[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.