    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 22, 1995]
    [Pages 1452-1454]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the O'Farrell Community School in San Diego, California
    September 22, 1995

        Thank you so much. Let's give Henry Walker another hand. Didn't he
    do a great job? [Applause] I sort of want him to keep on talking; I was
    having a good time. [Laughter]
        Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the warm welcome. Thank you,
    Congressman Filner. Thank you, Dr. Bertha Pendleton, for doing such a
    good job with this school district. Thank you, Dr. Bob Stein, the
    O'Farrell chief educational officer. I want to say a special word of
    thanks to a group of parents and teachers and students and others who
    help to make this school successful, who met with me for about a half an
    hour, before we came out here, to talk about what they were doing. I'd
    like to ask them to stand up and be recognized. Let's give them a hand.
    They gave me an education today. [Applause]
        I want to say to all of you how grateful I am to this school and to
    all the other schools here present for believing in our children. I
    believe in zero tolerance, and I thank you for that. I'm trying to get
    every place in the country to adopt that policy. And most importantly, I
    believe in the high expectations that are given to all children in this
    school, because all of your children can learn, and we should expect
    them to and help them to.
        I want you to know why I came here today. You know, I like San
    Diego, and I came here to sign the Goals 2000 bill, and I like to be in
    a community that cares about education. But I wanted to come to this
    school today for a particular reason, and that is because O'Farrell is
    organized as a charter school. They call it a family. And as a school
    organized in this way, it's freed of a lot of the rules and regulations
    that keep some of our schools all across America from designing their
    own ways of educating children. They also are held accountable for
    results, and they do a good job.
        I want the American people to see this because there are too many
    people in America that not only don't have high expectations of our
    students, they don't have high expectations of our schools anymore, and
    they don't understand how much good can be done in a good school when
    people are working together and they believe in their children and the
    promise of this future.

    [[Page 1453]]

        I have been promoting schools that are organized and operated like
    this school for more than 3 years now, and I asked the United States
    Congress to appropriate just a little money, as a part of the Goals 2000
    program Congressman Filner referred to, to give schools all across
    America just a little start-up money if they wanted to become schools
    that were independent, that were energized, that were high-expectation
    schools like O'Farrell.
        Today I'm pleased to say that the Department of Education has
    granted another $6 million to open schools just like this one in 11
    States across our country, including more schools in the State of
    California.
        America has to be serious about education. We have to be serious
    about education if we want to have a strong economy, if we want these
    young people to live up to the fullest of their God-given abilities. If
    we really believe that our obligation to our children is to give them
    the ability to make the most of their own lives in the world we are
    living in, that means education, education, education. We must face it,
    embrace it, and be glad about it.
        I wouldn't be President of the United States today if it weren't for
    the educational opportunities I had. I was raised by my grandparents
    until I was 4, boys and girls, and my grandfather left school after the
    6th grade. But because I had a chance to go to a good school, I had a
    chance to get scholarships and loans and jobs to go to college, I had a
    chance to become President. None of it would have happened if it hadn't
    been for teachers like your teachers, parents like your parents,
    community leaders like your community leaders. It means everything, and
    it is more important today than it even was when I was your age. We have
    to give the children of this country a chance to get a good education.
        There are a lot of things that have to be done here school by
    school, that a President can't do much about: teaching our young people
    to believe in themselves, organizing a system for high expectations and
    zero tolerance of destructive conduct, pointing out that freedom and
    opportunity requires a lot of personal responsibility. But I'll tell you
    something, there are a lot of things that we in public office can do to
    help. And I am tired of people in public life pointing the fingers at
    others and saying, you should do better, and then running away from
    their own responsibilities to education. That's not the example we
    should be setting for our children in this country.
        Just yesterday in San Francisco, I announced a breakthrough that
    will enable, by the year 2000, every classroom in America to be
    connected for computers, if we do what people in California have
    promised to do--business leaders--which is to wire every school in
    California for the Internet and to do it soon. This is the kind of thing
    we have to do together.
        But you heard Dr. Pendleton talk about the money that these schools
    get from the National Government to fight for better education for these
    children. Don't you let anyone convince you that this money cannot be
    well spent to improve education. And don't you let anyone convince you
    that we have to cut out this money to balance the Federal budget. It is
    not true.
        I favor balancing the Federal budget, and I have given Congress a
    plan to do it. I hate the fact that we were up to our ears in debt when
    I took office. We had a deficit of $290 billion a year when I became
    President, and in 3 years we've cut it from $290 billion to $160
    billion. I want to go all the way and balance the budget.
        But why are we balancing the budget? Because we care about our
    children. We want to lift the burden of debt off of them. We want to
    have a stronger economy for them. We want America to work better. Those
    are our values. If those are our values, we cannot balance the budget by
    destroying our commitment to education. Otherwise, we won't help our
    children, and we won't strengthen our economy. So I say to you, my
    fellow Americans, we can balance the budget and increase our investment
    in education. And that is exactly what we ought to do.
        We need to make sure our schools are safe and drug-free. We need to
    make sure when little children show up for school that they've been
    given a chance to get off to a good start. We need to make sure that
    schools that don't have the resources on their own can still have
    smaller classes and have technology and have the ability to have those
    higher expectations that were talked about here today. And your National
    Government has an obligation to help you do that. That is what I am
    fighting for in Washington today.
        The right way to balance the budget is to balance the budget while
    keeping our commitments and our values to the future of our chil-

    [[Page 1454]]

    dren intact. That's what I am fighting for. You heard Congressman Filner
    talk about it.
        The alternative budget in Washington today, proposed by the
    congressional majority, would undermine dramatically our commitment to
    education. It would cut back on our ability to promote charter schools
    like this one. It would cut back on our ability to help with smaller
    classes and more computers. It would cut back on our ability to help
    assure safe and drug-free schools. It would cut back on our ability to
    make sure little kids from poor families show up ready to learn. It
    would cut back on the availability of scholarships to go to college and
    on the availability of low-cost college loans.
        Now, California has seen what happens when you cut back on the
    availability of people to go to college. You have a decline in
    enrollment in your colleges because of the cost. I want to lower the
    cost and increase the enrollment of ordinary Americans in a college
    education.
        I come here to San Diego to say to you that when things are really
    important in America, we ought to act like a family the way the
    O'Farrell family works.
        Education is our meal ticket to the future. Let me tell you
    something, folks: There's not a country in the world in a better
    position for the next century, for the global economy, for the rapid
    movement of people and money and ideas and technology around the world.
    No one is better suited for that than the United States, because we are
    the greatest country, that has people from everywhere in our country and
    in our communities. Look around here today and you can see that. Look
    around here and you can see that.
        But if we are going to fulfill our potential as a nation, these
    children have to fulfill their potential, every one of them. We have to
    believe in what they can become. We have to believe they can learn. We
    have to insist that they do learn. We have to help them to learn. And
    they can learn a very great deal. We have to believe that our schools
    can work. And yes, we've got to embrace all these new ideas, like
    charter schools, but we also have to invest in them.

        Before I came out here, the students were given a chance to ask me
    questions, and one of the students who is sitting right back there stood
    up and said, ``If we really care about education, how come we pay
    professional athletes who never get off the bench 10 times as much as
    the schoolteachers make?''

        This is not about money. It is about our values. It's about what
    kind of people we are. If you believe that every person should be
    responsible, that every person should be a good citizen, but that every
    person should have the opportunity to make the most of his or her own
    life, then you are required to say we have obligations to each other. We
    owe something to each other. Yes, we can put a bunch of our money into
    entertainment and let those folks make a lot, but we have to invest some
    of our money where our values are, where our future lies, where
    everybody can come together.
        This should not be a partisan political deal. America's existence as
    a great, free, democracy depends upon developing the ability of all the
    children who are here and the people they represent all over America. So
    I ask you, I ask you, without regard to your political party, your
    income, what you do for a living, your ethnic background, if you believe
    this, if you believe this, if you believe that one of these little kids
    could grow up to be President of the United States, with a good
    education, if you believe that all of these little children can assure
    that America will remain the strongest, greatest country in the world,
    if you believe it is not an accident that people here have gotten
    together and done something that is the envy of America in education,
    then I plead with you, send a message to the Congress that it shouldn't
    be a matter of partisan politics, we must balance the budget and invest
    in education to keep faith with the future of our children and the
    future of America.

        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 4:39 p.m. in the courtyard. In his remarks,
    he referred to Henry Walker, parent of an O'Farrell Community School
    student; Bertha Pendleton, superintendent, San Diego Unified School
    District; and Bob Stein, chief educational officer, O'Farrell Community
    School.