[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 24 (Monday, June 17, 1996)]
[Pages 1036-1038]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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.
    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 edu- 

[[Page 1037]]

cational 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 school teachers 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 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 lunch time, 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

[[Page 1038]]

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 promise 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 at the athletic field. 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 former Gov. Bruce 
King of New Mexico and his wife, Alice.