EDUCATION IS OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS, CONGRESS, AND CONSTITUENTS

On 2025-04-07, Representative Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-VA-3) delivered a floor speech titled "EDUCATION IS OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS, CONGRESS, AND CONSTITUENTS" in the House.

EDUCATION IS OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS, CONGRESS, AND CONSTITUENTS

Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 62 (Monday, April 7, 2025) [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 62 (Monday, April 7, 2025)] [House] [Pages H1447-H1455] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] EDUCATION IS OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS, CONGRESS, AND CONSTITUENTS (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Ms. McClellan of Virginia was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader. ) General Leave Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order hour. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Haridopolos). Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from Virginia? There was no objection. Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to co-anchor this CBC Special Order hour along with my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn). For the next 60 minutes, members of the CBC have an opportunity to speak directly to the American people on education, an issue of great importance to the Congressional Black Caucus, Congress, and the constituents who we represent. Mr. Speaker, in the 1880s, my great-grandfather founded a school in his rural community because the State of Alabama did not provide a good education to Black children. As explained in his autobiography, he wanted to teach children, whose parents and grandparents had been enslaved on plantations nearby, to be of better service to themselves, their employers, and the community in which they lived. In the 1930s, my father and his sisters attended that school because the State [[Page H1448]] of Tennessee did not provide a good education to Black children. Like his father and his grandfather, my dad became an educator himself, ultimately teaching the next generation of educators at Virginia State University. In the 1950s, my mother had to move away from her hometown because the State of Mississippi did not provide a good education for Black children. The only school that did was run by the Catholic church, but only up until the eighth grade. As the third youngest of 14 children, she wanted more than the domestic and laborer jobs that were available to her parents, her grandparents, and her siblings. She had to move to go to high school, becoming an educator herself, eventually running the TRiO Programs at Virginia State University. These are federally funded programs run by the Department of Education to work to ensure that children like her have the support they need to go to and graduate college. My parents understood how important a good education is not only to individual opportunity, but to a thriving, healthy economy, community, and democracy. Like my grandparents and great-grandparents before them, they dedicated their lives to ensuring not only that their children had a good education but every child did. Not every child is so lucky. The legacy of 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow, massive resistance, and chronic underfunding have created too many obstacles to the ability of States and local governments to give every child an opportunity for a good education. For the past 20 years, first as a State legislator and now in Congress, I have worked to ensure that every child in Virginia could have a good education. As the mother of two children in public schools, I know that, even with bipartisan and Herculean efforts, there are still gaps in Virginia and across the country. The Department of Education was created to fill those gaps. The Department protects students' civil rights, particularly those with disabilities who often need special accommodation to learn. It provides support to attract, train, and retain the best and brightest teachers, school administrators, support personnel such as counselors, nurses, and mental and behavioral health specialists, especially in hard-to- staff rural or urban schools. It measures and tracks academic progress across the country and helps those school divisions that lag behind address areas of concern. It manages student loan and grant programs that ensure children without financial means can go to and succeed in college without incurring more debt than they could ever pay off. The Trump administration's illegal actions to dismantle the Department of Education will ensure that these gaps remain. The administration claims that it is just returning control of public education back to States and localities. States and localities have always had that control, but they have not always had the will or the ability to ensure that every child can get a good education. In my own State of Virginia, State and local officials and educators right now fear that local agencies and the Virginia Department of Education will not have the funding or the staff to handle the workload, especially in areas like special education. The block grant funding that the Trump administration promises comes with little accountability, making it unclear whether the funds will actually reach the students and schools that need them the most: children with disabilities in rural and low-income communities. Education lays the foundation for a strong future. Our Founding Fathers understood that. Today's students are the entrepreneurs, civic leaders, teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and Members of Congress of tomorrow. We owe it to our parents, our grandparents, and our great- grandparents to protect and build upon the progress that they have made. We owe it to our children and theirs to fight efforts to roll back that progress now. Mr. Speaker, it is now my privilege to yield to the gentleman from the great State of South Carolina, the Honorable James Clyburn. Mr. CLYBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. McClellan) tonight in opposition to the Trump administration's attacks on education. Mr. Speaker, as the gentlewoman just mentioned, our country has a very spotty history when it comes to educating everybody. I know a lot about the history she just mentioned in Alabama and Mississippi and now in Virginia. Hailing from South Carolina, my own dad was not allowed an education beyond the seventh grade by the State of South Carolina. Thanks to Black churches. In fact, in my congressional district, there are seven HBCUs. Only two are supported by the State. The other five are church schools: The AME Church at Allen University; the Baptists at Benedict College and Morris College; and Episcopalians at Voorhees. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion, AME Zion, has a school up in Rock Hill outside of my district. I better mention Claflin University in Orangeburg, as well. Mr. Speaker, as we talk about education and think about the Trump administration's efforts to minimize the importance of focusing on areas that have been left out of the process, I will mention a couple things here tonight that is going to run a little bit contrary to what my staff has researched for me. The knowledge and skills of our young people and the things that they learn in school should not be limited to people who look like them or only people with similar backgrounds and experiences. We learn from each other when we bring to discussion a plethora of backgrounds and experiences that we can learn from. I found that out in my own marriage. I was married to the same woman for 58 years. I remember when schools were first integrated and the courts demanded in the case called Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education in Charlotte, North Carolina, that we ought to allow busing to educate children. Mr. Speaker, I thought there was something wrong with that decision. I didn't like it because I thought it put too much burden on students. {time} 2000 I went out talking about my opposition to that decision. In fact, I spoke to a TV reporter who held the mike in my face and I waxed what I thought was eloquent until I got home. When I got home, my wife was standing in the middle of the door, tears were streaming down her face. I asked her what was wrong. I thought maybe something had happened to our daughter. We had one child at the time. I rushed toward her, what is wrong? Is something wrong with Mignon? She said no. There is nothing wrong with Mignon. I just saw you on television and there is something wrong with you. Sit down and let me ``splain'' something to you. Now, it is one thing to get an explanation, but when the Gullah Geechee woman from South Carolina starts ``splaining,'' it is time to sit down, and I did. She told me about her experiences growing up in rural South Carolina when her class, her students did not have schoolbuses. They had to walk 2.5 miles to school every morning and 2.5 miles back home every afternoon. She told me that the White kids had buses. They would ride by them and throw urine-filled balloons as they walked. She said to me on that day, they were not against busing then and you best not be against busing now. I learned the difference in our backgrounds. I grew up on a paved street. I walked three blocks to my elementary school, six blocks to my middle school, and I am a graduate of Mather Academy. We called it a boarding school in those days. So I didn't know what it was like to have to walk 2.5 miles to school. Then I reflected on those children in Clarendon County, South Carolina, who walked 9.5 miles to school every day, no bus. The White kids had buses and they had to walk. Why? Because the superintendent of education said that yours don't pay enough taxes for buses. That is what we have been trying to get over in this country. That is why we had Brown v. Board of Education, which started in that little town of Summerton, South Carolina, as Briggs v. Elliott when a Federal [[Page H1449]] judge, Waties Waring, himself a great-grandson of a Confedera

Referenced legislation: HR433