It's time to uncork the bottle

NEA Today, Sep 2000

This Congress has bottled up legislation vital to children and public education, like common-sense gun control. We need to elect new people.

If you need just one reason to put pro-education people in Congress and the White House this November, listen to Colorado art teacher Patti Nielson, one of 30 people shot at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.

Nielson spoke this past spring on Mother's Day before 750,000 participants in the Million Mom March in Washington, D.C.

"I am outraged," she said, "that in the year since the Columbine tragedy, Congress has done nothing to protect our kids from gun violence. Nothing!"

Nielson was just one of many NEA members at the march, proudly wearin; "Moms NEA=Keeping Kids Safe" buttons in a demonstration that offered front-line educators their second oppor tunity in a week to push Congress for common-sense gun control legislation.

Just five days earlier, on National Teachers Day NEA members Andy Pope and Arlene Thomas spoke at a Capitol Hill press conference on experiences that convinced them of the need for curbs on child handgun possession.

Pope, a world history and geography teacher at Chadron High School in Nebraska, told reporters about what it was like to be shot in the chest in 1995 by a 13-year-old student in his class.

"My oldest son, Mitch, was in the classroom across the hall when I was shot," he shuddered. "A 13-year-old should not have access to a handgun."

Thomas, a school law enforcement officer at Camden High School in New Jersey agrees.

"Sometimes at my school we use a hand-held metal detector, but kids have many ways to go around detectors," she noted at last spring's news conference. "We need to stop the guns from getting in their hands in the first place."

Added Thomas: "We need roadblocks against those who buy 50 guns at a time and sell them on our streets, and we need child safety locks to prevent a child from accidentally firing a loaded handgun at another child."

Many of these concerns are addressed in S. 254, the Senate bill now stalled in conference committee.

This legislation, if enacted, would require background checks at gun shows and pawn shops, outlaw juvenile possession of semiautomatic weapons, require child safety locks and devices on new handguns, and ban imports of high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Joining Pope and Thomas last spring were NEA President Bob Chase and pro-public education lawmakers from both parties, including Representative Michael Castle, a Republican from Delaware.

"Gun safety and school safety are not partisan issues," Castle said. "We need to send a message to our congressional leadership that we want to work the will of the American people and enact these safety measures as soon as possible."

NEA's Chase was blunter yet: "No more delays, no more excuses. The time has come for every lawmaker to put kids and their safety first."

But delays and excuses are gumming the machinery of Capitol Hill, where common-sense gun control-along with reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, federal aid for school modernization, and money for emergency school repairs in high-- needs districts-have been deliberately stalled by congressional leaders.

"Broad educational policy changes are unlikely to happen this year," says NEA lobbyist Joel Packer. "The failure of Congress to address the needs of kids and schools is proof that we need to elect more pro-public education lawmakers this November."

A reminder of all that's at stake in November 2000:

The offices. Up for grabs this year are the Presidency the entire U.S. House of Representatives, one-third of the Senate, 11 gubernatorial seats, and control of several state legislatures.

The issues. Whoever's in charge at the federal and state levels will set the tone for public education in areas ranging from special education funding to teacher recruitment and retention.

Your future. This year, you'll hear lots of debate on proposals that affect you-from vouchers to Social Security privatization. Stay tuned.

For more information on important education legislation now stalled in Congress, go to www.nea.org/lac/.