Paul Coverdell: “first, I have the utmost respect for my good colleague from Virginia, but I do want to correct one statement that he…”

“first, I have the utmost respect for my good colleague from Virginia, but I do want to correct one statement that he made. He said that the underlying bill provides no provisions for school construction. That is not accurate. The underlying bill embraces the provisions of the Senator from Florida on the other side of the aisle that does have a significant expansion of funding for schools at the local level and, without creating a new bureaucracy, leaving all the decisions to be made at the local level rather than at the Department of Education. In the debate between the chairman and the Senator from Illinois, it is suggested that this does not carry that traditional, onerous Federal intervention with prevention. But I would just like to share with you that under this legislation, the Federal Government is required to establish a formula to allocate the school modernization bonds. The Federal Government would need to ensure that half the bonds go to the 100 largest school districts with the largest number of low-income children, and the other half of the bonds would go to the States and Puerto Rico divided in proportion of shares of Federal assistance according to the basic grant formula for the Elementary and Secondary School Act of 1965. The Federal Government would not only scrutinize the criteria and figure out who gets what, it would be required to do more.”