Remarks at James Ward Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Jan 15, 2001

I have believed for 4 years that the National Government should give both tax incentives and direct cash investment to the repair, the modernization, and the building of school facilities. I've also been in one of the mayor's new school buildings here to highlight this. We've done this--did you ever see that movie "Groundhog Day," where every day is the same thing over and over again? Every time I--Mayor Daley thought I was casting him in "Groundhog Day," I think, for a long time, because every time I'd come back here, we'd have to talk about the same thing, because we could never get anything done.

But I'm happy to report that this year, for the first time, we have finally secured $1.2 billion to help repair schools like this one across America where the need is greatest. Now, let me say to you, one of your former United States Senators, Everett Dirksen, once said in his droll way that when you mentioned a billion here and a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. And that sounds like an enormous amount of money, but the truth is that the aggregate net need for school construction and school repair in the United States of America is over $100 billion.

That's why I think it is so important for the Congress to continue to try to get the tax relief that I have suggested, which would, in effect, cut the cost of school financing, so that if school districts went out and floated their own bonds, or cities floated their bonds for school construction or school repair, the cost would be dramatically reduced to the taxpayers, making it easier to sell such issues to taxpayers whose kids are not in the schools. And I think we should continue to invest direct resources from the Federal Government.

But this is a big beginning. And I predict that that this program will be wildly popular throughout America, because I can see how you feel about this school building today, and I can only imagine how different it was before it was fixed 5 years ago.

Eight years ago we knew that children learn best in smaller classes, but classes were getting larger for the same reason school buildings were deteriorating: more kids, limited tax base. Today, we are in the third year of hiring 100,000 teachers for smaller classes in the early grades. If we can get them all hired, we'll be able to bring down average class size to 18 in grades K through 3 all across America.

Again, I'm really grateful to the Congress. In the last education budget, concluded after the election, we went from a budget which hired about 29,000 teachers last year to one that will hire 37,000 this coming year. So we'll be more than a third of the way home in a 6-year program. And I hope and pray that the Congress will continue to do this.

We've also funded initiatives to help recruit new teachers, retain the best teachers, train and certify more board-certified national teachers, and let every teacher keep learning on the job. And one of the things that I think Sharon Wilcher should be commended for, I understand, is giving her staff every chance to continue to learn and grow. Staff development is a big, important part of keeping the school going in the right direction.