[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.