Pete Stark: “I oppose the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations (Labor--HHS) Bill considered in the House…”

“I oppose the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations (Labor--HHS) Bill considered in the House today. education suffers under this bill This bill would have devastating effects on students and our education system and I strongly urge my colleagues to reject this bill. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been busy with their education agenda this year. We've debated a Constitutional Amendment to allow for prayer in schools and we've tried to eliminate affirmative action programs for minority students. We've also tried to provide public dollars for private schools--not once, but twice, and to eliminate public dollars to be used for the purposes of educating our bilingual students. Lucky for our students, parents and teachers, Democrats have an education agenda, too. The Democratic plan will improve public education. We want to reduce the average class size in the early grades by helping local school districts hire 100,000 new qualified teachers. We want to provide federal tax credits to pay the interest on $22 billion in bonds for the modernization and construction of more than 5,000 schools. We want to make sure that schoolchildren have somewhere to go after school instead of hanging out on the streets. We are promoting after school learning opportunities for students. We support expanding resources for educational technology in order to ensure that every classroom and school library is connected to the Internet by 2001.”