[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5639-5640]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         HONORING THIRTY YEARS FOR R.J. VIAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

 Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, every session in Congress, we 
spend a large amount of time discussing education in this country. 
Debates range from accountability to school construction to teacher 
recruitment. While our discussions are of the utmost importance, it is 
the implementation of our decisions by individuals within the education

[[Page 5640]]

system that changes how our children learn. Today, I honor an 
elementary school in Paradis, LA that has served as an example of a 
great school that is achieving the goals we set forth in these halls.
  R.J. Vial Elementary School will turn 30 years old this Friday, April 
8th. There will be festivities and celebrations for students, alumni, 
teachers, administrators, and parents. But I would like to take a 
minute to talk about the real celebration of this school. In the past 5 
years, R.J. Vial Elementary School has steadily increased the number of 
students passing the LEAP 21 test in all four areas that the test 
covers. R.J. Vial is clearly meeting its mission of developing 
respectful, lifelong learners. That is what I would like to celebrate 
today in the United States Senate.
  In the April 2005 Community Newsletter of R.J. Vial Elementary 
School, Principal Frederick A. Treuting wrote, ``Our greatest and 
perhaps only truly effective discipline tool is a strong relationship 
that bonds us to our children.'' Principal Treuting could not be more 
correct. If we are to succeed in educating our children to the best of 
our ability, we must reach out to them and work to raise academic 
achievement in our public schools by putting the priority on 
performance instead of process, delivering results instead of 
developing rules, and on actively encouraging bold reform instead of 
passively tolerating failure.
  At 510 Louisiana Street in Paradis, LA, R.J. Vial Elementary School 
is already doing these things and because of that, has become one of 
the finest schools in the state of Louisiana. There is no greater 
investment we can in our future than in the education of our children. 
I commend the hard work of all the people who have and currently work 
at and with R.J. Vial Elementary School; you are giving the best gift 
you can to our youth. It has been said that it takes a village to raise 
a child, so we must all work together to see that we educate our 
children to the best of our ability. And to the students, both past and 
present, of R.J. Vial, I offer my congratulations. Because of your 
efforts in the classroom for the past thirty years, R.J. Vial 
Elementary School has become the beacon of success that it is today.
  Happy Birthday, R.J. Vial Elementary School! My heartfelt 
congratulations to all involved with the school, and best wishes to 
another great 30 years.

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