No Child Left Inside Act of 2008

Press Release

NO CHILD LEFT INSIDE ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - September 18, 2008)

Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Chairman, this is the ultimate friendly amendment to this very solid bill, on which I commend the gentleman from Maryland for his leadership. Based on Mr. McKeon's positive comments earlier, I should probably make this very short and sweet.

In a nutshell, what this amendment does is it encourages organizations that apply for this environmental education grant program to describe on their application for Federal grants how they have partnered or how they intend to partner with a State or with a local park and recreation department.

As was mentioned in the earlier colloquy, Park and Recreation Departments all over the country already are very involved in environmental education programs, and that certainly holds true also for State park systems.

In Connecticut, we actually have a program, by coincidence, called the No Child Left Inside Program, which was instituted in 2006 by the Republican Governor of Connecticut, Jodi Rell, and by her outstanding commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, which again is following exactly the same mission that Mr. Sarbanes' bill is following, to encourage children to get outside, to experience nature, to learn about nature, and to hopefully stimulate an interest in environmental science, which again, as has been said many times here during the earlier debate, is an important way to make sure that we get children engaged and involved in science, technology, engineering, and math, which the education committee has spent many hours wrestling with because we clearly have an educational system which is not producing enough scientists and engineers to meet the workforce challenges of our country.

The Connecticut program utilizes State park systems which, again, are perfectly established right now to provide trained personnel, transportation equipment and programs funding to again provide a very solid and an enriching experience in nature. They work together with school systems in a variety of programs.

The Appalachian Connection program, which again uses the Appalachian Trail which goes through Connecticut, works collaboratively with school systems to bring children out to the Appalachian Trail. It's just an extraordinary part of Connecticut's environment.

In Bolton, Connecticut, they have the geography in October program. In Preston, Connecticut, there is a recycling program, which again is operated through the No Child Left Inside Program.

There are many examples of where working in collaboration between the State's park system and local school boards has really, again, provided a perfect model and an example of what this legislation seeks to achieve.

The National Recreation and Park Association and local parks departments all over the country have endorsed this amendment. It's a ``may'' not ``shall'' amendment, so it is purely voluntary in terms of encouraging local school districts to participate.

In conclusion, I just wanted to comment on some of the prior discussion regarding the energy needs of this country and how come we are taking up a bill like this.

In my State, where we have an active nuclear power plant that provides 40 percent of the power of the State, we build nuclear submarines in my district, if you talk to people in the industry, an industry which in America has not built a nuclear reactor since 1973, in fact the biggest challenge is not financing or national energy policy, because we have over 20 new applications for new nuclear reactors before the NRC today. If you talk to the people in the industry, their biggest challenge is human capital, that the average age of a nuclear engineer in this country is over age 55.

Because of that gap, which has existed because for a million different reasons, if we are really serious about promoting nuclear power as an avenue in the future, and with the cap and trade debate that is looming on the horizon in the future I believe it is going to be part our energy portfolio, the fact of the matter is we have to get serious about getting kids engaged and involved in science and engineering. And Mr. Sarbanes' legislation is all about that. It is exactly focused on the real energy needs that we have in this country, which is to create the scientists and engineers that are going to provide the solutions in all of the above avenues.

Madam Chairman, with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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