Sue Myrick: “I very much respect the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), and I know how hard she works to face…”

“I very much respect the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), and I know how hard she works to face the problems that are in the District, which everybody acknowledges. So I do want to say that this bill is in no way an attack on the D.C. school system. This bill is a way to look for solutions to help and to solve some of the problems. Most of the people will agree, and I think it has been well documented in the press, that there are a lot of problems in this school system. There are problems, yes, in school systems all over the country. It seems to be the number one issue that parents say they are concerned about, is the education of their children. What we are looking at doing with this bill is providing some choice for those parents. This bill would give those parents in D.C. the same opportunity as parents in other communities across the country have. Last fall when the private scholarship fund, the Washington Scholarship Fund was announced, this was only for 1,000 scholarships that would be paid for privately. There were 7,573 children who applied. That is one out of every six eligible children in the District applied. I think that sends a very strong message that there are parents in the D.C. school system who would like and appreciate their child to have that choice. This does not take any money away from the school system. This is additional money, additional dollars that are going into this program.”