    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [January 26, 1998]
    [Pages 110-111]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the After-School Child Care Initiative
    January 26, 1998

        Thank you very much. First, let me thank all of you who are here.
    Many of us have been working together now for 20 years on a lot of these
    issues, and this is a very happy day for us.
        I thank the First Lady for all
    she has done on this issue for as long as I have known her. I thank the
    Vice President and Mrs. Gore for their family conference and the light it has shed
    on the announcement we're here to emphasize today. Thank you, Secretary
    Riley, for the community learning centers,
    and I'm very proud of what we've done there.
        Thank you, Bill White. I'll talk more about
    your contribution in a moment, but it is truly remarkable. And I thank
    Rand and Debra Bass for
    giving us a living, breathing example of the best of America: parents
    who are working hard to do their jobs but also determined to do their
    most important job very well with their children. I thank Senator
    Feinstein, Senator Dodd, and Senator Boxer for being
    here.
        Tomorrow, in the State of the Union Address, I will spell out what
    we seek to do on behalf of our children to prepare them for the 21st
    century. But I want to talk a little bit about education today and about
    this announcement in that context.
        Education must be our Nation's highest priority. Last year, in the
    State of the Union Address, I set out a 10-point plan to move us forward
    and urged the American people to make sure that politics stops at the
    schoolhouse door. Well, we've made a lot of progress on that 10-point
    plan: a remarkable--a remarkable--array of initiatives to open the doors
    of college to every American who's willing to work for it; strong
    progress toward high national standards in the basics, the America Reads
    challenge to teach every 8-year-old to read; continued progress in the
    Vice President's program to hook up all of
    our classrooms and libraries to the Internet by the year 2000.
        This has been the most important year in a generation for education
    reform. Tomorrow

    [[Page 111]]

    I'll set out the next steps on our continuing road.
        First, I will propose the first-ever national effort to reduce class
    size in the early grades. Hillary and I worked very hard 15 years ago
    now to have very strict class sizes at home in the early grades, and it
    was quite controversial and, I think, enormously beneficial when we did
    it. Our balanced budget will help to hire 100,000 teachers who must pass
    State competency tests but who will be able to reduce class size in the
    first, second, and third grades to an average of 18 nationwide.
        Second, since there are more students and there will be more
    teachers, there must be more classrooms. So I will propose a school
    construction tax cut to help communities modernize and build new
    schools.
        Third, I will promote a national effort to help schools that follow
    the lead of the Chicago system in ending social promotion but helping
    students with summer school and other programs to give them the tools
    they need to get ahead.
        All these steps will help our children get the future they deserve.
    And that's why what we're announcing here is so important as well.
        Every child needs someplace to go after school. With after-school
    programs, we can not only keep our kids healthy and happy and safe, we
    can help to teach them to say no to drugs, alcohol, and crime, yes to
    reading, sports, and computers. My balanced budget plan includes a
    national initiative to spark private sector and local community efforts
    to provide after-school care, as the Secretary of Education said, to
    half a million more children.
        Now, let me say, in addition to all the positive benefits, I think
    it's important to point out that the hours between 3 and 7 at night are
    the most vulnerable hours for young people to get in trouble, for
    juvenile crime. There is this sort of assumption that everybody that
    gets in trouble when they're young has just already been abandoned.
    That's not true. Most of the kids that get in trouble get in trouble
    after school closes and before their parents get home from work. So in
    the adolescent years, in the later years, it is profoundly important to
    try to give kids something to say yes to and something positive to do.
        But we can't do it alone. As I said, our plan involves a public-
    private partnership. So it has fallen to me to announce that our
    distinguished guest from the Mott Foundation of Flint, Michigan, has
    pledged up to $55 million to help ensure that after-school programs
    supported by Federal funds are of the highest quality. That is an
    astonishing gift. Thank you, Bill White. Thank
    you.
        We are determined to help Americans succeed in the workplace, to
    raise well-educated, healthy kids, and to help Americans succeed at the
    toughest job of all, that of being a parent. And the Mott Foundation has
    gone a long way toward helping us. I thank them.
        Now, I have to go back to work on my State of the Union speech. And
    I worked on it until pretty late last night. But I want to say one thing
    to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say
    this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss
    Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie,
    not a single time--never. These allegations are false. And I need to go
    back to work for the American people.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:37 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the
    White House. In his remarks, he referred to Bill White, president and
    chief executive officer, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation; Rand and Debra
    Bass, parents whose children attended an after-school child care program
    at Barcroft Elementary School, Arlington, VA; and Monica S. Lewinsky,
    former White House intern and subject of Independent Counsel Kenneth
    Starr's expanded investigation.