[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 39 (Monday, September 28, 1998)]
[Pages 1882-1885]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Jenner Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois

September 25, 1998

    Thank you very much. There aren't all that many sixth graders that 
could do that and be less nervous than she was. She did a great job, 
didn't she? Thank you, Gina, thank you.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I am so glad to be here today. I thank the 
mayor for his extraordinary work. and I want to thank Secretary Daley, 
too, for being a truly remarkable Secretary of Commerce. My old friend, 
John Stroger, thank you for being here. I'd like to thank the board 
members of the Chicago School Reform Board, Gery Chico and the other 
members who are here. I thank Paul Vallas, your CEO. I thank your 
principal; thank you for your good work here. It's been my experience 
that all good schools have a good principal.
    I want to thank Gina again. I'm sure the first time she was asked to 
do this, this was just one step above going to the dentist, you know. 
[Laughter] And I thought she did a superb job.
    I'd like to thank Joanne Alter, and all the people who are involved 
in the WITS program here in Chicago. I believe in this so strongly. Last 
year we arranged to have students from a thousand colleges and 
universities go into our elementary schools to help to tutor, to try to 
follow the sterling example you have set here.
    To all the parents, the teachers, the educators, the tutors, the 
students, thank you. I'd also like to thank Mary Lou Kearns for being 
here, for her work in health care and for presenting herself as a 
candidate for Lieutenant Governor. And I'd like to thank

[[Page 1883]]

Glenn Poshard who wanted to be here, but I wouldn't have him anywhere 
else. He's back in Washington voting a tough vote so close to an 
election, voting not to give an election year tax cut before we make 
sure we've got the budget balanced and we save Social Security for the 
21st century. It is the right thing to do, and I thank him for that. And 
we're glad to have Glenn's wife, Jo Poshard, here with us. Thank you, 
Jo, for coming. We're glad to see you.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I told the mayor on the way in that he ought 
to put me on the payroll because I've become such a shameless advocate 
for the Chicago public schools. But I want to tell you why. First of 
all, I am deeply gratified by the success of our country. Most of the 
credit belongs to the American people. But I think our policies have had 
something to do with the fact that we have the lowest unemployment rate 
in 28 years, almost 17 million new jobs; the lowest crime rate in 25 
years; the smallest percentage of people on welfare in 29 years; the 
lowest African-American poverty rate since statistics have been 
collected; the lowest inflation in 32 years; the highest real wage 
growth in more than 20 years; the highest homeownership in history; and 
in just 6 days, the first balanced budget and surplus in 29 long years.
    I have been particularly grateful to the people of Illinois and the 
City of Chicago, without whom it is doubtful that I could have become 
President. I brought some of them with me here today, Secretary Daley 
and Rahm Emanual. I was met at the airport by Kevin O'Keefe, who worked 
in the White House for several years. And I see my good friend, Avis 
Lavelle out there, who was a part of our administration. And of course, 
the most important person from Chicago to this administration is the 
First Lady, who asked me to tell all of you hello. She's out on the West 
Coast today, and I'm going to meet her tonight so we can see our 
daughter tomorrow. But you've had a lot to do with it.
    But I would like to especially thank Senator Carol Moseley-Braun and 
Congressman Glenn Poshard and the other members of the Democratic 
delegation in Illinois, without whom--without any one of whom we would 
not have passed the economic plan in 1993, which led to this big decline 
in the deficit, big decline in interest rates, big takeoff in the 
economy.
    One of the things that very few people know about that economic plan 
was that it also doubled something called the earned-income tax credit, 
the EITC, which lowers taxes to working people on modest incomes with 
children. Today, for a family of four with an income of under $30,000, 
that amounts to about $1,000 a year going back to families. Last year 
alone, thanks to Glenn Poshard and Carol Moseley-Braun and these other 
folks--and remember, if one of them had fallen off, none of it would 
have passed--last year along 4 million working Americans, including 1.1 
million African-Americans, were lifted out of poverty because of this 
tax cut. And that has made a major contribution to broadening economic 
growth. And the people of Illinois should be very grateful to them for 
making that historic vote in 1993 when it was hard to do. And I thank 
them.
    Now, the mayor once said when he was talking that not so many years 
ago people were kind of defeatist about the American economy. There is 
still a great debate going on in Washington, DC, about public education. 
Everybody knows--everybody knows that we have the finest system of 
higher education in the world, and we have now opened the doors of 
college to everybody who is willing to work for it with the HOPE 
scholarship, the $1,500 tax credit for the first 2 years of college; 
with tax credits for all higher education; the deductibility of student 
loans; huge increase in Pell grants; 300,000 more work-study positions. 
We've done that. But all of us know that we can't stop until we can look 
each other straight in the eye and say with absolute conviction, every 
child in this country, without regard to their race, their income, their 
neighborhood, their family circumstances--every single child has access 
to a world-class education. That is our national mission and we cannot 
stop until we achieve it.
    Now, back to what I was saying before, there really is an honest 
debate in Washington. Some people who haven't been to places like Jenner 
School have given up on the public schools. Chicago didn't give up. 
Chicago

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said, if we give the schools back to the parents, if we hold the 
students and teachers accountable, and if we help those who need help, 
we can make our schools work again.
    As I was saying before, I go all over the country, and people's 
mouths drop open when I say, ``They've ended social promotion in 
Chicago, but everybody gets to go to summer school. They have after-
school programs.'' People's eyes pop out when I say, Chicago's summer 
school is the sixth biggest school district in America; when I say over 
40,000 kids are getting three square meals a day here. I say to you, if 
we can do this here, we can do it anywhere.
    If these students--and look at them, their bright eyes and their 
whole life before them--but you know as well as I do--when I was in this 
little class beforehand--I want to thank the two young men who were in 
the tutoring class with me and the tutor who sat around the table and 
all the other young people that were in there--and by the way, one of 
the little lessons today was on Washington, DC, and one of the test 
questions was, how many words can you make from the letters in 
Washington? One of the students got more words than I did. I liked that. 
[Laughter]
    But one of the questions in the little forum they had today was, if 
you were President what would you do? And one of the students said, 
``Well, if I were President, I'd do something to end the violence.'' 
Another said, ``If I were President, I wouldn't sell guns to anybody but 
police officers.'' Another said, ``If I were President, I would have 
more homes for the homeless and more clothes for them.''
    So I want these children to know--I know a lot of you have got it 
pretty tough. I know that life's not so easy for you when you're out of 
school. I know that you've seen a lot of things in your life already 
that children should never see. But I want you to know something else. 
If you make the most of your education, you can still live out your 
dreams. You can do what you want to do with your lives. You can be 
happy. You can be fulfilled. You can succeed. And that's what we owe 
you, an education that gives you a change to be fully free to live out 
your own dreams. And we are determined to do it.
    Now, if the principal, the students, the parents, the volunteers, 
and the students here can double reading scores and triple math scores--
and according to what I saw, last year alone, reading scores in 
percentile terms increased by 50 percent--if you can do that, if you can 
do it here, then no one else in America has an excuse. They can do it, 
too. But if you can do it here, then the decisionmakers in Springfield 
and in Washington, DC, don't have an excuse either. We owe it to you to 
give you the tools and the support you need so that every child can be a 
part of a successful school. We don't have an excuse either.
    Jenner proves, Chicago proves that the public schools can work. Now 
the rest of us have to go to work and give you the tools you need to 
succeed. I have given Congress a plan that would make a big dent in 
that. And I have worked as hard as I could now for 6 years to make 
education a bipartisan issue. America cannot be strong unless we give 
all of our children a world-class education. This should not be a 
partisan issue. But the fact is that the majority of the Congress is in 
the hands of the other party. And earlier this year I gave them an 
education plan that for both partisan and ideological reasons they 
refused to act on, and we know it could dramatically improve our 
schools.
    Let me tell you what it does. It says, first of all, everybody's got 
to take responsibility for high standards and learning. But secondly, if 
there are going to be high standards, we have to give students the 
opportunity to reach those standards. That's the formula that's worked 
here, and it's the formula that will work throughout the country.
    So I said, ``Let's develop voluntary national standards. Let's give 
exams to our kids to see if they're meeting it, but let's don't 
designate children failures before they ever have a chance. Give these 
kind of summer school and after-school opportunities to all the children 
of the United States, and you'll see what they'll do with them.''
    I say we ought to have smaller classes in the early grades and gave 
a budget plan to the Congress that would lower class size to an average 
of 18 in the first three grades and hire another 100,000 teachers. I 
said we ought to do even more for the really poor

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areas of America, and I gave Congress a plan to educate 35,000 bright 
young people and then let them pay off all their student loans by going 
into our hardest pressed areas and teaching for a few years. These are 
good ideas. They'll make America stronger.
    I embrace Senator Carol Moseley-Braun's idea that we ought to have 
more places doing what Chicago's doing and building new schools and 
repairing old ones. So I gave the Congress a bill that says, let's tear 
down and rebuild or repair or build 5,000 schools. And here's a plan to 
do it, paid for in the balanced budget act.
    All of these things are in this education bill. I gave them a plan 
for safer schools through more partnerships with local law enforcement. 
I gave them a plan to hook up every classroom to the Internet by the 
year 2000 so that every child can have access to the world of learning 
now on the Internet, and every child can have access to the wonders of 
computer technology. So far, Congress has not responded.
    I gave them a plan for most charter schools, for better rewards for 
our more committed teachers, to do more to train teachers, to make sure 
we have certified master teachers in all the schools of America. Without 
touching a dime of the surplus, we did all that. So far, Congress has 
not responded.
    So I say to you here in Chicago, you are doing your part, and its 
time Washington, DC, did its part to help you succeed. That is our 
commitment to you.
    There are a few days left in the congressional session. It's not too 
late. It's not too late for Congress to put aside the lure of election 
year and save Social Security before we spend the surplus; not too late 
to give all the patients in this country the protection of a Patients' 
Bill of Rights; not too late to keep our economy growing by protecting 
us against the troubles in the global economy and doing what we can to 
turn it back; not too late to reaffirm our commitment to a clean 
environment; and most important, not too late--not too late--to pass 
this education agenda so that every child has a chance to be part of the 
miracle of his or her own learning. That will be the surest way to 
America's greatest years in the 21st century.
    Good luck, young people. Make the most of it. Thank you, and God 
bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:05 p.m. in the gymnasium. In his 
remarks, he referred to Gina Borner, sixth grade student, who introduced 
the President; John Stroger, president, Cook County Board of 
Commissions; Gery Chico, president, Chicago School Reform Board of 
Trustees; Paul Vallas, chief executive officer, Chicago Public Schools; 
Sandra Satinover, school principal; Joanne Alter, chairman of the board, 
Working in the Schools (WITS); Representative Glenn Poshard, candidate 
for Governor, and his wife Jo. A tape was not available for verification 
of the content of these remarks.