Max Cleland: “The modified amendment I offer today reduces funding for the National Center for School and Youth Safety from $50…”

“The modified amendment I offer today reduces funding for the National Center for School and Youth Safety from $50 million to $25 million, and it creates separate authorizations for the National Center and the Safe Communities, Safe Schools grant program. It has been almost 2 years ago to the day that a 16-year-old boy brought a .22-caliber rifle and .375 magnum revolver to Heritage High School in Conyers, GA and opened fire on six students. The shooting occurred in my hometown of Lithonia, GA, where I grew up. The day was May 20, 1999, exactly one month after the deadly Columbine High School massacre, which took the lives of 15 people. The shootings at Heritage High, at Columbine, the school shootings in Springfield, OR, in Jonesboro, AR, in West Paducah, KY and other school tragedies around the country underscore in red the crisis of juvenile violence in America. Our schools were once safe havens in this country. Today, according to data from the Department of Education, they are the setting for one-third of the violence involving teenagers in this Nation.”