Bob Filner: “We had Simon and Garfunkel a year ahead of us in school. I am the former President of the San Diego Board of Education…”

“We had Simon and Garfunkel a year ahead of us in school. I am the former President of the San Diego Board of Education, and I know how we have to make our children's education a top priority for all of us. Quality education demands that we provide our teachers and students with classrooms and school buildings that are not falling down around them. In my home town of San Diego, in the towns I represent, Chula Vista and National City, California, the needs are becoming almost overwhelming. The San Diego Unified School District, which is about the sixth biggest school district in the nation, serves 140,000 children, and we are growing at almost 2 percent a year. Willing to do their part, as the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) suggested in New York, the citizens of San Diego recently voted last year a $1.5 billion school bond, and they did that by over 75 percent of the vote. That is an incredible support to show that people are willing to use their own tax dollars for their top priority, their children. But our needs are almost 4 billion by the year 2,013. That is another 2\1/2\ billion have to be found. Twenty new elementary schools, two new middle schools, four new senior high schools have to be built by the year 2013. Further south in my district, the Sweetwater Union High School District, serves 33,000 students in grades 7 to 12. They need $240 million worth of modernization.”