[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11024-11025]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        THE CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to express my concerns to 
the House to consider the children who will be left behind in H.R. 1 
and S. 1.
  As House and Senate conferees begin meeting to consolidate the House 
and Senate bills which will reauthorize the elementary and secondary 
education act, I urge the House to consider the reality that the 
children living in U.S. insular areas like Guam, the Virgin Islands, 
American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands will 
be left behind in this reauthorization bill.
  The President's education plan to ``Leave No Child Behind'' is woven 
into the language of H.R. 1 and S. 1, which are our blueprints for 
elementary and secondary education in this country. While these bills 
give special attention to the needs of children living in rural areas, 
the needs of American Indian, native Hawaiian and Alaskan native 
children, the needs of children with limited English proficiency, the 
needs of children of military families, it fails to begin addressing 
the needs of children living in the insular areas.
  Although the insular areas have a unique status under Federal law 
which

[[Page 11025]]

requires special policies to serve the educational needs of children, 
there is no Federal educational policy that focuses on the specific and 
unique needs of insular area school systems.
  It is difficult for insular area systems to compete for educational 
funding distributed by competitive grants because schools lack the 
personnel needed to prepare grant applications. They are also faced 
with unique challenges in hiring and retaining qualified administrators 
and certified school teachers. Insular area educational systems face 
other challenges such as geographical barriers, high unemployment 
rates, shrinking economies, aging buildings which are strained by the 
acceleration of weathering caused by an unforgiving tropical 
environment, the high cost of importing and providing equipment and 
supplies, and a host of other limited resources.
  As the delegate from Guam to the U.S. House and a lifelong educator, 
I have always advocated for improvements in the manner in which the 
Federal policy is developed by the Federal Government in its treatment 
of the insular areas. Gratefully, the insular areas are included in 
most educational programs, but mostly as afterthoughts. As a result, 
educators in the insular areas must follow a patchwork system of 
funding arrangements varying from State shares to special formulas for 
outlying areas in order to obtain needed and fair funding of Federal 
program resources. I am pleased to note that the territories are 
included in many of the increases, including the President's proposal 
to increase by $5 billion reading programs from kindergarten to third 
grade.
  But I am also concerned that H.R. 1 leaves out funding for parental 
assistance centers. In my home, the Guam sanctuary program has a 
program called Ayuda Para I Manaina, Help For Parents, which provides 
services for over 1,000 families on Guam each year. The Senate bill 
includes funding for this program, but the House does not, and I urge 
my House colleagues to recede to the Senate.
  I have been a longtime advocate for establishing a Federal 
educational policy for the insular areas that would help bring 
consistency to their treatment throughout H.R. 1. In the absence of 
such a policy, I proposed an amendment which would require a Federal 
policy for the insular areas. Unfortunately, this amendment was struck 
down along with over 100 other amendments proposed for H.R. 1.
  So I stand again before my colleagues today to urge consideration for 
the special needs of children in the territories. The Federal 
Government has recognized that special attention must be given to the 
challenging circumstances of insular area educational systems. Why 
should our educators be left searching for information in footnotes and 
obscure reference to find the policies which apply to them? We need to 
work in concert to level the playing field for all American children 
wherever they live, whether they live in a State or whether they live 
in a territory.
  I hope my colleagues will join in supporting this proposed amendment 
to ensure that no American child is left behind in our national 
educational programs, no matter where they live.
  I also would like, Mr. Speaker, to acknowledge the presence of Paulo 
Madlambayan, who is our congressional art contest winner from Guam. He 
came the furthest to be with us today with the other congressional art 
contest winners, along with his Uncle Jesse.

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