cause is right. The time is now.'' The voters of the City 
of Cleveland said that the cause was right, and they realized that the 
time was now.
  It is a day of celebration for the children, for the teachers, for 
the schools, for the administrators, for the maintenance workers, for 
the custodians, for labor, for the neighborhoods, for property owners, 
for businesses, and for our country.
  The bond issue was a bond issue for $338 million. We are very excited 
about it. Particularly because it made us eligible for a $500 million 
match from the State of Ohio to fix the crumbling school buildings of 
the City of Cleveland.
  The voters looked past mismanagement, failure on the part of prior 
school boards to the needs of the children of the City of Cleveland and 
the need for safe schools.
  I want to congratulate a number of people who participated in this 
great bond issue yesterday: Mayor Michael R. White, who is the mayor of 
the City of Cleveland, the first mayor to take over the responsibility 
for oversight over the Cleveland public school system.
  I want to celebrate our new, CEO, Barbara Byrd Bennett. For the past 
2\1/2\ years, she has brought hope, energy, and optimism to the City of 
Cleveland at Cleveland schools.
  I want to congratulate the school board chair, Reverend Hilton Smith; 
his vice chair is Miggie Hopkins; and other members of the school 
board; the president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, Richard 
DeColibus; his vice chair is Merle Johnson and Michael Churney; the 
athletic chair, Leonard Jackson; campaign chair, Arnold Pinkney, who 
has forever, it seems, run campaigns in the City of Cleveland and been 
quite successful; to his senior advisor on the campaign, Steve Rusniak; 
and the media manager, Alan Seiffulah.
  My cochairs for the campaign, and I should say that I had the 
privilege to cochair the campaign for the bond issue. My cochairs were 
the Reverend ET Caviness of Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church and John 
Ryan, the head of the AFL-CIO.
  I want to congratulate other organizations that supported Cleveland 
in this great effort, the Black Elected Democrats of Cleveland, Ohio; 
the 11th Congressional District Caucus for the New Millennium; the 
NAACP; Urban League; Growth Association; Bishop Pilla, the head of the 
Catholic Diocese; the Baptist Ministers Conference; the Southern 
Christian Leadership Conference; the New Future Outlook League; and an 
organization called BUILD, Black United In Labor and Democracy.
  Finally, I want to congratulate all of the elected officials and 
organizations who I did not mention in this statement who were willing 
to sign on to this important issue.
  I have to say that, as we debate the budget here in Congress and as 
we talk about the importance of education and a lack of Federal funding 
for school construction, I am so happy and even more proud that I come 
from the City of Cleveland, Ohio where we stepped up to the plate 
yesterday and voted to fund school improvement in our area.
  I want to thank God. I want to thank Cleveland for hearing and 
responding to the needs of Cleveland's children. The time is right. The 
time is now.

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