Remarks at a Tribute to Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., of North Carolina

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 30, 2000

But we've tried to focus this money on what works. For example, when I became President, we were giving no support to the States for after-school programs and summer school and night programs, to turn the schools into community learning centers, nothing, even though we knew that we had all these latchkey kids and that they needed some place to go.

Well, now, we're serving 800,000 of them, and we want to go to 1.6 million of them in this budget. And it's the best money we could spend. And a lot of these schools have absolutely no capacity to afford things like this unless we do it. We started in '94. Only 14 percent of our schools and 3 percent of our classrooms were connected to the Internet. Because of the leadership of the Vice President and getting the E-rate, which allows even the poorest schools in North Carolina a 90 percent discount so they can hook on, we have gone from 14 percent of our schools to 95 percent of our schools connected to the Internet; from 3 percent of our classrooms to 65 percent of our classrooms connected to the Internet. So we're moving this thing a long way.

And our basic philosophy is, then, that we should not micromanage what the schools do but that we should target the funds, since it's only 7 percent, to the areas that the educators and the research says will have the biggest impact.

Now that's the real fundamental debate in this election. And if you listen to--both sides say they're for accountability, and they are. And as I've said, I think our accountability proposal that our candidate for President, Vice President Gore, and the others have embraced is better. And I believe Jim and Paul agree with me, but we don't have to argue that out. The point is, that's the good news. The good news is that the American people believe that there should be higher standards and accountability.

But we believe it ought to be accountability-plus--plus funds for 100,000 new teachers for smaller classes in the early grades; plus a tax credit to help to cut the costs of raising bond issues to build or modernize schools; plus funds to help repair 5,000 schools a year. We've got $100 billion school construction and repair deficit in America today. I bet you there is--no telling how many schools in North Carolina and Kentucky, where the kids are going to schools in housetrailers or where big closets have been converted to classrooms or where old buildings are so old they can't--I've been in schools that are so decrepit they can't even be wired for the Internet.

So we have standards and accountability, plus the tools to do the job. And I think that is consistent with the stunning record of Jim Hunt. If you look at what he's done, he's gone out there and given local communities the tools they need to give children early childhood education, access to health care, and strategies to turn around schools that aren't performing. It works, and we ought to do more of it.

The only other thing It would say that's highly relevant to this is, you can't get blood out of a turnip. If you're going to spend money, you've got to have the money to spend. And that's the other big issue in this election. I don't want to get into a political debate about the structure of tax programs or even how the Social Security should be reformed. I have my own ideas, but someone else will have to make that decision. But I just want to make a basic point here that I think is fundamental to this.