Blake Moore: “More than 27 years ago Congress made a promise to our local school boards and State school boards, and we said to the…”

“More than 27 years ago Congress made a promise to our local school boards and State school boards, and we said to the educators across our country, you take special needs children out of our hospitals and institutions and bring them into the public schools for education, and we, Congress, will pay 40 percent of the cost of educating those children. The States and locals did. Congress did not. An unfunded Federal mandate, a promise made, a promise broken, and we are doing it again now. I voted for the No Child Left Behind Act. I think it was the right thing to do. I want accountability in our schools, and I want to leave no child behind, and I want our schools to succeed. But when we place additional requirements on our schools without adequate funding, it is another unfunded Federal mandate, and we are short $6.15 billion this year. Our educators, I talked to all of our school superintendents in our districts. We have some of the best schools in the whole country in my district, but they said, unanimously, we can do the job of educating our children, but we cannot do it without the resources when additional requirements are put on us. That is what this is about. This is not about blinking. This is not about blinking. This is about educating our children and a promise made and a promise we are about to break again.”