    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [April 8, 1998]
    [Pages 530-533]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Rachel Carson School in Chicago
    April 8, 1998

        Thank you very much. Thank you for making me feel so welcome at what
    is at least my third trip to the Chicago schools since I've been
    President.
        I want to begin by thanking Rita Nicky for
    that wonderful introduction and for her obvious devotion to the children
    of this city. I thank very, very much Kathleen Mayer, the principal, for making me feel welcome. I'd also
    like to thank Catherine Garza, whose science
    class I visited. And I'd like to thank the students in the science class
    who showed me how to make a weather vane and the young students who sang
    to me today and all the students, indeed, of Rachel Carson, along with
    the teachers and the administrators and the staff. Thank you so much.
        I thank Aldermen Coleman,
    O'Connor, and Burke for being here. I thank Congressman Gutierrez, but also Congressmen Davis, Rush, and
    Blagojevich, who are out here in front,
    for being here, for their support; and Senator Art Berman and Senator Dick Durbin; and
    Senator Carol Moseley-Braun I'll have
    more to say about later.
        I want to thank the mayor and all of those who have cooperated with
    him, the members

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    and the leaders of the teachers union, the parents, the administrators,
    everybody, in this remarkable attempt to revolutionize, revitalize, and
    energize the schools of the city of Chicago. It has been awesome to
    watch. But in particular I would like to thank the CEO of the Chicago
    board of education and the superintendent of schools, Paul
    Vallas and Gery Chico.
    They have done a wonderful job, and I thank them so much. Thank you,
    gentlemen.
        But mayor, none of it would have
    happened without you. And you believed that the kids of Chicago could
    learn and deserved a chance to learn and could have a future and
    deserved the chance to have that future. And when you got up here and
    you said you got tired of making excuses for failure and you decided to
    start making reasons for success, the whole crowd clapped. I wish that
    every public official in America had that simple creed. We'd be a lot
    better off as a country, and I thank you.
        I also want to thank the Carson Choir and the Recorder Band, the
    people that provided music earlier.
        Very often when I get up to speak I feel like that old joke at the
    banquet--where the banquet starts at 6 and everybody in the whole room
    either gets introduced or gets to talk. And the last speaker gets up at
    10, and he says, ``Everything that needs to be said has been said, but
    not everyone has said it.'' [Laughter] And somehow that's how I feel
    this morning, because so much that needs to be said has been said.
        But I want to try to put this issue of modernizing our schools in a
    larger context for you, about what it means to prepare our country for
    the 21st century. It is just 632 days away. I'm gratified that most
    Americans think we're in good shape for that new century, because we
    have the strongest economy in a generation, 15 million new jobs, the
    lowest unemployment rate in a quarter-century, the lowest inflation in
    30 years, the highest homeownership in history; first time crime has
    gone down this many years in a row since President Eisenhower was
    President; the welfare rolls are the lowest they've been in 27 years.
    That's all good.
        But when things are changing as rapidly as they are now, we should
    use good times to think about the problems that remain today and the
    challenges that loom ahead tomorrow. It is a responsibility of good
    citizens in a democracy to bear down and do more in the good times, not
    to relax and pat ourselves on the back.
        This meeting I had today, along with 23 community forums the Vice
    President and the Secretary of Education,
    Dick Riley, are having across the Nation,
    are all designed to discuss the importance, first, of modernizing the
    schools. Like Senator Durbin said, we all owe a debt of gratitude to
    Carol Moseley-Braun for sounding the
    alarm on this issue. She is the first person who ever talked to me about
    the possibility that the Federal Government should play a role. And so I
    said, ``Well, look, I was a Governor for 12 years, and I spent more
    money on education than any of my predecessors. I raised more funds. I
    put more money into the schools. But the building decisions were always
    made at the district level.''
        And she gave the same speech to me
    years ago she gave to you today. She said, but that having good schools
    is a national priority. We spend money at the Federal level on roads
    that are the responsibility of the State and local government. We invest
    in that kind of infrastructure. But the most important infrastructure
    for tomorrow is the infrastructure of education. If we can be spending
    Federal money, as we are, to try to make sure we connect every classroom
    and library in the entire country to the Internet by the year 2000,
    don't we want the classroom to be fit to go to school in, and don't we
    want there to be enough to have small class sizes where we need it?
        So she sold me, and ever since I've
    been trying to sell the country, which as usual is ahead of the
    politicians, and the Congress, which sometimes is a little behind the
    President. [Laughter] So we're working on this in Washington.
        And I came back to Chicago because of all the exhilarating things
    that Chicago is doing, leading a revolution in public schools of high
    standards, accountability, rising expectations. Last year I came here to
    highlight the practice of ending the destructive policy of social
    promotion but not letting the kids drift off and instead bringing them
    closer by giving them summer school opportunities.
        Today the mayor told me there are now 240 schools plus in Chicago
    open after school every day for tutoring and academic work and to
    provide a decent dinner to poor students who need it, so the kids can
    actually get 3 meals a day in 240 schools. He said there had already
    been

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    an evaluation of 40--of the first 40 schools where this 3-meals-a-day
    policy had been in effect, and the tutoring, and that 39 of them had
    shown dramatic gains in learning. This is not rocket science; this is
    taking care of our children. If Chicago can do it, everybody can do it.
        So the mayor and I were talking yesterday about the ROTC program in
    the schools and what it does for young people, to be able to put on that
    uniform and feel the pride and find constructive things to do, and how
    they're being given a little extra consideration in being hired for
    other work that needs to be done in Chicago.
        So Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, sitting here while we're talking,
    she said, ``You know, I'm not sure we put enough money in the defense
    budget to take care of all the kids in the country that would like to be
    in ROTC. And there are a lot of kids in this country that that may be
    the only opportunity they ever get to learn the lessons they'll learn
    and become the kind of people they can become to do the kinds of things
    they can do.'' So I now have a new assignment from Senator Carol Moseley-Braun--[laughter]--and I am about
    to fulfill it when I go back to Washington.
        I say this to you because this is big stuff here. This is exciting.
    All over the country, people, all kinds of people, have just sort of
    given up on public schools and the kids that are in them and the
    children whose first language is not English. And I'm telling you,
    that's crazy. I just got back from the poorest continent on Earth,
    Africa. I saw over half a million people in one sitting in Ghana. I went
    to rural villages. I talked to all kinds of people. I can tell you I
    believe more strongly than I ever have in my life that there is an even
    distribution of intelligence, energy, and potential among all human
    beings everywhere. The question is, are we doing what's necessary to
    bring it out and to give kids the chance that they need?
        So that's what this is about. I really like the fact that in her
    introduction Rita said, ``Well, even in the old building, teachers work
    hard to do a good job.'' A lot of those classrooms are still open and
    they're appealing; I was kidding her. I went to a high school that was
    built in 1914. It's been closed for years. We're trying to renovate it
    and open it up as an arts center. But if you really want to make the old
    buildings work, it requires a lot of money, too. And our proposal would
    permit not only the building of new buildings but also the
    rehabilitation of old buildings--I mean the rehabilitation--opening the
    window, solving the problems that she mentioned, recovering them for
    positive purposes.
        What does all this mean? At this school you've got reading and math
    scores up, attendance at almost 100 percent, all parents turning out for
    report card pickup day. This is a school of choice, a school of
    champions. And congratulations, by the way, to the fifth and sixth grade
    soccer team for winning the city title. But you're winning an even more
    important title in my mind by proving that our city public schools can
    work.
        Now, if I were listening to this and I were in the same state of
    mind I was in before I became a convert, I would say, ``Well, if the
    city of Chicago can put all this money into building new schools, why
    can't everybody?'' I'll tell you why. Ask the mayor. There's a limit,
    even in these good economic times with these very low interest rates, in
    how much money that the markets will let any city borrow to build school
    buildings. There is also a limit to how much the taxpayers can pay, as
    Senator Carol Moseley-Braun said.
        This is a national priority. I went to a school in Florida in a
    fairly modest-size community, where the kids in the school building were
    also going to school in 17 house trailers out back. Since last year,
    we've got the largest number of children in our schools in the history
    of America. This is a problem not just in big cities; it's a problem in
    a lot of smaller towns and communities across this country.
        One-third of all of our schools need major repairs. More than half
    have major building problems. Nearly half don't have the wiring systems
    necessary to support my goal of hooking up every classroom to the
    Internet. Think of that. How bizarre is that? You have all these high-
    tech companies wanting to give you computers, hook you up to the
    Internet--I'm sorry, the wiring in the schools won't let us take our
    kids into the 21st century. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave
    our schools an F in its infrastructure report card this year, worst than
    in roads, bridges, mass transit, and every other category of investment.
        Last week Congress passed billions of dollars for new roads, new
    bridges, and other public works. I believe that we should have a good
    road program. I believe that unsafe bridges

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    should be repaired. I believe that the city streets ought to be in good
    shape. I believe that mass transit should be adequately funded. But I
    believe none of that will matter very much if we let the education
    system come crumbling down around our children.
        I want these kids to be able to get on the subway in New York or the
    Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago and be able to afford the ticket or
    afford a car and be going to a job where they can earn a good living
    because they've got a good education. You can't just have one kind of
    investment.
        Now, the proposal in our balanced budget plan to help the schools do
    construction provides tax incentives to help communities modernize and
    build more than 5,000 schools. Our children deserve schools they can be
    proud of.
        I want to help promote programs like after-school programs. We have
    funds for that. I have a program to reduce class size in the early
    grades all over the country and help schools hire teachers to do that.
    But if we pass the funds to provide help for the schools to stay open
    late, to tutor the kids, to feed the kids, do whatever needs to be done,
    and if we provide funds for more teachers to help get the class size
    down, you still have to have good classes in good buildings that are
    safe and clean, where there are good learning environments, and they are
    at least adequately organized so they can be part of the information
    superhighway. This is an important thing.
        The work that is being done by your school leaders here, we can't
    do. Eighty percent of the schools in Chicago now, according to the
    mayor, are following the school uniform policy, which you know I love. I
    thought those kids looked great in their uniforms today. And I know--and
    the children that can't afford it, you have to find help to give them
    that. If you're going to have uniform policy, it's got to embrace all
    children.
        But that's a decision that a local district has to make. The
    President can tell you how to do it legally and help support it morally,
    but that's a decision you have to make. You know, which schools should
    be open how many hours a day, what kind of tutoring programs you have,
    what you do with the ROTC program, that's a decision you've got to make
    here. How these children learn to speak English, if English is not their
    first language--I want to thank one of the students, Rosalia
    Delgado, who took me around this morning--
    how she learned to speak English--that's a decision you have to make.
        But it is in the national interest to know that we have decent
    infrastructure for our schools, just as much as our national future
    depends upon a decent network of highways and a decent investment in
    mass transit. That is the idea that we have to convince the Congress on.
        And when I can show people that, look what they're doing in Chicago;
    all they want us to do is to help, to create a framework in which they
    can have more success and a framework in which every other school in
    America can have the kind of success I saw here at Rachel Carson, I
    think we will have gone a long way.
        So I came here to send that message out, and I ask you to help me
    send that message out and give your Members of Congress and the United
    States Senate a pat on the back for leading the way.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:58 a.m. in the school courtyard. In his
    remarks, he referred to Rita Nicky, first grade teacher, who introduced
    the President; Catherine Garza, third grade teacher; 16th Ward Alderman
    Shirley A. Coleman; 40th Ward Alderman Patrick J. O'Connor; 14th Ward
    Alderman Edward M. Burke; State Senator Arthur L. Berman; Paul Vallas,
    chief executive officer, and Gery J. Chico, president, reform board of
    trustees, Chicago public schools; and Mayor Richard M. Daley. A portion
    of these remarks could not be verified because the tape was incomplete.