    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [February 24, 1996]
    [Pages 327-331]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community in Long Beach
    February 24, 1996

        Thank you very much. Thank you, Melissa Machit. Didn't she do a good
    job? Give her another hand. [Applause] Mayor O'Neill; Superintendent
    Cohn; Chief Ellis; our host, the principal, Alexis Ruiz-Alessi, the
    principal of Jackie Robinson Academy, where we are now; to the president
    of the board of education, Bobbie Smith; to the JROTC groups from Wilson
    and Poly, thank you very much for being here. And to the Poly High
    School band, thank you very much for playing so well.
        Just before I came out here I had a little roundtable discussion
    about the school uniform policy with Melissa and another fine student
    named Maurice Troutman and a number of--I thought he was going to run
    for office someday; he's already seeded the crowd--[laughter]--and a
    number of teachers and parents and the chief and your board president. I
    would like for all the people who were in our little roundtable to stand
    and be recognized; they did such a good job of educating me about what
    was done. Thank you very much. [Applause]
        I'm glad to be back in Long Beach. It seems like only yesterday when
    I was here last. [Laughter] I do have my pin on today; it's sort of my
    uniform. And I'm honored to be here. I came here today to applaud and
    support the efforts of this remarkable community.
        Yesterday the mayor and community leaders briefed me on the
    remarkable plan that this community has to revive itself and deal with
    the impact of the defense downsizing of the last several years. Today
    I'm here to support what over the long run may have an even more
    profound impact on the future of this commu-

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    nity and our country, this remarkable progress you have shown in your
    schools as a result of the school uniform policy, making them safer,
    more disciplined and orderly, freeing teachers to focus on teaching and
    students to focus on their job of learning. You are returning their
    schools to their original purpose and proving that public institutions
    can excel when they have high standards, high expectations for all
    children, and a high purpose with a strategy at the grassroots level
    supported by everybody in the community for carrying it out.
        I have to tell you on a very personal note, as I told the panel,
    this has made my life at home even a little more difficult because for
    10 years--10 years--several times a year, before Long Beach finally took
    this groundbreaking step, the only person who ever talked to me about
    school uniforms was the First Lady. And six or seven times a year we'd
    go to Chelsea's school and we'd go to this or that event at school, or
    we'd visit other public schools, and she'd come home and say, ``You
    know, if we had a uniform policy, it would make things better in these
    schools.'' I heard it over and over and over again. And thanks to you, I
    have to listen to ``I told you so.'' [Laughter] Being able to endure ``I
    told you so'' is one of the essential requirements of a successful
    marriage--[laughter]--and I must say I can't think of a time when I have
    enjoyed hearing it more. I applaud all of you.
        I want to take a few moments today to talk about how what you have
    done here fits into the larger pattern of what I hope is going on in
    America and what I am trying to do and what we are trying to do to help
    you to spread this message throughout the United States.
        When I became President I was convinced that our country had to go
    into the next century making significant changes if we wanted to ensure
    that the American dream was available to everyone willing to work for
    it, without regard to their race or income or background, if we wanted
    to bring the American people together instead of seeing them continue to
    drift apart, and if we wanted to see our country remain the leading
    force in the world for peace and freedom and prosperity. We have worked
    very hard over the last 3 years on all those three objectives, and we
    see that while progress has been made which is very substantial, serious
    challenges remain, challenges that can only be met if we do a better job
    of working together. If you were to ask me what the single most
    significant lesson I have learned as your President in the last 3 years
    is, I would without hesitation answer, it is that when Americans work
    together we never lose, and when we are divided we defeat ourselves.
        Today California newspapers reported 285,000 new jobs in this State
    in 1995 alone. We are moving this economy; almost 8 million new jobs, a
    15-year high in homeownership, 3 years of record highs in new businesses
    formed. Businesses owned by women alone in the last 3 years have created
    more new jobs than the Fortune 500 have laid off. The combined rates of
    unemployment, inflation, and home mortgage interest rates are the lowest
    they've been in 27 years. We are moving forward.
        But we know--we know--that a lot of Americans have not participated
    in this economic recovery. They haven't gotten a raise, or they live in
    the inner city or isolated rural areas where there aren't any new jobs,
    or they work for one of these big companies where sometimes when they're
    my age and ready to send their own children to college, they've been
    downsized. So we have more challenges to meet until we can say to every
    American, ``You're going to live in a more rapidly changing economy, but
    you will still be all right if you're willing to work for it.''
        If you look at our most fundamental institutions, many of the social
    problems we've had, the objective indicators clearly point out the fact
    that on balance our schools are doing a better job. You should know that
    the welfare rolls are down in this country, the poverty rolls are down
    in this country. Every State in the country has reported a decline in
    violent crime. This is all encouraging. That's the good news.
        Everybody knows this country is still too violent. It's still too
    dangerous for children. There are still too many problems out there.
    There are still too many people trapped in a culture of dependence when
    they ought to be out working and being successful in supporting their
    families and contributing to their communities and country. So we have a
    lot to do.
        Now, a lot of the things we have to do involve modernizing our
    systems. For example, we have reduced the size of your National
    Government. We have gotten rid of thousands of pages of regulation.
    We've made it far less bureaucratic. It's the smallest Government you've
    had in 30 years. But you don't want it to be weak; it's

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    still strong enough to be there when you need it if there is an
    earthquake or a fire or a flood. It's still strong enough to be there to
    help companies change when they have to go from defense to civilian
    construction. And these are the kinds of things that we need to focus
    on. I want to give you a Government that is less bureaucratic and
    smaller but still able to help every person, every family, every
    neighborhood, every community make the most of their own lives.
        And so all the institutions have to change; we have to modernize. In
    just a couple of weeks the Vice President and I will be out here to
    celebrate NetDay in California, the biggest next step in our campaign to
    make sure that by the year 2000 every single classroom and every single
    library in this country will be hooked up to the Internet. Twenty
    percent of California's schools will be hooked up this year.
        But it's not all modern. Some of what we have to do is to get back
    to basic values and basic institutions. I see at least two Members of
    the Congress out here, Congressman Horn and Congressman Martinez; there
    may be others here. We know that there are things in Washington we
    cannot do that you have to do. We have to find ways to reassert the
    vitality of the basic institutions of this country, of the family, of
    the schools, of the neighborhood and the community.
        In the schools, I have always had a very simple formula. I believe I
    have spent more time in classrooms, more time listening to teachers and
    parents and students than any person who had the privilege to hold this
    office. And I believe that all children can learn. I think that we have
    to have high expectations. I believe in high national standards. I
    believe in high technology, nationally spread. But I believe in
    grassroots reform, giving kids a good head start, giving every person
    access to college, and giving adults a lifetime chance to always, always
    get education when they need it for economic reasons. But let's not kid
    ourselves. None of this is going to work unless our schools work and
    unless our children feel safe and secure, unless the environments of
    education are disciplined and drug-free.
        We saw the tragic consequences of the time in which we live again
    just a few days ago with the terrible, painful, agonizing, senseless
    shooting of that fifth-grade teacher in front of his students in Los
    Angeles. We are praying--I'm sure all of you will pray along with our
    family--that Alfredo Perez will pull through and that his wife, who is
    also a schoolteacher, will have the courage, the bravery to carry on and
    that those students in that school who underwent that horrible
    experience will somehow find the courage to believe in their adults who
    are responsible for their lives, so that they can go and grow and learn
    again.
        We know that most of our schools are safe, but we know that our
    country is not as safe as it ought to be. We know that every parent who
    walks a child to the bus stop and waves goodbye in the morning should
    never worry whether the child will come home safely. Every parent has a
    right to expect that their children will be safe in school. Every parent
    has a right to believe that the children are spending their time
    learning and teachers are able to spend the day teaching.
        When we identify national problems that have to be solved by local
    communities using basic values, what I believe we should do at the
    national level is to help to define what we ought to do and let you
    decide how to do it. That's what we're here to celebrate today. We've
    tried to help promote school safety with the Gun-Free Schools Act. We
    are educating our children through you, with the funds we provide, about
    the dangers of drugs with the help of the safe and drug-free schools
    act. We are tackling student drug use through our random drug testing
    programs that we have advocated for local school districts. We are
    getting tough on criminals when they are seriously violent by permitting
    the prosecution of hardened young criminals as adults. We are promoting
    greater parental involvement through our family partnership for learning
    at the Department of Education. We are supporting you and teaching our
    children the values of hard work, discipline, mutual respect through the
    introduction of character education programs all across America, again,
    at the initiative of local school districts, not from Washington. But
    when you want to do it, we're there for you, and we think you should do
    it.
        And we have worked very hard in this country, where so many people
    come from such diverse backgrounds and so many different faiths which
    they want to express in different ways, to say that the first
    amendment's freedom of religion is the freedom from oppression, but it
    doesn't make schools religion-free zones. There is a way people can
    pursue their values and

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    their faith consistent with the first amendment. We have tried to do all
    these things.
        But I have to say, in the end it matters whether all of you are
    working together and whether your counterparts in every school district
    in America are working together. That's why I took some pains in the
    State of the Union Address to urge that other school districts in our
    Nation consider following the example of Long Beach on school uniforms.
        One of the great hazards of our culture, with all of its wonderful
    opportunities, is that we can sometimes, as a friend of mine used to
    say, without meaning to, teach our children to minor in the majors and
    major in the minors. It's important to be able to make a good living,
    and it's important to be able to buy things that you'd like to have, but
    that's not the most important thing in life. And it's tragic when young
    people without a balanced upbringing, without grounded values, without a
    secure education wind up believing that it's all right to kill somebody
    for a pair of sneakers or jewelry or a designer jacket.
        In Detroit, a 15-year-old boy was shot recently for his $86
    basketball shoes. In Fort Lauderdale, a 15-year-old student was robbed
    of his jewelry. Just this past December, near where I live now, in Oxon
    Hill, Maryland, a 17-year-old honor student was killed at a bus stop,
    just standing there, caught in the crossfire during the robbery of
    another student's designer jacket.
        As parents, every one of us has been wrenched by these stories. We
    cannot stand idly by while our children are having their childhoods
    robbed from them and from us by people who place more value on the
    material things than even human life, not to mention human learning.
        The Long Beach Unified School District and the parents here have not
    stood idly by. I want to again say, the entire United States of America
    is in your debt because you took the first step to show that elementary
    and middle school students could wear uniforms to class, reduce
    violence, reduce truancy, reduce disorder, and increase learning, and as
    was said more ably than me by my remarkable introducer, give a sense of
    unity and purpose and teamwork to the students and the schools that are
    in this school district. We are all in your debt in the United States.
        After the first year of this program, fights between students and
    other students who bring guns to school were cut in half. Overall crime
    in the schools was cut by more than a third in one year. In addition to
    safety, learning improved; schoolwork became more important for students
    than showing off what they were wearing or resenting what someone else
    was wearing. And maybe most important of all over the long run, I think
    these uniforms do not stamp out individuality among our young people.
    Instead, they slowly teach our young people one of life's most important
    lessons, that what really counts is what you are and what you can become
    on the inside, not what you are wearing on the outside. And at least on
    that score, I think you can make a serious argument that this school
    uniform benefits the children of affluent families as much as it
    benefits the children of poor families, because that is a lesson all our
    children need to learn.
        But in the end, we should remember it should be safety first. I was
    so moved in this panel listening to Melissa talk about unity and then
    listening to young Maurice say, ``I can walk down the street now and
    because I have my uniform on, those gangs know that I'm not a problem.
    I'm just a student. I don't have to look over my shoulder all the
    time.'' It is wrong for a young person to look over his or her shoulder
    walking down the street of the United States of America. That is wrong.
    And you have helped to stop it.
        And let me say finally about you, you did it, reflecting the lesson
    I said that was the most important I have learned. You did this
    together. This was not imposed on you. The parents decided to do it,
    working with the teachers, working with the school board, working with
    the police department, working with others. You worked this out
    together.
        And I've learned about the differences from school to school. I've
    learned about the differences in permissible uniforms. I've learned all
    about this. It has really pleased me to understand just how much of a
    grassroots endeavor this is. And that also is important.
        I do want to say, though, that in all the years that I have spent in
    public schools, the thing that has frustrated me most is that nearly
    every problem in America has been solved by somebody somewhere in some
    school. But ideas don't travel very well. The most heartening thing to
    me, although I know it's been a headache for your superintendent, is
    that you've been deluged

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    with phone calls. That's good. That means people say, ``I'm not too
    proud to learn from them.''
        You know, the Founding Fathers of this country set up State
    governments as the laboratories of democracy with the express intent
    that they would not be too proud to learn from one another. When I was a
    Governor, whenever we were the first State to do something, I was always
    proud of that. But I used to tell our people, I'm even more proud when
    we're the second State to do something because that meant that we
    weren't too arrogant, hard-headed, and deaf to learn from what somebody
    else was doing right.
        So we want to support what you have done here. And so we have taken
    on the job of finding out what works and how. And I want you to know
    that just before I came here today, I signed a directive instructing the
    Secretary of Education to distribute this new Manual on School Uniforms
    to every one of the Nation's 16,000 school districts so they will know
    how to do what you did. The Department of Education worked with the
    Department of Justice and the Attorney General to develop this. It's a
    roadmap for the establishment of a policy for school uniforms for
    schools that want to use the tool. It provides a central source of
    information about successful programs, yours and those that have
    followed, that are making a difference all across America.
        Let me be clear, this is not a National Government mandate. This is
    not Washington telling any school or school district what to do. The
    decision about whether to adopt a uniform policy as a tool in an overall
    program to promote safety and improve learning is a local decision to be
    made entirely by parents, teachers, and local school officials. But at
    least now nobody will say, ``We didn't know about this. We couldn't
    imagine how to do it, and we're not sure it will work.'' If they read
    this, they will know it will work and they'll know about it and they'll
    understand how to do it.
        In the meanwhile, let me leave you with these two thoughts: Please
    don't grow weary in pursuing this goal. We can never rest until violence
    against our children is the exception, not the rule; until we are
    horrified--until we are genuinely surprised when we hear about something
    bad happening to a child. We can never rest until we have more of our
    children wearing the colors of school uniforms than the colors of gangs.
    We cannot rest until that is true.
        And please, each and every one of you in your own way, be willing to
    reach out to your friends and neighbors and anyone with whom you come in
    contact across this great State and across our beloved country, to tell
    people the story of how this works. People are desperately looking for
    ways to restore integrity and meaning and purpose and direction and
    success to our schools all across America. You have shown that it can be
    done. Share your knowledge; share your passion; share your conviction.
    And remember what I said. Whenever we are defeated, we defeat ourselves.
    If we are divided, we can't win. But when we're together, America never
    loses.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:03 a.m. in the courtyard at Jackie
    Robinson Academy. In his remarks, he referred to Melissa Machit, Charles
    Evans Hughes Middle School student; Carl Cohn, Long Beach School
    District superintendent; Mayor Beverly O'Neill of Long Beach; and Bob
    Ellis, Long Beach police chief.