Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer an amendment, along with my colleagues Frederica Wilson from Florida and Danny Davis of Illinois. This amendment is straightforward. It is protective in nature, and it ensures that high poverty schools are not adversely affected by H.R. 5's proposed change in the funding allocation formula for teacher support and development under title II of the ESEA. Now, if we don't adopt this amendment, we may inadvertently break a long bipartisan agreement that we've had regarding our fundamental need to ensure that our low-income students are not assigned less qualified teachers than their advantaged peers. The reality is that a school district serving students in poverty faces many challenges in recruiting and in retaining teachers as well as other qualified staff. I believe that the Rules Committee made this in order because it wanted the body to have an opportunity to meet this long bipartisan agreement. H.R. 5, as current drafted, would totally eliminate the current formula, which focuses on funding students in poverty, and replaces it with a formula that equally weights poverty and population. As written, we have strong reason to fear that H.R. 5 would result in Federal dollars being siphoned from States and schools with the poorest students and awarded to the States and schools without similar levels of poverty.…”