Remarks at the Audubon Elementary School in Owensboro, Kentucky

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 8, 2000

May 3, 2000

Thank you very much. Thank you. I am delighted to see you all here. I think we should give Karen Cecil another round of applause. She did a great job, didn't she? [Applause] Superintendent Silberman, you might ought to just put her on the road as an advertising for the district.

I'm delighted to be here with all of you. I want to thank Governor Patton and Judi Patton for, first of all, for many years of friendship and support, and for, Governor, your truly magnificent leadership in this State. I have served--I was a Governor for 12 years, and I have served with over 150 Governors. And since I've been President 8 years, I guess I've known about 100 or so more. So I have some experience in this. He's one of the best I've ever seen, and I thank him very much. Thank you.

I thank your Lieutenant Governor, Steve Henry, for being here. And my longtime friend and also fellow former colleague, John Y. Brown, thank you, Governor, for coming. I'm glad to see you. And Senator Wendell Ford and Jean, I'm glad to see you. We miss you in Washington. I had to be funny Saturday night; they don't laugh enough since you came home. [Laughter] And we miss you.

I want to thank Attorney General Chandler and Treasurer Miller and Speaker Richards for being here, and the other State legislators who are here. And, Mayor Morris, thank you for welcoming me, along with the City Council. And I thank the Board of Education for their good work. I want to thank the AmeriCorps volunteers who are here for the work they do in the America Reads program. And thank you, Superintendent Silberman, and thank you, Diane Embry, for the work you do.

I've been in so many schools over the last 20 years, I can be in one for 5 minutes and know whether it's doing well or not. And there are a lot of rules, and you heard some of them today, but one of the things that Diane Embry did not say is that you nearly never have a good school unless you've got a great principal. And it's obvious that you've got a great principal here.

And I'd like to thank the bands who played. And most of all, I'd like to thank Crystal Davidson for letting me come into her class and read with her students. We read a chapter from "Charlotte's Web," a wonderful book. And Crystal said it was the students' favorite chapter. It's called "The Miracle," and it's about how Charlotte the spider weaves a magic web that says, "some pig." And everybody thinks that it's the pig that's special, not the spider, and as a consequence the pig is not sent off to make bacon. And it's a pretty good story for real life, I think. [Laughter] I may recommend it to the Congress when I get home. [Laughter]

I am told that I'm the first President to come to Owensboro since Harry Truman. He always did have good judgment, Harry. But I have known about Owenshoro for a long time, now. The Baptist minister that married Wendell and Jean Ford was my next-door neighbor in 1961. And his daughter graduated from high school with me and became one of my best friends and now is very active in the national adult literacy movement. So there's something in the atmosphere around here that promotes good education. I understand Lieutenant Governor Henry's mother was a 25-year veteran of the school system here in this county. So I'm delighted to be here.

I am on the first stop of a 2-day tour to highlight for the American people the good things that are happening in education in America and the challenges that are before us. I want people all across this country to know that there are places where people, against considerable odds, are bringing educational excellence to all our children. I want people to know this because the great challenge before us is how to get the reforms that worked in Audubon Elementary School into every elementary school in America.

And the first thing that you have to do if you want to achieve that goal is to know what was done and to believe it works. I came to Kentucky to show America how a whole State can identify and turn around its slow performing schools with high standards and accountability, parental involvement, and investments to help the schools and the students and the teachers meet the standards. After I leave you, I'm going on to Davenport, Iowa, to highlight the importance of having good school facilities. And this is a big issue, too. The average school building in America is over 40 years old; in many of our cities, the average school building is over 65 years old. We have school buildings in some of our cities that can't be wired for the Internet because the building just can't accommodate it. We have school buildings in New York City still being heated with coal-fired furnaces. We have elementary schools in America with 12 or 13 trailers out back because there are so many kids in the schools. So I'm going to Iowa to try to emphasize that.

And then tomorrow I'm going to St. Paul, Minnesota, to visit the first public charter school in America, which was basically created to give more accountability with less bureaucratic paperwork, and I'm going to talk about that. And then I'm going to Columbus, Ohio, to talk about the importance of teachers and results in the classrooms.