Departments of Labor, Health and Human Sevices, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2008

Floor Speech

Departments of Labor, Health and Human Sevices, and Education, and Related Agenceis Appropriations Act of 2008

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

The Acting CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Maryland is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, this concept of community schools Mr. Walsh correctly refers to is a concept that is present in many States, many communities.

My wife Judy was the supervisor of early childhood education in Prince Georges County, Maryland, just down the road. She started a concept in our county of full service schools, community schools. There are now 24 Judy Centers in the State of Maryland. Maryland has paid for them, started them.

The problem with a full service community school, as Judy found out and as all of us know, is the turf battles. The turf battles are ferocious. Some people have made fun of the fact that it takes a village to raise a child. Now, obviously, hopefully every child has a good parent. But we have many services available to make sure that our young people, when they get to the ninth grade, are ready to succeed in the ninth and 10th and 11th and 12th
grades. But those services in many communities are discordant and not coordinated. So the concept of a full service or a community school is to bring together services, not in a forced way, but in a cooperative way.

Now, the gentlelady refers to the authorization on the appropriation bill. I know that the ranking member is shocked by that ever happening. I remember, perhaps before the gentlelady got here, when Bill Frist added 40 pages in the dead of night of authorizing language to an appropriation bill just a few years ago to preclude insurance company liability.

The fact of the matter is this $10 million in NIE is to encourage, facilitate cooperation, not to mandate spending more money; but to encourage educators, social services, child care providers, other services, as they have in the State of New York. I have visited some of them in the city.

So I would hope that we would not take this $10 million and add it to an $11 billion program. A critically important program, the gentlelady is absolutely correct, but it is a program that is funded $800 million more than President Bush asked for by this bill. And in order to add that $10 million to an $11 billion program, you will undermine the effort to see if we can create cooperation, in effect magnifying the role of each as they cooperate with one another. That is the concept, and it is a concept that works.

Superintendent Grasmick in my State has talked about this concept all over this country. I have talked about it to Secretary Spelling; I have talked about it to their predecessors. In fact, we did pass a bill through the House that didn't make it through conference which LYNN WOOLSEY had sponsored which had this concept. It is a concept that the Education and Labor Committee is now considering. They may go much broader than this.

But this is what NIE is all about. It is trying to facilitate better ways to deliver education to our children. And I remind the gentleman from New York, who is my friend and I am pleased to see him as the ranking member, but we do participate significantly in the education of children in this country, particularly children at risk. That is what this attempts to do as well, to magnify the services available, coordinate them, bring them together so they are accessible by people who can't get in their car at $3.15, and drive from this place to the other place to the other place to get services for their children.

So I would hope, ladies and gentlemen of this House, that we would reject this amendment. I thank the chairman for including this provision in the bill, and I would hope that the amendment would be rejected.

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Mr. HOYER. I would simply say to the gentlelady, it so happens I have known two of your Governors pretty well, once as a young person, Terry Sanford, and as a contemporary of Jim Hunt, who was a good friend of mine for the last 45 years.

You mentioned the programs that you have in North Carolina. BOBBY ETHERIDGE, of course one of the former superintendents of your State's system, your State has been an innovative, progressive leader in education and Jim Hunt has been one of the educational leaders in our country. I have no doubt, because I have worked with him over the last 20 years that I have been in Congress on various programs while he was Governor and since then, that, yes, you have moved ahead in North Carolina, but you have also done it in partnership with many Federal programs. I know that because I have worked with your Governor on that. I simply wanted to make that point. Again, this is a partnership. And I thank my friend for yielding.

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