    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [June 11, 1996]
    [Pages 895-898]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at Grover Cleveland Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico
    June 11, 1996

        Thank you so much. Thank you. Let me say, first of all, Tomas did a
    terrific job. Let's give him another hand. I thought he was wonderful.
    [Applause] Let me also say I am delighted to be back in New Mexico and
    delighted to be here to celebrate the commitment of your people across
    party lines, ethnic lines, and income lines to secure the future of the
    children of this State, and I thank you for that.
        I thank our principal here, Mary Lou Anderson, for welcoming me at
    Grover Cleveland. I thank Superintendent Gonzalez for what he said about
    Las Cruces, and I'll say more about that in a minute. I thank Mayor
    Chavez for doing a wonderful job as your mayor and for all the things
    that he talked about here. I thank Senator Bingaman and Congressman
    Schiff for being here with me. I thank Governor and Mrs. Johnson and the
    leaders of the legislature and former Governor and Mrs. King.
        I want to thank the law enforcement officials who are here; I want
    to say a little more about them in a moment. And I see some leaders in
    the Native American community from New Mexico here; I thank them for
    coming. I'm glad to see all of you here as one people today.
        You know, as I have said many times to the American people, I
    believe that the best days of this country are ahead of us. I believe we
    are moving into a period of possibility for people all across this
    country to live out their dreams, unlike anything we have ever known.
    But we have to find a way to meet the challenges of this new era and to
    preserve the basic values that made America great.
        Now, there are some things that we can do in Washington and a lot of
    things that you have to do out here. If you think about what you want
    your children's future to be like, what you want your grandchildren's
    future to be like, you have to think of these programs and these efforts
    that were discussed today. You have to think you want every child to
    have the same chances that young Mr. Sanchez talked about today.

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        Now, when I think about that, I think, well--and I've given this a
    great deal of thought; indeed, I think of little else as President. I
    want everybody to have a chance to have gainful work. I want all people
    to have a chance to get a good education. I want the American people to
    be able to raise their children on safe streets in safe neighborhoods.
    And those things we can make a contribution to.
        When we invest, for example, in your laboratories here in New Mexico
    as they move from the cold war to the new global economy to try to
    preserve new technologies, to create new high-wage jobs, that's a way of
    creating a new economy. When we cut the deficit by more than 50 percent
    and get interest rates down and expand exports so that our economy
    produces 9.7 million new jobs in 3\1/2\ years, those things help to
    create a structure of opportunity for children in the future. And that's
    very, very important.
        If you look at education, we have tried to expand educational
    opportunities, everything from providing more funds for more kids to be
    in Head Start programs to helping States to set higher standards for
    their schools, to a commitment to connect every single classroom and
    library in every school in America to the Internet by the year 2000,
    which will help all the children here, to giving every family in this
    country on a modest income a deduction for the cost of college education
    and a tax credit for the first 2 years of community college after high
    school. These things are important.
        But safety is also important. Let me tell you what plagues me. In
    this country in the last 3\1/2\ years, the crime rate is down, but
    violence among young people under 18 is up. That is a very troubling
    thing. You heard this fine student talk about the gang problem. Let me
    tell you, the young people who are coming into our schools today are
    coming in in record numbers. There will soon be classes in the
    elementary schools of America that are larger in numbers than any of the
    classes of the baby boom years. And if we don't do something to turn
    this problem of gang violence and youth violence around, it can threaten
    to wreck all the progress we have made together in strengthening the
    economy and expanding educational opportunity and helping America to
    grow and go forward together.
        We cannot create opportunity in this country unless the American
    people are willing to take responsibility for giving our children safe
    childhoods and a safe future. And you are doing that in New Mexico.
    That's why I came here today.
        You heard the mayor talk about some of the things the National
    Government can do: more police officers, the Brady bill, the other
    initiatives. They're important. But it's also important to try to help
    local communities seize control of their destiny. I don't know how many
    times I've heard my daughter's friends tell Hillary or me how they'll
    never forget the D.A.R.E. officer that came to them when they were in
    grade school to talk to them about the importance of staying away from
    drugs and living a drug-free life. I don't know how many schoolteachers
    I've had come up to me and talk to me about the importance of the safe
    and drug-free schools program and the zero tolerance for guns and
    violence that we're trying to enforce all across America. If kids cannot
    be safe in school so they can learn and feel secure, where can they be
    safe? These things are all important.
        But the most important thing perhaps we can do here is to do what
    I'm trying to do today, and that's to find ways to support you in taking
    local initiatives. And again, I say that this is something that ought to
    transcend politics. When I heard the mayor up here talking about the
    middle school cluster initiative, when I heard your principal, when I
    heard young Tomas talking about the program that he lauded and he
    thanked all the people who were involved in it, I realized that that is
    really the magic of what we have to do. Somehow all these kids that
    we're losing have to know that someone cares about them, have to know
    that there are not only things they have to say no to in life but things
    that they can say yes to, have to realize that they can have a future.
    Even if they come from difficult family backgrounds, even if they live
    on tough streets, even if they live in a tough neighborhood, they have
    to know that there's something they can say yes to.
        The community curfew program you have instituted here, I know it's
    controversial when you start it. I know a lot of young people think,
    ``Well, why should I go in?'' But I can tell you, I have been in
    communities that have had these curfews for a couple of years. Crime
    goes down. Kids are safer on the street; they're better off at home 99
    times out of 100. And after they've been there a couple of years they
    become popular with young people, as well as

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    with the parents, because everybody wants a safer community to live in
    and a better and brighter future in which to live it.
        And so I want to applaud you for doing that. And let me say that I
    heard some of you expressing your reservations when Superintendent
    Gonzalez talked about the school uniform program in Las Cruces. But let
    me tell you, no one says that you should do it. What we say is that you
    should have the right to do it.
        But let me tell you a story about the biggest school district in the
    country to adopt a school uniform policy, Long Beach, California. It's
    the third biggest school district in California. Now, their problems are
    not the problems of every school district in America, but they had some
    terrible problems. They had kids that had to walk to school through
    neighborhoods that were infested by gangs, and they had to wonder every
    day whether the clothes they had on were going to get them rolled,
    either because the jackets or the shoes were too nice or inadvertently
    they'd worn the wrong colors. They had to really worry about that. They
    had to worry about people coming on the school grounds during recess,
    during lunchtime and rolling the students and not even being identified
    as non-students until it was too late.
        And so they permitted every school to make up their own mind about
    what kind of uniform they were going to have. They let the students
    design what they would wear and pick the colors. And it just had to be
    inexpensive enough for everybody to afford. And then they raised a
    little money for the people whose families were too poor to afford the
    uniforms. So that the uniforms, since they weren't the same for the
    whole district, they were different for every school. Sometimes the
    teachers wore them, too, and sometimes they didn't. It was all about the
    school's identity. It was almost like being on one big team, being in
    one good gang.
        And guess what? The crime rate went down; the violence went down;
    attendance went up; school learning went up. And even upper income
    students said, ``This is a better deal,'' because they were no longer
    identified by what they wore but by what kind of people they were, what
    kind of values they had and what kind of--[inaudible]--they had.
        So I say to you, we don't say that you should do this. We say if you
    have a problem with young people and gangs, it's one thing you should
    consider. And you sure ought to be free to do it, free of any worries
    about lawsuits or hassles if you decide to do it.
        There are all kinds of other things that schools are doing. A lot of
    schools are doing more work in character education, and we've tried to
    help schools deal with that. There are all kinds of initiatives that
    will work only if people at the local level believe it. So I say to you,
    I came here today to say I want America to look at New Mexico and say,
    ``Well, maybe we should consider a curfew policy. Maybe we ought to
    consider a middle school initiative like the one they have in
    Albuquerque. Maybe we ought to consider a uniform policy like the one
    they have in Las Cruces.''
        I'm dry--I can't do this today--[laughter].
        And some of the times, the best thing the Government can do in
    Washington is just to help you do this. The only thing we have done on
    all these issues is to make sure that the Justice Department and the
    Department of Education can give every school district in America
    guidance if they want to do these things, so there are no legal
    problems, no legal hassles, and people are free to put our children
    first and their future first.
        So I say to all of you, again, I thank the people of New Mexico for
    being here today. I thank the political leaders for being here today.
    Two members of your congressional delegation called me before I came
    because they couldn't come, Senator Domenici and my good friend
    Congressman Bill Richardson, and I thank them for calling expressing
    their support for these endeavors.
        This is something we have to do together. And when you go home
    tonight, if you have any friends in other States or other communities in
    New Mexico, the next time they get in touch with you, I want you to talk
    to them about this, because we don't have any more important
    responsibility than to give every child in this country, no matter where
    they are, where they grow up, how tough their circumstances are, the
    opportunity to live out their dreams.
        We are going to be able to construct an economy that will permit
    them to live out their dreams. We know--we know that we can expand
    educational opportunity so that every single child who's willing to work
    for it will have access to go beyond high school to 2 years of community
    college and on to college if they want to do it--every child. We know we
    can do that. But we will never, ever seize the prom-

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    ise of the 21st century in New Mexico or anywhere else in the United
    States until every child can live in a safe neighborhood and go to a
    safe school and belong to good, positive, constructive groups that
    reinforce the kind of values and the kind of imagination and the kind of
    character that our young speaker who introduced me evidenced today.
        That is a dream that you have to pursue and that every American
    family, every American community, and every American school has to
    pursue child by child by child. We'll do what we can to support you, but
    you need to do what you can to make sure every person you know is
    committed to that goal.
        Thank you, and God bless you. And I hope you get rain tonight. Thank
    you.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:08 p.m in the auditorium. In his remarks,
    he referred to Tomas Sanchez, Grover Cleveland Middle School student who
    introduced the President; Jesse Gonzalez, superintendent, Las Cruces
    Public Schools; Mayor Martin Chavez of Albuquerque, NM; Gov. Gary E.
    Johnson of New Mexico and his wife, Dee; and Bruce King, former New
    Mexico Governor, and his wife, Alice.