Political Quotes

“I have heard this repeatedly over this debate in the last hour, that if this amendment is adopted, this destroys the straight A's program. This amounts to 5.7 percent, according to the Congressional Research Service, of the funding in the pilot Straight A's Program, title I, non-title I funds under that title I program. Not 40 percent. To say you cannot fund the block grant program with 94 percent of the money does not make any sense to me. Rather than stripping the program, we are taking the pilot program and setting aside afterschool in that pilot program. As we said earlier, we are talking about a program that includes 7 States and 25 districts. It could be more than 7 States over the 7 years of this entire bill. We don't debate this bill again for 7 years. Obviously, for children who are starting elementary school, they will have completed elementary school by the time we come back and revisit the issue. To say in a pilot program we will block grant everything made at the State level, and if a local school district wants to apply for funds for afterschool, they will depend upon a State educational authority or a Governor to say, yes or no, is totally up to the discretion of the State authority. There is no review process at all. They can apply, and for whatever reason, they can say no. Afterschool programs are the most highly sought after grants in the history of the Department of Education.”