Bill Clinton: “Unlike the rest of you, I knew what we were about to hear--[laughter]--because Hillary went and visited the school and…”

“Unlike the rest of you, I knew what we were about to hear--[laughter]--because Hillary went and visited the school and she came back sort of floating. When you were talking about trying to cover that third ``b'', I couldn't help but think that's a perfect project for the Vice President's reinventing Government endeavor. [Laughter] I don't think I can add any more to what she said, but I would like to fill in a blank that maybe needs to be filled in for some of you. When Susan was talking, I asked her if her superintendent supported what she was doing, and she said yes. It's just not true everywhere that the school district supports such things or that sometimes the districts are so big they're just so overwhelmed they can't even imagine how to achieve such things. And that is the purpose of the charter school movement that the Vice President, Secretary Riley, and I have worked so hard to support. It basically says you can create your own school within the public school system. And we have charter schools that are created in many different ways. Sometimes you just take over an existing building, and the teachers run it; sometimes a group of teachers and parents run it. But the point is, you're free to get out from under all those rules and regulations you think you have to cover yourself against. And no one could have imagined a public school, for example, not only doing the things that were just described but actually buying out crack houses across the street or, if the parents are really poor and they want to be better role models for their kids and support them better, creating, in effect, microenterprises. And Los Angeles now has a $400 million bank that the Federal Government funded to try to help make loans to people who couldn't get loans any other way, and we'll probably be able to help to finance some of those folks. But this is just an example of what can be done if educators and parents work together to try to create their own future in circumstances people say are hopeless. People are never in hopeless circumstances unless they have no power to do anything about it. All this charter school movement did was to give people like this remarkable woman the power to change their own lives. So I think it's a very important component of it, and in our budget, which is part of this balanced budget amendment, we have enough funds to increase by tenfold the number of charter schools over the next 5 years. And I hope that they'll increase by a hundredfold just by local initiatives now, as these stories get out. And then of course, the real answer is for more people to be in a situation Susan is in, where the central administration just lets them do it in the first place. Thank you. Both of you were great. [The discussion continued.]”