Frank Pallone: “One of the ironies, you are talking about Johnston County, but when we had the debate two weeks ago on the D.C.…”

“One of the ironies, you are talking about Johnston County, but when we had the debate two weeks ago on the D.C. appropriations bill, and there was the proposal which actually passed after some strong-arming here to include a voucher system within that for about 2,000 D.C. school kids, and I just thought it was so ironic, because if there is any school system that has greater needs in terms of dollars, for example, for infrastructure, their schools were closed down for three weeks in the beginning at September because the judge ruled they were unsafe and wanted the schools to be fixed up or renovated before they started the school year. What we as Democrats were saying in that debate is, you know, spend this voucher money, if you will, to better train the teachers, to fix up the schools, to improve academic performance. One of the things we did the day of the vote is a number of us went down, we did a little march where we went from the Capitol, from the House chamber here, down to a local public school, the one that was very close to here called the Brent School. It was only a few blocks away. But talk about innovative ideas. Like Johnston County, they are out there trying to improve the public school system in various ways. They have started a very innovative tutoring program, an after-school program that has again brought up not only the grades, but the proficiency, if you will, of the students. So basically now Brent School is a success story for the District of Columbia.”