Cleo Fields: “Absolutely. I think the President is so right on this initiative. And if others, local, State, and the business…”

“Absolutely. I think the President is so right on this initiative. And if others, local, State, and the business community will all join hands and do something similar, just work with this initiative or have one similar to it, we can refurbish, rebuild and have new construction of schools all across America so we can give our kids an opportunity to learn again. We cannot, and I have said it over and over again tonight, we cannot expect learning to take place in a classroom when you have students walking in the classrooms all across America that do not have the proper tools. What purpose does it serve when we have students sitting in classrooms when they do not even have the proper textbooks? We have three and four students sharing the same textbook. We have some students that do not have a textbook at all. These are real situations that teachers have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. We have to address that calamity. The biggest national threat we have in this country is how we deal with education and how we deal with illiteracy. We have to give our kids a fighting chance. A final example. Who is committing crimes in this country? Over 83 percent of the people in jail are, what, high school dropouts? The people involved in drugs for the most part, many of them are high school dropouts. Most of the people who are unemployed, high school dropouts. We have to do a better job of retaining our kids in school and do a better job of educating our youth.”