Posted on 06/06/2008 6:29:56 AM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds
Every 26 seconds, a student drops out of high school in the United States. National test scores reveal that half of all low-income fourth graders cannot read. Given such alarming statistics, you’d think that helping at-risk kids would be the top education-related priority on Capitol Hill.
Apparently not. As far as Congress is concerned, the real problem with public education in America is that it’s not environmentally friendly enough.
On Wednesday, the House passed the “21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act,” a $6.4 billion school-construction program. Essentially, it’s a regulatory gift bag for environmental groups and labor unions
The legislation creates a new federal grant program to provide states and local school districts with money to build and modernize schools. Among the reasons offered by Chairman George Miller’s Education and Labor Committee for supporting the legislation: to “create jobs in the construction industry” and make “schools that are more energy efficient and reliant on renewable resources of energy” to reduce “emissions that contribute to global warming.
Under the plan, states and localities would be required to use federal dollars to make schools consistent with environmental standards established by the U.S. Green Building Council. States also would receive funding to encourage state agencies to track public schools’ carbon “footprints” and energy efficiency. In all, the Congressional Budget Office projects the program would cost $20.3 billion over five years.
Environmental groups aren’t the only special interests the legislation rewards. Labor unions win, too. The legislation includes the Depression-era Davis-Bacon prevailing-wage regulations, which require projects funded by the program to pay workers wages at least equal to similar projects in the locality.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
The school’s are fine. “No Child Left Behind” fixed ‘em.
Once the media and the Dems (but I repeat myself) position “global warming” as the great crisis of the 21st century...
...they will take your money to “fix” it. What’s going on is very clear.
About ten days ago a group of scientists held a press conference at the National Press Club in DC presenting a list of 31,000 scientists who claim “global warming” is a fiction....
...not one major MSM outlet covered it.
“High” on Green is a great way to put it.
If congress really wanted the schools to go green, they would pass a tax credit for home schooling and/or cyber schooling. Just think how much gasoline would be saved hauling fewer kids back and forth to school and how much heating oil would be saved by building and maintaining fewer buildings.
Before all of the school bashers begin, please look at the demographics of our schools. The main reason Congress will not address this is because they would be slapped in the face with the fact illegal immigration is to blame for most of this. I have been in schools where the majority of the school speak Spanish only. These same students are required to take the Standardized Test.
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