Remarks to students at Carlmont High School in Belmont, California

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 31, 1994

October 22, 1994

It's nice to be back in California. It's nice to be here in Belmont. It's nice to be here at Carlmont High School. I'm honored to be the first President to come here. And it's only fair that I came here to see your principal, since he didn't get to come and see me. Now that should not be interpreted as a sign of dissatisfaction with the lady who got to be principal of the year, but he would have made an awful good one. [Laughter] And he sounds to me like the principal of the year here.

I want to say how very honored I am to be here with all of you. I thank Mayor Rianda for her welcome, Mayor Davids for what he said. I thank them for their leadership and their devotion to public service at the grassroots level, where so many of our problems and challenges have to be met. I thank Congressman Lantos and Congresswoman Eshoo not only being my friends but for their extraordinary service in Washington. I can tell you that there is this popular feeling, I think, that nearly everybody who goes off to Washington has something bad happen to them and forgets about the folks back home; they do not. And they represent you well, and you should be very proud of them. I'm also very pleased to be joined today by your State treasurer, Kathleen Brown, and your State insurance commissioner, John Garamendi. Thank you, John. I'd like to introduce one other person, too, who is my partner in these education endeavors, a former colleague of mine and former Governor of Vermont and now the Deputy Secretary of Education, come all the way from Washington with me today, Governor Madeleine Kunin. Please make her feel welcome. I want to say a little more about Senator Feinstein in a moment, in connection with this work, but I appreciate what she said today.

But let me begin by saying that, as all of you know, I had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time in this magnificent State of yours a couple of years ago. And since I have been President, I think I've been back here a dozen times. I've worked on the emergencies for California, like the earthquake and the fires. I've worked on trying to get the economy of this State going again, to sell computers overseas, to sell the farmers' rice to Japan for the first time, to start the ship building industry in the southern part of the State, to help the defense conversion momentum really get going here so we could build a lot of jobs out of this defense downsizing and not just lose them. I've tried to do things that would help you deal with the crime and the immigration problems, real, concrete steps, not just talk about it. Ten thousand more police officers will come to California under the crime bill. We have doubled the number of immigration officers along the southern border of the State. We've begun to have a real impact in dealing with the problem of illegal immigration.

But what I want to say to you is that over the long run, if we are going to have a bright future for the people of the United States, and if California is going to work--and it can work, you look around at the students here, look at all the different ways they found to say welcome to me up there--if this country is going to work, and this State is going to work, then schools like this school have to work all across America. We have to prove that there is strength, not weakness, in our diversity. We have to prove that all children can learn. And we have to prove that with all the changes that we're going through in America today, we can still give our kids an old-fashioned, safe upbringing and a good education, because that is the key to the future of the global economy.

One of the least known stories, perhaps, of the recent concluded session of Congress is that it was the best session for education in at least three decades. [Applause] That's worth clapping for. I appreciate that. This Congress expanded the Head Start program, making more children eligible and making younger children eligible. This Congress passed the Goals 2000 bill, writing into national law our national education goals, world class standards, and saying that we would help to develop means of measuring whether we're meeting those standards but emphasizing that education reform has to come from the grassroots, school by school.

Just a couple of days ago I signed the elementary and secondary education act, which dramatically reduces the Federal regulations telling schools how to spend the money we give them to help kids who need extra help in schools and encourages schools to do things that will actually prove that children can learn without regard to their racial or economic background. The bill also, as Senator Feinstein said, helps to support the safe schools initiative and promotes the concept of character education when basic civic values to be taught in the schools are developed at the community level.

We also passed a bill for young people who don't go to college but do want to get good education, an apprenticeship bill to help every State in the country develop a system to guarantee that even those who don't go to college will have a chance to get some further education and training and get a good job with a prospect of a growing income.