TABLE OF CONTENTS *

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MIKE CASTLE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES *

OPENING STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE LORETTA SANCHEZ, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES *

STATEMENT OF MS. JACINTH M. CISNEROS, PARENT, ANAHEIM UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT, ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF MS. KIM CORRAL, FIRST GRADE TEACHER, GARDEN GROVE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF MS. LINDA HOWE, PRESIDENT, GARDEN GROVE PTA, GARDEN GROVE, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF MS. OLIVIA TAPIA, 1999 GRADUATE, SANTA ANA HIGH SCHOOL, SANTRA ANA, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF MR. BRUCE KERNS, DIRECTOR, STONE & YOUNGBERG, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF MS. LAURIE SMITH, DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS, PROJECT TOMORROW - PARTNERSHIP FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION, ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF MR. DANNY WONG, PACIFIC BELL PIONEERS PROGRAM, TUSTIN, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF MS. PAT HALBERSTADT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GARDEN GROVE GIRLS AND BOYS CLUB, GARDEN GROVE, CA *

STATEMENT OF MR. MAX MADRID, DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY SERVICES PROGRAMS, SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF SERGEANT JOE VARGAS, POLICE ACTIVITIES LEAGUE PROGRAM, ANAHEIM POLICE DEPARTMENT, ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA *

APPENDIX A -- WRITTEN OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MIKE CASTLE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES *

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., in the City of Anaheim Council Chambers, 200 South Anaheim Boulevard, Anaheim, California, Hon. Mike N. Castle, [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

Present: Representatives Castle and Sanchez

Staff Present: Lynn Selmser, Professional Staff Member; Alex Nock, Legislative Associate; Sarah Anderson, Press Secretary.

Chairman Castle. Good morning. My name is Mike Castle and I hail from across the country where we have really warm weather, unlike California. I am from Delaware and it is about 103 or 104 degrees there.

Of course, it is about 13 degrees in the winter sometimes, too, so there are some offsets to all of that. I am happy to be in California after going through the last three days there.

I am the Chairman of the Early Childhood, Youth and Families Subcommittee which is part of the Education and Workforce Committee in Washington, D.C. I would like to welcome all of you, obviously, those who are going to testify and be with us, but all of you who joined us today at this hearing on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Over the last several years my Subcommittee and the full Education and Workforce Committee have worked together to create the Reading Excellence Act and to reform federal education programs including I.D.E.A. I.D.E.A., for those who may not know, pertains to those with disabilities. It is a significant federal program. It is the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act is actually the acronym, at least the acronym I.D.E.A.

We have also been working on higher education programs, vocational education and Headstart. This year, we hope to build on that list of accomplishments and as the first order of business we are considering changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. As many of you know, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is a primary means by which the federal government provides assistance to our nation's elementary and secondary schools.

As a matter of fact, most of the programs that you are going to hear about on a federal level -- and by the way the federal level in education is about 6.8 percent of all the funding of education -- most of the programs you are going to hear about when you talk about the federal government are under the auspices of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

As the Chairman of the Subcommittee, it is my job to insure that at the end of the day this reauthorization provides our schools, teachers and our communities the necessary resources to help our children obtain the best possible education.

The Committee has already held a series of hearings, both in Washington and in the field -- that is what this is considered when we leave Washington and go where, as we say, the real people are -- on Title I for disadvantaged students, professional development, safe and drug free schools, Even Start and several other ESEA programs. Additional hearings are scheduled for the coming months.

The testimony we receive at these hearings will help us identify weaknesses in the law and guide our reform process. I participate in these hearings because I believe that individuals who work with these education programs on a daily basis are well suited to tell us what works and what does not, in their schools and for their students.

Essentially, we use a five-minute rule in Washington. We seem to carry it all over the country, even to the far West. We each take five minutes in our brief openings and then the witnesses will each have five minutes. We have basically an egg timer I think here, so when that thing goes off it means five minutes is up. Feel comfortable to wrap up.

We do not mean you stop talking in five minutes, but we hope at that point you consider your time is coming to the end. Then Ms. Sanchez and I may have, will have, I am sure, some questions to ask of the witnesses as well. We do that because there are a number of witnesses and a couple of panels that we have to get through in the course of a day.

Let me just say while there are two of us here, this testimony which is submitted is then submitted to the full Committee.

We have two very key staff people here, Lynn and Alex and Ms. Sanchez' staff will be helping us sort through all of this and then it goes out to the full Committee. So a lot of people end up seeing this. It is well beyond just the two of us.

We thank all of you for taking the time to appear before the Subcommittee. Now I will be more than happy to yield briefly to Congresswoman Sanchez for any opening statement she may wish to make, let me first just thank her for hosting this, for being kind enough to host us in California. We are delighted to be here in your District and hopefully we are going to learn a lot about education here.

WRITTEN OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MIKE CASTLE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES - SEE APPENDIX A

Ms. Sanchez. Well, thank you, Chairman Castle and welcome to sunny California, although we are not as hot as back in the East and to tell you the truth it is nice to be out here this week instead of having to be put through that heat and let me welcome you to Orange County and particular to the City of Anaheim which is my home town and actually many of the school districts you will hear from were the same public schools that I attended. So we are real excited to be here today.

Let me begin by just giving a couple of minutes to our Mayor Pro Tem of the City of Anaheim, Shirley McCracken, for an official welcome to all of us here.

Ms. McCracken. It is my pleasure to welcome you today to the City of Anaheim for this timely and important hearing. We opened a new school today. It does not satisfy our needs because we have many of our schools that are on double sessions as well as on year round session.

On behalf of the Mayor and my colleagues on the Anaheim City Council, I would like to convey our best wishes for an informative and enlightening hearing.

I am particularly impressed with the hearing agenda and the wide array of perspectives the Committee is seeking. Thirty years ago today I was interviewed for a job in the Anaheim Union High School District and that is what brought me across the country to Anaheim.

As a parent and a grandparent, I realize how important it is to have parent involvement, as well as business and community participation in framing public policy. It is clearly evident that you value this contribution which will affect our children's future in the community and the workforce for years to come.

Thank you, Congresswoman Sanchez, Chairman Castle for bringing this subject to light in our community. I hope your day is successful and if by chance you have the time you might check out the progress in our resort area. Believe it or not, Catella Avenue is unrecognizable from what it was just a few months ago and in less than 180 days we will have many of the projects completed.

Thank you again for choosing Anaheim as the venue for this important hearing.

Chairman Castle. Mayor, may I ask you a question? You said that you are opening a school. Will it actually be in use now?

Ms. McCracken. Yes.

Chairman Castle. You also referred to year round; I am just curious, will it actually be in use even before the regular school year begins?

Ms. McCracken. Because we are on year round school.

Chairman Castle. Because of the year round circumstances. Interesting.

Ms. Sanchez. Chairman Castle, we have here in Anaheim about twice the rate of school enrollment growth of the top five states with the top school enrollment across the nation. We have year round, four track year round school and in this past year we also added double sessions besides busing and other alternatives and portables. So we are really in a crunch with respect to school construction.

Ms. McCracken. It is a growing population and lots of young people.

Chairman Castle. I will say.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, thank you, Shirley, for your welcome.

Chairman Castle. Thank you.

Ms. Sanchez. And I would also like to welcome our witnesses who have so graciously volunteered their time today and of course, the public, also. I know that we are going to be joined by many as we go throughout the day here.

You know, in trying to figure out what we would focus on because one hearing, we are very fortunate that the Chairman gave us this hearing today. There are so many unique programs in Anaheim and in other parts of Orange County that we represent. I really wanted to highlight what parents and businesses and the community are doing, working together for our schools.

Kids today have so many needs, so many needs; so many more needs than I had even when I went through the system. And we are all responsible to help meet those needs. Teachers cannot do it alone. Parents cannot do it alone and it is too late for the universities. By the time our kids get to college and of course, a recent event in the nation proved that our own children certainly cannot make it on their own.

When I say communities, I mean parents. I mean business, the private sector, the corporate world, the law enforcement and the nonprofits and of course, our institutions of higher learning as well. That is because all of us share in the responsibility. Parents have to read to their children, communicate with teachers and administrators and work on homework with their kids. That is why programs like Headstart, of which I am a product, are so successful. They do not just focus on one child. They focus on a family. They focus on children and their parents.

Businesses know that the only way to insure a quality workforce is to work early on to insure, especially in the kindergarten through 12th grade area. Every part of our community has a role to play. We have to work with boys and girls clubs, 4-H groups, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, after school, alternative programs, you name it. We need to be working towards the 21st century with all of it. And so, that is why we are here today.

In a recent study, most children here in Anaheim have caring parents. We are working together and you are going to see some of those examples, Chairman. But that is not the case everywhere. For example, a recent study of high school students and families, parents reported being fairly involved with their children's lives, but when the researchers talked to the students, they got a different story.

Over half the students said it did not matter if they walked through the front door with a C grade or lower. Their parents would not say anything. Forty percent said their parents never went to school events and a full one third said their parents had no idea what their kids do in school.

And so clearly we have a lot of work to day and I hope that when we share our experts out in the field here with us, we will get some ideas on what we should be doing.

Our first panel will focus on families and the role that parents play in the children's academic success. Jacinth Cisneros is the parent of two children in the Anaheim Union School District. She has served as a school principal as well as a PTA Board Member, a Girl Scout leader and a classroom volunteer.

Kim Corral is a first grade teacher at Park View Elementary who has taught in the Garden Grove School District for three years. She has taught a variety of age levels from preschool to adult and she also has served as youth sports coach.

Linda Howe is the President of the Garden Grove Council of the Parent Teacher Student Association and she serves on several community boards. She is also the mother of four children in preschool through fourth grade.

Last, but certainly not least, today we have Olivia Tapia with us today. Olivia graduated from Santa Ana High School this past year where she served as her student body president.

And so without further ado I think we should get started and Mr. Chairman, if it is all right, we would like to hear from our first witness, Jacinth Cisneros.

WRITTEN OPENING STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE LORETTA SANCHEZ, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES, EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES - SEE APPENDIX B

Chairman Castle. Not only is it all right, but it is encouraged. Ms. Cisneros, it is all yours.

Ms. Cisneros. Thank you.

Chairman Castle and Members of the Subcommittee, my name is Jacinth Cisneros and I would like to thank you for inviting me to speak on the subject of parent involvement.

Before I begin, let me tell you a little bit about myself. The most important piece of information is that I am a mother, indeed, a very old mother, because my children are still young. Breanne is 14 years old and Brandon is 10 years old.

So I actually have one child in a traditional system and I have one child in a year round school program. Before beginning my career as a stay at home mom I was a school principal and a teacher in the San Gabriel Valley. I watched children being tremendously successful. I watched them devouring books. I watched them designing award winning science projects. I watched them mastering musical instruments.

What was the factor, what was the key factor in that success? I would love to say it was a great teacher, even a great school or possibly even a great principal. And I do believe that all of those play into it. I believe they have a factor in that success, but really the key element was parent involvement.

In many cases both parents were working and in many cases there were children from single parent households. But when a parent was involved in the educational progress, the outcome was success.

Armed with that knowledge and armed with the knowledge that great schools and great kids and inseparable, I began volunteering at our local elementary school even before my children were old enough to attend that school. Stoddard School has progressed from a traditional schedule to a year round schedule, to a year round double session schedule. Indeed, it has become more complicated.

When my daughter was in kindergarten, there were so many parents that wanted to volunteer that the teachers actually had to limit the number of parents. They had to rotate those parents through the volunteer slot so that all of us would get a fair opportunity at being involved in the classroom. There was even a paid classified employee that was in charge of coordinating the volunteers and we had a parent who was in charge of volunteering from the PTA board.

Now 10 years later, we no longer have that paid classified employee and our numbers of volunteers in the classroom, as well as those volunteers for a PTA Board have diminished significantly.

In Anaheim, we really do face many obstacles that many school districts do not have. In recruiting parent volunteers, we are facing severe overcrowding and we have really very limited space to use those parent volunteers when they are available.

Many parents juggle work schedules and they have the complication, as I do, of having children both in the traditional and the year round system. On top of it, they have double sessions. In some cases, we have parents who have to go to and from school systems in order to pick up their children six times a day.

The ability to actually meet with the parent casually, just out on the playground while they are waiting to pick up their kids after school really has been significantly curtailed. District-wide PTAs have had to look beyond baking cookies and just being room moms. We have had to expand our definition and our idea of parent involvement in order for our PTAs to survive.

We have had a hard core group of never say die parents and teachers and we have participated in a number of programs that have sought to involve parents in the educational process. For three years, Stoddard School has been a member of the "Rolling Reader'' program. We have averaged 25 readers for 32 classrooms. I think that is a success story.

Indeed, we have recruited grandparents. One of our "Nana'' volunteers volunteered in five classrooms. She worked faithfully in each of those classrooms. Although the "Rolling Reader'' program can no longer provide the books for the children, our PTA has sought to support that.

The PTA has also been supportive with the kids participating in a "Lunch with the Kids'' program. The parents come to school, have lunch with their kids and play basketball. Our teachers have held "Family Math and Science Nights'' in order to bring parents to school to learn educational games and activities that they can do at home to support the learning process.

In the same way, Stoddard really has had to be creative in looking to involve parents in different manners. I think that from a federal level we can look at other types of support so that we can loudly tell parents that we need their support in our system.

I believe Congress can provide that message by providing the funding for creative, local programs that promote parent involvement. By providing incentives to teachers that develop programs that improve parent participation, even funding time for teachers and classified staff to contact parents, also supporting businesses that provide parents of employees with release time to volunteer in the classroom. Last, but certainly not least, is continuing to support the new school instruction that provides the space to utilize those parent volunteers.

I realize we cannot legislate parent involvement. We certainly can encourage it. In order to build better schools and to reach for that success that we also desire, I think that we have to work together as partners and that critical factor in there is parent involvement.

Thank you.

Chairman Castle. Thank you.

[The statement of Ms.Cisneros follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MS. JACINTH CISNEROS, PARENT, ANAHEIM UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT, ANAHEIM SCHOOL DISTRICT - SEE APPENDIX C

Ms. Sanchez. Next we have Kim Corral who is a first grade teacher a Parkview Elementary.

Kim?

Ms. Corral. I wanted to also thank you for allowing me to come serve as a witness on your Committee. It is a very passionate subject, parent involvement.

In my first year of teaching I did not have very much parent help. I called several parents and I asked them please to come and help and I was very fortunate to get one mother who helped every other Friday. This one day every two weeks was very little, but her son, when she would walk in the room, he was so glad to see her there. She helped by working one on one with children who were not able to learn the alphabet, who were having difficulty learning the basic reading skills they needed that I could not give alone in the classroom.

In my second year of teaching I was very fortunate. I had more parents than I knew what to do with. I think I had a more open attitude. I was welcoming parents, the impact that they had was great. I had four parents out of five days, one parent every day except for one. Each parent brought with them a different skill. One mother was very skilled at teaching reaching and she had been an English teacher before. She was able to bring in those students who needed help with reading.

Another mother was highly skilled at art, something that I am not so skilled at. So it was wonderful to have someone who could bring in another aspect that I was not as good at bringing into our classroom.

A third parent was very intuitive. She had mothering skills that only a mother can have. She was able to comfort a distraught child. Teaching kindergarten in the past is something that is quite an experience. You can have one child who has a cut, bleeding, while you are trying to teach them the alphabet and their skills for reading and another child is running around in circles. So it is nice to have an extra person there who is supporting the students and giving them extra support.

Another parent was able to assist with -- excuse me -- another parent was able to walk in the classroom at any time and know exactly what we needed. If there was extra help that was needed, she was able to provide it.

Many parents, worked at home creating projects on the computer, making writing journals, preparing math centers at home, those parents were working, they were not able to come into the classroom, but they were able to provide help at home.

The benefits were great for me as a teacher because I was able to devote more time to the education of my students and finding out what methods were the best for providing my children in my classroom with the best education. Alone it would take hours, there are many teachers who come to school at 7 a.m. and do not leave until 10 at night, because they are working on these simple tasks. When we bring in parents we are able to do so much work, and work more effectively by working on the actual teaching, rather than all of the things that come with teaching students.

If you look at research, Anne Henderson and Nancy Berla have been conducting research for over 20 years on the effects and benefits of parent involvement. They state that when parents are involved, students achieve more, regardless of socio-economic status, their ethnic or racial background or their parents' education level.

As we are seeing new laws regarding school performance here in California, I think it is imperative that we look at ways of improving the amount and the quality of parent involvement at school. With another quote, they state "When parents are involved, students have higher grades, better test scores, better attendance and they complete their homework more regularly and more consistently than when parents are not involved."

As we are trying to improve our test scores here, it is an important resource to look at parents for helping us because alone, as teachers, we cannot do it alone. As you stated, Ms. Sanchez, everybody helping is imperative.

Some suggestions that I had are to provide -- we need to make teachers more aware of parent involvement and the benefits of it. As a new teacher, I did not receive any formal education on parent involvement at the university or in my post-graduate work, earning a credential. I think that possibly providing funding for staff development through the school districts on the importance of parent involvement for teachers -- many teachers are afraid to have parents in their classroom.

It is very intimidating, but after you have them in your classroom you realize how supportive they really are and once they see the work that you are doing with their students or their children that it is very -- that you are not dealing with what the newspaper says.

Another thing we need to implement is more funding for parent education. Our school has a Parent Institute for Quality Education which has brought -- I think we had over 100 graduates of the parent institute. It teaches parents how to work with their students, how to help them with homework, how to discipline their children. This is strictly on a volunteer basis, but as we offer more of these types of services to our parents, I believe we will be able to get more parents involved.

Thank you for allowing me to testify.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Kim, for your testimony.

[The statement of Ms.Corral follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MS. KIM CORRAL, FIRST GRADE TEACHER, GARDEN GROVE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA - SEE APPENDIX D

Ms. Sanchez. Now we have Linda Howe who is the President of the Garden Grove Council of the Parent Teacher Student Association.

Linda?

Ms. Howe. Chairman Castle and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to speak before your Committee today. My name is Linda Howe and I am the President of the Garden Grove Unified Council of PTSAs. I am Corresponding Secretary at Parkview Elementary PTA, Chairman of the Board at my preschool and I have four children, a fourth grader, a first grader, a kindergarten student and a 2 year old, who hopefully will attend preschool this year.

Studies have shown that student success in school is directly related to parent involvement in the education process. The success level of the student increases even more if their father is directly involved. PTA, as an organization, has been aware of this for many years and has stressed the importance of families being visibly involved in the education of their children.

We have worked very hard to help parents learn more about their children's schools and communities and the laws that govern them. This knowledge allows them to form meaningful partnerships with the school staff and community leaders to create for all children the highest advantage of physical, mental, social and spiritual education.

Our school PTAs are encouraged to do more than raise funds for their schools. They are asked to provide parent education nights on a variety of topics of interest to their families. Many provide students with field trips and with supplemental classroom supplies as requested by the teachers.

Most elementary PTAs promote reading incentive programs each year rewarding children for their reading outside of the school day. Several provide additional funds for arts education at their sites.

My involvement in PTA began four years ago when my oldest child started school. With two small children still at home, I joined the PTA at Parkview Elementary School determined to find a way to help. Before I knew it I was PTA Treasurer and on my way. Joining PTA made it possible for me to contribute in a meaningful way to my child's school. It was a structured organization with meetings and a variety of planned activities where my husband and I could meet other parents of students at the school.

Through my work at my children's school, I have become more aware of the importance of daily parent involvement. Because of the regular assistance of PTA volunteers, teachers are able to devote more of their attention to students.

Some of the tasks performed by classroom volunteers involve setting up art projects, verifying that homework is done, grading papers, reading with students who need extra help, photocopying handouts.

Parents who are involved at the school help to keep teachers more aware of the needs of the children by providing extra ears and eyes. Parents and teachers develop better relationships that foster true partnerships in the educational process. Parents are also more aware of their children's daily activities, their academic progress, and their friends.

From personal experience, I find it easier to keep track of my children's progress because I am at the school helping out. I have regular contact with their teachers and the principal allowing for informal conversations about what is going on as far as classwork and behavior is concerned.

Because we are visible at the school campus, the children know a great many of the parents and see the things that we do. They really seem to appreciate our efforts. It is a wonderful feeling to walk across campus and hearing, ``Hi, Ms. Howe'' or to have a child come up to me in a grocery store and ask ``Aren't you that PTA lady?'' Being involved in PTA has given me the opportunity to meet a lot of the parents at our school. I think that it helps to bring our community closer together. It is a great feeling knowing that you are making a difference in a child's life.

I wish that all parents had the opportunity to spend time at their children's school. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could get employers to see the importance of parent involvement in schools? Would it not be wonderful if we could find ways to ensure that even parents working outside the home could have the opportunity for time off so that they could spend a few hours a month helping at their child's school?

Until all parents have the opportunity to spend time regularly in their child's school, PTA will continue to work on communicating to its members the importance of knowing what is happening at their schools, the importance of using that knowledge to become real partners in the educational process, and the necessity of becoming informed advocates for all children.

Thank you again for this opportunity to speak.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Linda.

[The statement of Ms. Howe follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MS. LINDA HOWE, PRESIDENT, GARDEN GROVE PTA, GARDEN GROVE CA - SEE APPENDIX E

Ms. Sanchez. Last, but not least, we have Olivia Tapia who is the former Santa Ana High School Student Body President.

Olivia.

Ms. Tapia. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak before you today. It has been my experience over the past 13 years of my education that parental involvement plays an essential part in a student's life.

Having my mom and dad both taking an active role not only in my education, but also in my extracurricular activities has made me feel that they really care about the education that I receive, and the activities that I was involved in. As I saw their interest and concern for my education grow, I myself began to take a greater interest in the education that I was receiving.

I can remember growing up feeling a little embarrassed at first when my mom and dad took an active interest in what I did and their wanting to get involved. I wanted to be like the kids whose parents would just drop them off places, did not ask about report cards, and never took the time to talk to teachers and counselors.

As I got older though, I began to realize the value of my education and I liked the fact that my parents were there. I learned to appreciate them more. It made me feel special knowing that every time they went out of their way to help and get involved, they had to rearrange their schedule. I was important. Important enough for them to spend countless hours at my school, coaching my teams, being a room parent or even spending Saturday mornings hemming up some kids' band uniforms for a parade that we were about to perform in.

I will admit sometimes it was not the best thing. Having teachers knowing me because my mom was always at the school was not always appealing. I got used to, but did not always enjoy sharing my mother with 60 other band members and being pushed aside because they were sure I had no priority with her, even if she is my mother.

My favorite pet peeve was my dad always nagging me about school, my grades and college deadlines. It was these things, however, that I have learned to live with and depend on. It was because my parents got involved and took interest in what I did, that I feel I was able to do as well as I feel I did in school. They kept on top of me, not letting me slide, not letting me get involved in the wrong things or with the wrong people.

I believe that every parent should be involved in their child's life in some way. Not everybody can be a room mother and a soccer dad, but I do think that every parent can take time out of their busy schedule to do even minor things. Get to know the student's teachers, make sure that they are being given the classes that will be needed to get the student in the right direction for the future. Attend a PTA meeting here and there and find out about what is happening at the school. People always talk about the children being the way of the future. I believe it is up to the parents to get involved, to guide them and to help mold the leaders of tomorrow.

Thank you.

[The statement of Ms.Tapia follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MS. OLIVIA TAPIA, 1999 GRADUATE, SANTA ANNA HIGH SCHOOL, SANTA ANNA, CALIFORNIA - SEE APPENDIX F

Chairman Castle. Well, let me start by thanking all of you very much. You are hitting on something that is dear to me. I am absolutely convinced that you are correct in what you are stating.

I have my free copy from the Hilton Hotel this morning of the USA Today. They have a chart here which I thought I would just show you just to begin this. It says what causes violence which is a little different than what we are talking about today, but similar in a sense.

Compared with five years ago, more adults blame video games and fewer blame guns for social violence, etcetera, etcetera. Here is what is interesting. They have local TV and news reports shows 35 percent believe this contributes to violence; video games, 38 percent; movies, 60 percent; TV, 61 percent; easy availability of handguns, 70 percent; lack of adult supervision of children, 89 percent. I mean it just blows away everything else that is out there.

We hear this constantly. We are going to hear later today and I have heard before about after school programs. I am a strong believer that you need after school programs.

Of course, I am not used to dealing with schools that are in double sessions and a lot of the things that you have here, that I need to hear more about, but the bottom line is that having some sort of parental involvement is vitally important.

I think, Ms. Cisneros, you actually stated in your comments, I believe I am correct about this, that parental involvement is important even if the parents cannot physically be there. In other words, the fact that they are engaged in making sure that the kids are being looked after in some way or another is important.

Can you expand on that a little bit because we always think of parental involvement being the parent at home or the parent there coaching or whatever it may be, but there is another form of engagement that may be as important and in this day and age with both parents working and mixed schedules with kids and everything else, that is important.

Ms. Cisneros. I believe, and I have experienced it with Stoddard Elementary School in Anaheim, is that we had to redefine parent involvement and it came down to the fact that parent involvement was really multi-faceted. As Loretta indicated, it is reading to your kids at home and it is beginning at a very early process in recognizing that you are your child's first educator. It is recognizing that you can be an active and supportive parent.

We have parents who are active that are not necessarily supportive and we have supportive parents who are not necessarily active. It is working with your child at home on their homework and it is being involved in educational programs that the parents are taught how to do this, how do you work with them in science, how do you work with them in math? Those seem to be really two weak links for parents. They know how to sit down and read a book with their child and they know how to sit down and monitor that half hour time, but we also, I think the other facet is that they do need to be involved with the advocacy for children. They need to be involved with PTAs or spending a little bit of time at the school and it is not necessarily in the classrooms. It may be out on the playground at lunchtime and playing a game of basketball with kids. We had dads who did that.

Chairman Castle. Right, in accordance with their skills to some degree.

Ms. Cisneros. Yes.

Chairman Castle. We have had art skills mentioned here and various things that Kim mentioned that people may have talent in athletic skills, art skills, whatever it may be.

Ms. Cisneros. That is right or even taking on the opportunity to be a Girl Scout leader or Boy Scout leader and I can tell you from my own personal experience that I have gained more from those activities than the children I have worked with and I think that that is critical.

Thank you.

Chairman Castle. This could be just to anyone, but Kim, in your school, how encouraged, I mean you indicated that on your own you had to learn about parental involvement because you really had not been educated in that which is probably an oversight we need to look at. And in your first year, not much happened. In your second year, by your own encouragement you started to have and then you embraced it and you realized how well it works and that was helpful.

How much help did you have from the administration of your school at any level? Did they become involved either at the beginning or later or did you operate sort of a contractor in all this?

Ms. Corral. Well, I believe that the most important factor or the guiding force is our PTA at our school. They do so much for the teachers at our school and the support is overwhelming. There is about maybe seven or eight ladies that you see constantly on campus. I believe that that was the first place where I sought help and where I learned that the parent involvement and the parent support was there for me. The second place was our school has an EISS grant and I believe it is a federal grant which is called Early Intervention for School Success. I was very fortunate to attend a five day conference where a woman named Betty Rose spoke on the importance and the value of parent involvement. She also spoke about how effective and how crucial it is to improve a student's performance, to improve their grades in school as well as their self-esteem.

Our principal is also very supportive; however, we have not received a formal experience or a formal education on parent involvement as teachers.

Chairman Castle. Let me come back to something if I have time, to Olivia for a moment, I was curious about some things you said because I cannot imagine. I was always a little concerned when my parents were around too, you know, whether this was good or bad and obviously you have concluded that it was good and I think I have concluded that it was good. How did other kids feel about that? In other words, you obviously had wonderful parents who wanted to be involved and really were trying to help you as you have realized now, but there were other kids who did not.

Did they resent you? Did they resent your parents? I mean obviously not all parents are as engaged with their children as yours were and I am curious as to the peer aspect of all that.

Ms. Tapia. One friend of mine actually really stands out when it comes to parent involvement because her mother really did not care about what she did, and I remember one time we were at a parade and she just sat there and she was like, I wish my mother would be here, I wish she would take the time and at least go see something. I know a lot of times kids think like my mom is not here, my dad is not here, no big deal. But I know a lot of times it does affect them and they do care if their parents are there. I know that they like to see, and I know I like to see, that your parents care and that they want to see something that you are in. So I know that they do.

Chairman Castle. It is an interesting balance in that it is sort of a difficult time. I have never heard of a circumstance in which a child's parent -- well, there are circumstances, I should not say that, but generally speaking in 99 percent of the circumstances when the parents are engaged and involved in the child's education, the whole achievement level of the child usually goes up at that point as opposed to down. My parents were involved. My achievement level was not that high, but God only knows where it would have been if they had not been involved, so I am an experienced hand at this.

Linda -- my time is up and I want to get to Ms. Sanchez as quickly as I can, but I did want to ask you about the whole PTA because you have obviously been actively involved and actively recruited. Even in the best of PTAs you are only dealing with a smaller, not 100 percent of the parents at least. Then you have circumstances in which parents feel inadequate, if you will, that is, they were not educated. Perhaps they have a language problem. They do not feel they can really contribute. Is the PTA, is your PTA or PTA national groups with which you associate, working on that so that you are not just dealing with the parents who have college degrees and masters in terms of helping in schools, but the parents are just regular, ordinary people doing ordinary jobs who are not necessarily well educated to get them involved and engaged and helping in some way or another? How do you deal with that?

Ms. Howe. Well, I guess I fall into that category. I am not well educated. I had a few years of -- a little bit of college, but I am a stay at home mom and it was just a way that I could help. We have a big problem, not a problem, but a translation problem at our school. Our school is 51 percent Hispanic and so we have a hard time getting those parents involved because of the language problem. We are working on that. We are trying to get translators. If we find someone who is bilingual, we snap them up and say we need you.

We are out there for everybody. We are trying to get everybody involved. We want all the parents, if we can get them, but it is really difficult because of language barriers or they just work too much.

Chairman Castle. You do work to try to overcome that and get them involved, is that correct? That is something you focus on in running a PTA?

Ms. Howe. Yes. That is one of our main goals is to get everybody involved.

Chairman Castle. Kim, I am not going to ask you this question now because my time is way over and I am going to defer it --

Ms. Sanchez. Mr. Chairman, you are the Chairman, go ahead.

Chairman Castle. Well, as the Chairman I am going to pose a question and then I am going to turn to Congresswoman Sanchez and then come back to you and ask you this, think about this for a moment. You are talking to a couple of Members of Congress, you have a Mayor here, so you have local government here, of course you have school officials to deal with and you have colleges of education as well as state officials and various other aspects, but what programs would you recommend, if any, on a governmental level that we should either contribute to or become involved with; or on an educational level for people who are getting education degrees what would you suggest in terms of what we should or could be doing to help with the parental involvement in schools?

I have met a lot of teachers -- and do not answer it now, I want you to think about it for a little bit -- but I have met a lot of teachers who, as you said at the beginning, sort of are resentful of this or administrators who are resentful of this. They do not feel it is a place for parents or whatever. I would be curious as to what your thoughts are on that, but we will get back to your in about seven or eight minutes.

Ms. Corral. Okay.

Chairman Castle. Let me turn to Congresswoman Sanchez for her questions.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to first of all begin by introducing, and acknowledging that Dr. John Dean who is superintendent for all of Orange County for our Department of Education has joined us and he is sitting out there in the audience.

Chairman Castle. Thank you for being here.

Ms. Sanchez. Obviously, I live here and I do not know if you know this, Mr. Castle, but the reason I ran for Congress was because of education, because I have seen the difference in Anaheim, having gone to the schools here and seeing now what is happening in the classrooms. There are a lot of structural reasons why things are different today because you commented earlier and I think you are a little surprised at some of the things that go on here with respect to just even the school construction issue that is going on. When Jacinth talked about having a student on traditional, that is at the junior high level because our junior highs and high schools are in a different school district than our elementary schools. Our elementary schools are on the four track, year round, double session, you name it, going crazy kind of place. Where our elementary schools were built for 500 or 600 kids, when I went there, are now taking 1100, 1200 and continue to grow. So we grow about a new, about a 1,000 kids a year in the elementary school system here.

One of the things we tried to do last year was to pass a bond issue to build new schools, taking the local responsibility of doing that. We have a two-thirds vote for any new taxes on school construction in the State of California and we won with 55 percent, but of course, we lost the vote. Jacinth spearheaded that effort, actually, but I want to go back to where, if you get the parents to volunteer, where do you put them? I mean are you able to do sessions where you can teach them about being parents inside the classroom? Where do you meet? Every school building I have seen is booked.

Ms. Cisneros. Every school is a little bit different when it comes to housing parent volunteers. I can speak regarding Stoddard Elementary. We virtually have no space to work with parents during the day. If the parents are working on something as simple as cutting out letters or bulletin board activities or something in a clerical nature for the teachers, we virtually do not have the space for them to be working with, or in the classroom, we really have to place them in our small workroom. Many of them work in our teacher's lounge. We just basically squeeze a space for them to work. They will find a corner in our library, but there is basically not an empty classroom available for parents to work.

When I first started with Stoddard School and Stoddard PTA ten years ago that space was available. We virtually do not have it. The school day begins at 7:30 in the morning and ends at 4:30 in the afternoon. There are parent workshops and classes offered in the evenings. If that does not fit into a parent's schedule to be able to avail themselves of that opportunity, then we really have no means of handling it. That is why I say for me a critical factor is to continue to support school construction in some manner from a federal level because we really do have to have that space. That provides the welcoming aspect of it. That is what ends up happening. As we have indicated, you begin with a die hard group of seven or eight parents who are there working regardless of that space. So it is a difficult, it is definitely an obstacle that we face in Anaheim.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Jacinth.

Kim, I would like to ask you, you sort of divided parent help in the classroom into two piles. One is this sort of will you grade the papers, will take attendance, will you cut out the construction letters, etcetera, which I think is what used to happen when we used to pay people to do some of that for the teachers so the teachers could concentrate on the teaching. The second aspect you talked about was the valuable skills that -- the other skills, the individual skills that parents bring into the classroom.

At one point you talked about being afraid, teachers being afraid of -- can you talk a little bit about what are teachers afraid of if parents come into the classroom?

Ms. Corral. Of course, especially as a new teacher, I came into the classroom feeling as though parents were, intimidating, possibly. In turn, after they had come into the classroom, I realized they were not intimidating, they were much more supportive after they had been in the classroom. I think that sometimes a lot of teachers are afraid that parents will judge, maybe they do not like what they see. However, I do believe that it is not the case. I felt overwhelming support. Every parent I ever had come into the classroom, after they had been in the classroom working, was so much more supportive and welcoming and helpful after they had been there.

I think that teachers, some teachers are afraid that maybe it will take too much of their time to train the parents. Of course, that is not all teachers, but I believe because they are not aware of the value of parent involvement, that this is something that sometimes teachers are afraid of.

Ms. Sanchez. Do you think you would have -- it would have been valuable to have had a two or three week course where seasoned teachers who have a lot of parent participation come in and talk to you about the methods of getting parents involved?

Ms. Corral. Yes, that would have been very valuable, not even two or three weeks. I think that that is something that could have been covered in a few hours, a short time. It is just that once you see the research and the impact that parent involvement makes just the straight simple facts, it reduces violence, it reduces drop out rates, it increases student performance, as well as the parents' quality of life. So it is something that in a short time you can realize the importance of it.

More education on how to get parents involved, I think would be very effective because as many times as I asked in that first year and did not get anyone to help me, I was just approaching it the wrong way. I did not know how to get them involved, whereas once you realize the way to approach a parent and to ask them to help you in the right way, it is a lot easier to get them involved. So knowing the correct approach is very helpful.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you. And then with the indulgence of the Chairman, I will ask a couple more questions here.

Chairman Castle. Sure.

Ms. Sanchez. Linda, I know a lot of PTA people. My mom, the first thing she ever did when I was four years old was become Ways and Means Chairman of the PTA which you know, if you think about it, she used to put movies on and well chocolates and stuff in a big auditorium and I used to always bring my friends, four and five years old and say it is okay, it is my mom, we can get the candy bars for free. I did not know my mom was paying it out of her own pocketbook, but there are so many needs now in the classroom. I was talking to a principal the other day who said the PTA had just bought her a fax machine for the front office. What is the breakdown in PTA between trying to find the funds to augment what is going on in the classroom or at the schools, versus trying to get parents involved to actually come in and do volunteer work?

Ms. Howe. It all breaks down to each individual school and what that particular school needs. You sit down with your principal, some of your teachers and you decide. At Parkview, one of the things we did was we try to get all of the classrooms on a field trip every year. That is our goal. That is one of our main goals is field trips. From there, we try to provide some parent education events. Then we go from there, we see where there is a need and we try to fill it, if we can. We do not want to do fundraisers all year and raise a bunch of money and not have anywhere to put it because that does not help either and the parents get sick of doing fundraisers.

So we try to find a few main goals and most schools do that and then we shoot for those goals with our fundraisers.

Ms. Sanchez. Great. Lastly, Olivia, obviously my mother was -- and father -- they were very involved in school. When I was going through school, one of the things that happened was as we were choosing classes we needed signatures from our parents to be able to take particular classes. That made them at least take a look at what was going on in the classroom. And I know at some point that sort of disappeared. Did your parents sit down with you and talk about what classes you were taking?

Ms. Tapia. My freshman year my mom walked in to visit the counselor with me and we went through all the classes I would pretty much need for the four years to get to college and stuff, the main classes. So, she actually -- and every year she kept in contact, making sure that nothing changed and I was taking the right classes, if I decided not to take one, how it would affect me. So she kept in contact with the counselors.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you. I have no more questions.

Chairman Castle. Thanks, Olivia. Kim, we will come back to your question and maybe Jacinth here could help you with this a little bit. Looking at everything holistically, what is it that we, who are not directly in the classroom, should be thinking about in terms of helping the involvement of parents in with schools? Are there things out there we should be doing that we are not looking at?

Ms. Corral. Well, first of all, as I said before, I think that teachers need to be made more aware of the importance of parent involvement.

Chairman Castle. Should that start in their education process?

Ms. Corral. I think more at the District --

Chairman Castle. When they start their training for the classroom?

Ms. Corral. Yes, I believe so. Again, more parent education. A lot of parents do not have a college degree, do not have a high school degree. Some do not speak English. If we can bring them to the hub of the school to offer English classes. I know I was teaching an English class at our school to the parents and our class was closed because we did not have enough parents or students in the English class. I had ten that came all the time and they were so involved, but because of funding, we had to have twenty. Sometimes I would have fifteen, but always I had at least ten. So it was not enough to keep the class open. More funding for being able to educate the parents on how to work with their children, and also I believe that home visits are a crucial point that we need to bridge the gap between the school and the community and the students to see that we really, the teachers really do care about the children's education and we really are interested in getting involved with what is going on and how to help their children.

Something may more community liaison too, would help to provide that bridge is something we could definitely benefit from and also more parent education such as the Parent Institute for Quality Education. It is a six week -- they offer it in the morning and at night. Other things that other schools have done are providing home day care provider education where they educate the parents on how to become a daycare provider that empowers them to be able to help themselves rather than going through Social Services to find avenues for providing for their family, things like that, I believe are very important.

Chairman Castle. Good. Jacinth, you commented on this a little bit too, I mean are there any -- do you have any thoughts or ideas of separate programs?

Ms. Cisneros. She did a marvelous job. The only thing that I would touch on a little bit is that from a federal level, if there was a way that businesses could be supported from a financial aspect when they release parents or employees to come work at our schools.

In Anaheim, we absolutely, a tremendous benefit from the number of businesses that work with our schools. Washington Mutual has done a great job in contributing to our schools. Disney is right in our midst, sends a number of people out on principal for the day. If there is some type of bridge that we could build at the federal level that supports that and even the small businessman saying to a parent, it is okay for you to go to that parent conference. You are not going to be dinged for your salary for that hour or if you go on a weekly basis, that is how they will be paid and somehow reimbursed through the federal government and through that process. That is one thing that I would add.

Chairman Castle. It is an interesting question. It is a difficult -- I was impressed that Loretta's mother was head of the Ways and Means Committee. That is a big field down in Washington. It sets the tax policy. That maybe what that is, some sort of a tax deduction or credit as opposed to a grant type program. Obviously, it would be expensive. From my own experience with businesses is that they are either going to do it or they are not to some degree. Probably nothing you can do that will get them in if they are a small business and they are really struggling and they do not let their employees go at all and we just have some businesses that could not be more generous with their assets and their time and employees and whatever it may be. Some businesses have actually adopted schools and it has made a huge difference. But you are right, to the degree we can involve businesses is important.

Any other questions?

Ms. Sanchez. Those are the questions for this panel.

Chairman Castle. Good. We want to thank you very, very much for being here. You have been a wonderful panel. This is an extremely important subject. It is one in which there is not a lot of science, if you will. It has been more sort of adapting to whatever is out there. Obviously, all of you and your parents have been leaders in doing this. We just have to get other people to think about it. So we are very pleased to lend you the bully public to tell us about all these things and we thank you. At this time we will have a short break while we change panels and names and such. Again, thank you very much for being here.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you. About a ten minute break and there are some refreshments in the back for those of you who have been sitting down a little bit and we thank you.

Chairman Castle. This will be a short break, so get those refreshments quickly, please.

[Recess.]

Chairman Castle. Before we begin with the panel, we have some new visitors, I see. I will turn to Congresswoman Sanchez for introductions.

Ms. Sanchez. Yes, Mr. Chairman, we have a class, Leadership Development summer class, that is here from the Anaheim Union School District and their teacher, Mr. Ansaria is with them and would he like to come up and say a few words, please?

Mr. Ansaria. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Congresswoman and gentlemen. This is a rare opportunity. I came across this last Friday. Our Assistant Superintendent said here is a chance for you to take the Summer Leadership Academy over there, and here we are. I want to tell you, if I may, a couple of minutes about what this is so that you will have a better understanding of our program. This is our 25th year actually of this program. It has grown and to an awesome and powerful program for our District. As you know, there are 36,000 students in our District in 24 schools. Now the students, there are 80 students right now and they have been selected from nine high schools and they have been selected out of 140 people who applied, so they have to go through some application process, write essays and so on and so forth.

And in front of you, Congresswoman, I gave you our manual. It is a yellow thing that says Community Service Manual. These young people are in teams and they are going to explore different aspects of the community and they are going to participate in a volunteer work to the community for six hours. We selected six hours because this is only a summer school. And they are excited and anxious and they have just been doing wonderful. As you can see, our program has little buses on it. And the one for today does not have one because we were not planning to come here, so this is really indeed an opportunity for all of us to be here and there are five of us here and I want to recognize the staff here, if you will. Staff, please stand up, please. Staff members, each one of us is from a different school. This is Ms. Lutz here, to my left; Ms. Nuller in the back; Mr. Wilmot, our science person; nd Mr. Masuta, one little thing, he ran for the State Assembly last year and he is going to do it again and we would like to see him in the State Assembly. So he is sort of our local, if you will, representative, telling us about this, and he informed the students about what a congressional hearing is. So let us hear it for all the students and staff who are here and I am very proud of them.

[Applause.]

Thank you very much and I will be more than happy to answer any questions.

Chairman Castle. Thank you. I do not believe I have any questions, but we do appreciate you being here and we appreciate particularly the students being here and the program and the program you put together. These leadership programs are great for developing citizenship at a young age, so we are very, very appreciative of that. Thank you.

Before we go on, a comment, somebody from the audience had made. What we have here is a field hearing. I am sure Congresswoman Sanchez and I both have our town meetings and such in which we have comments from the audience. The nature of this hearing is to deal only with the panels and we ask them questions. So I apologize if anybody might have thought there would be an opportunity to ask questions, but we are both available to talk to in the breaks and after it is over and we would be delighted to hear your suggestions.

Unfortunately, because of time constraints we have to stick strictly with the concept of doing the hearing, but we again, appreciate your involvement and we have a full audience, which is wonderful, because we think we should have a full audience for education. It is that important to us.

I will turn to Congresswoman Sanchez for the introduction of the second panel.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will just let those in the audience know that the Chairman is also going to go on to do another hearing, actually in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, I guess, it is tomorrow in the morning, most likely because it will take you all day to get there, believe me. He will be leaving, this is the official portion for the Congressional Committee. After this, we will allow an open mike and you can ask your questions. I will try to field them and what I can do is take that information and submit it separately for the record to the Subcommittee and to the Committee in whole. So your comments, if you want to wait until after the official panels go, there will be an opportunity for people to make comments or ask questions, a brief three minutes to a person and again, the Chairman will probably at some point leave because he does need to catch a plane to get on to his next hearing.

Mr. Ansario, I just wanted to let you know that I am actually a graduate of the Leadership Academy, the Summer Leadership Academy in Anaheim. I was a Catella Grad and I got to go to that. So I am very familiar with the program.

[Applause.]

It was 1978. And of course, I supported Mr. Masuto then. I think he should run again for the Assembly, so work on him, will you?

[Applause.]

Anyway, back to the official business at hand. Not only is it important to see what is going on in the schools, but it is also important to see what our communities outside of the school are doing to help. It becomes even more important to do that. In fact, I really believe when we look at the workforce of California, we see it in our schools today and business people should be concerned and want to increase the level of people that we are graduating.

One of the reasons is because they need good people in their companies. Secondly, people want to work for companies that care about education. So if businesses care about education and have a commitment towards that, they will have employees who will want to come and work with them because a lot of them are parents or grandparents or aunts or uncles who know that it is important about what is going on in the classroom. And of course, it makes good business sense for companies.

Consumers want to support corporations that are giving back to their communities and it is not just businesses that we turn to. It is service clubs, senior citizens organizations, colleges, universities, law enforcement and the list could go on and on. These organizations make a difference many times after school or before school and today we are joined by several people who will share their thoughts on the subject of what can outside groups, outside of the school system be doing to work with schools.

The list of people that we have before us who will be testifying, Bruce Kerns is a financial advisor and investment banker for Stone & Youngberg. He directs the firm's work on school bond elections and is an expert on school financing and of course, Bruce and I go back a ways because I used to work on school bond issues to construct new schools. We have worked together many times before.

Laurie Smith is the Program Director for Project Tomorrow, a nonprofit organization that supports kindergarten through 12th Grade science education in a number of the schools in this area.

Danny Wong is here today on behalf of Pacific Bell Pioneers Program. This is a volunteer organization of Pac Bell employees who are dedicated to improving what is going on in the classroom. In particular, they have been helping us to wire some of the schools for the Internet.

Pat Halberstadt has been the Executive Director of the Garden Grove Girls and Boys Club since 1974. She is responsible for ten sites and 85 employees serving more than a thousand school aged children daily.

Then I have my good friend Max Madrid who is the Director of Community Services Gang Prevention Program in Santa Ana, which serves more than 100,000 people annually. CSP works closely with law enforcement and school personnel to provide healthy, safe alternatives for young people and their families.

We are also joined today by Sergeant Joe Vargas who is the president of the Anaheim Police Athletic League which offers such activities as basketball, golf and snow and beach days for local youth. This is a perfect example of community oriented policing, the philosophy of getting to know who your client is and I know I have been over there doing some kick boxing with the youngsters once in a while.

So now we will begin our panel and our first witness will be Bruce Kerns from Stone & Youngberg. Welcome, Bruce.

Chairman Castle. Bruce, before you begin, first of all, I did not know Loretta was a kick boxer, so I better be careful what I say to her. Secondly, just so everyone understands, Sylvia may not have been here when we started, but the basic guidelines are that we have a little timer here which by the way is an incredible bell. If you are up here you jump about two feet in the air every time it goes off and it will go off after five minutes. We have your written testimony, so what we would like you to do, if you can, is summarize that and when you hear that it does not mean you have to actually stop it. If you can try to wind down in the next minute or so that would be helpful and then Ms. Sanchez and I will ask questions of the panel in order after that. So that is basically the way we will proceed and Bruce, we are delighted to have you here to start it off.

Mr. Kerns. Fine, thank you. I am very delighted to be here, thank you for your kind invitation.

I am a financial advisor to school districts that need funding for the renovation of older schools or the construction of new schools. Loretta mentioned that we were in this field together prior to her election to Congress and we worked together on a number of projects including projects for Irvine Unified School District -- I will try to speak louder and point the microphone more toward me.

Loretta and I have worked on projects including Irvine Unified School District in this county and Antioch Unified School District in the San Francisco Bay area. I am currently assisting the Santa Ana Unified School District which just last week placed a $145 million bond issue which will go to the vote in November of 1999.

School districts have fewer sources of revenue for on-going operations and for capital projects than any other type of public agency in California. Their access to the property tax is limited by Proposition 13 which was approved in 1978 and general fund monies are controlled by the State of California and districts have no power to levy user fees or collect other supplemental sources of revenue.

Because of their limited funding, it is necessary for school districts to seek other sources of revenue to accomplish their capital projects. They can conduct bond elections such as the effort now underway for Santa Ana Unified School District. However, because bond elections in California require a two thirds affirmative vote, only about half of all the school district bond elections were successful. We have heard earlier in this hearing about the experience just this year of Anaheim City Elementary School District and their successful plurality, but not a two thirds.

School districts can also apply to the state for funding through the State School Building Program. This program provides modernization and construction grants based upon eligibility standards and the state having available funding. This funding from the state comes from grants through bond issues which are subject to approval at state-wide elections which only have a 50 percent affirmative vote requirement. However, because the backlog of eligible school projects is so large, even very large authorizations for the State School Building Programs such as were approved in November of last year or apportioned very quickly and not all school districts are eligible to receive state funds.

School districts which need to supplement these sources or cannot win voter approval for bonds or not eligible for state grants often have to use their general fund as a revenue source for capital projects. This, however, can place a burden on the operational budgets of districts as they seek to balance their capital needs with the competing demands of teacher salaries, books, supplies, utilities and the day to day expenses of providing public education to students.

There are several new federal programs such as the Qualified Zone Academy Bonds and proposed programs such as the Qualified School Construction Bonds which would provide valuable assistance to many California school districts by reducing the cost of debt for renovating and constructing schools. These two federal programs would represent new techniques to supplement the limited choices currently available to school districts for the funding of capital projects.

School districts increasingly look to private businesses for assistance in meeting the capital needs for school facilities. Business contributions to local capital campaigns or school foundations can reduce the amounts needed from bonds, state sources or district general funds. Businesses are also an important source for contributions during school bond elections which finance the advocacy needed to ensure the passage of bond measures. Also, prominent business leaders can serve as spokespersons for school bond elections, emphasizing the broad community support for the measure. And businesses can provide funds for the many items that are needed when new or renovated schools are opened for students such as band instruments, athletic equipment and library books. Also, some sources of state or federal aid, such as the Qualified Zone Academy Bonds require a minimum level of private investment to be eligible to receive such funding.

Businesses also form partnerships with schools to benefit students and to provide training intended to enhance labor market skills. Many businesses sponsor programs which place local high school students in real work environments, teaching job skills and providing experience with the social atmosphere of the workplace. Other businesses contribute equipment and employees to assist school-based programs, helping make curriculum such as anew computer technologies more accessible to students. And several school districts in California have teamed with local community colleges and nearby businesses to provide a coordinated approach to train students so that they can be employed at skilled jobs after graduating from high school or community college.

In the case of the Santa Ana Unified School District, the district has over 250 business partnerships of these sorts and each high school in the district has approximately 15 business partnerships. There is an acute need for funding to accommodate the growing student population in California and to address the aging of existing school facilities. Districts such as Santa Ana and Unified which have been successful at receiving capital funding grants from the state in the past are now compelled to seek voter approval for bonds in order to be eligible for state funding in the future. The combination of state grants and local bonds will not be enough. Other sources, including the federal programs such as the Qualified Zone Academy Bonds and the proposed Qualified School Construction Bonds, and private business partnerships, will be necessary to close the gap.

[The statement of Mr. Kerns follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MR. BRUCE KERNS, DIRECTOR, STONE & YOUNGBERG, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - SEE APPENDIX G

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Bert.

Ms. Sanchez. Next we have Laurie Smith who is the Program Director for Project Tomorrow.

Laurie?

Ms. Smith. Thank you, Ms. Sanchez, Chairman Castle and Members of the Subcommittee, I would like to thank you for inviting our organization to speak before the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families. Project Tomorrow is a nonprofit organization that has developed a partnership between businesses, educators, parents and other community constituents to support systemic reform in Orange County science education.

Founded in 1996 by a coalition of business, education and community leaders, Project Tomorrow set out to address the community's concerns with improving science and math education to prepare students for the highly competitive workforce of the 21st century. By benchmarking national models of systemic reform, Project Tomorrow developed three key proven strategies to improve science education: (1) to support pilot projects that initiate systemic reform; (2) to support professional development for teachers of science; and lastly, to create community awareness and involvement to support science education.

We believe that science is a subject that excites children and allows them to experience their natural curiosities and in the process they acquire math and reading skills as well as creative, communication and critical thinking skills that are so valuable in today's workforce.

In just three short years, Project Tomorrow has raised more than $2.4 million in cash and $10 million in in-kind private contributions for K-12 science education. We currently are supporting pilot projects and programs in the follow school districts: Saddleback Valley, Westminster, Anaheim Union High School, Anaheim City School District and

Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified. In addition, Project Tomorrow has just awarded South Lake Middle School in the Irvine Unified School District with a science education professional development grant. Our strategy is to document the best practices and integrate them into a cohesive systemic reform model that can be used throughout the 27 school districts in Orange County.

Our partnership has been very successful in large part to understanding the challenges schools face and being able to identify the needs of businesses. Through experience, we realized that there was an opportunity to apply business management practices in the projects to get results. This is where the dynamics of our board of directors and partners come into play. We have diverse, balanced representation on our board of directors from business, education and other community organizations. This has been instrumental in identifying challenges and working synergistically to find solutions using the expertise and experiences from the board. As a result, we have been able to overcome some of the barriers to success many partnerships face by addressing the following:

We work with educators to tackle the tough issues, including changes in policy, governance, finance, support systems and school/district management. We collaborate with educators on issues that are integral to the core of instruction, facilitate the dissemination of information regarding exemplary models and successful practices; create environments that support innovation and replication of effective, cohesive education models.

Early assessments indicate that signs of systemic reform are taking place in the schools we support. We have seen an increased interest in science by children, teachers, administrators and parents as well. There is also increased articulation across districts and increased participation by parents in their children's science education. In one particular program where high school students teach science to elementary school students, the high school students reported that they are excited about choosing teaching as a career. This is truly exciting in light of the predicted tremendous shortfall of teachers across the country in the next few years. These efforts are possible because of the support and commitment by business partners, the working board of directors, educators, parents, students and volunteers. Currently there are more than 50 business partners that include the Boeing Company, Rockwell, Beckman Coulter, Odetics, Pacific Bell, Wells Fargo, Experian, the Walt Disney Company, Ernst & Young, Bank of America and southern California Edison to name a few. We also have the support of the Orange County Department of Education and the Discovery Science Center. Our hope is that our work and findings will transcend Orange County and be accessible to all. Furthermore, we hope that elected officials will continue to work toward raising the bar in education so that our youth will have the best possible education in the world.

Thank you.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Laurie.

[The statement of Ms. Smith follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MS. LAURIE SMITH, DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS, PROJECT TOMORROW - PARTNERSHIP FOR SCIENCE AND EDUCATION, ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA - SEE APPENDIX H

Ms. Sanchez. Next, Mr. Chairman, we have Danny Wong who is with one of our original Pacific Bell Pioneers Program, one of our baby Bells out here in this area.

Danny?

Mr. Wong. Thank you for inviting me here today to speak on pioneering. Good morning. My name is Danny Wong and I work for Pacific Bell. I also belong to one of the largest volunteer organizations in the country and that is the Telephone Pioneers of America. The Pioneers are made up of active and retired employees of Pacific Bell. We have approximately 10,000 members in the De Anza Chapter which handles San Diego, Orange County, Riverside and Corona. We have approximately 4,000 active employees and 6,000 retirees. The Pioneers are targeted towards education, social needs and the environment. When we are asked to speak on corporate volunteerism in the community I had to stop and think about some of the projects that we do. On any given day you can catch us putting numbers on the bottom of toy ducks for Rubber Ducky Races to raise money for organizations like MS or you can catch us building houses for Habitat for Humanity. Our volunteers bring our families, our friends to the events, enabling friends, families and co-workers to come together. Last year alone, Pacific Bell Pioneers donated more than 1 million hours which comes out to about $12 million worth of volunteer time and donated approximately $1.5 million in contributions to programs to enhance the quality of life for thousands of people.

There are many projects I would like to speak on today; the first one would be Netday. This is a project where we team with a school district. We work together putting category 5 or cat 5 cable and ISDN jacks into each classroom. This enables the classrooms to access the Internet. Along with Netday we have a computer program project that we do. When a school is identified as needing computers, we send a form out to the schools and they fill it out and it is sent down to the Detwiler Foundation. When computers become available, then they are shipped out to the schools.

One of the next projects I would like to speak on is the Map Painting project. This is a two day project. On the first day we go on a sweep, wash and put down a base coat on a playground. On the second day we paint a 30 by 60 foot map of the United States on the playground. This helps teachers to teach geography in a school. Some of the classrooms have competitions with each other where they go out and actually find the States and see if they can name the capitals for it. That is how they would accumulate points for a contest.

One of the next projects I would like to speak on is the I Like Me project. This project is designed to build self-esteem and to promote reading skills. When we present the books to a school, we don't just go out and give the books to the children, we stay out there and we read with them. The books are custom made for each student. It has their name and two of their friends' names printed in the story.

The last project I would like to speak on is the 911 Simulator. This is another interaction project with the students. We go out to schools and we teach the ABCs of 911. With the help of ``Patches'' the 911 mascot cat, we teach students when and how to use the 911 number correctly. After the lecture part of the program, the students take turns on our simulator making 911 calls. We have a dispatcher that stays out of sight where the students do not see them and they would pick up the phone and dial 911 and we would walk them through just like a 911 emergency call would.

We do try to team up with the local police department and we try to get some of the local dispatchers out to the program with us.

Thank you.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Danny.

[The statement of Mr. Wong follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MR. DANNY WONG, PACIFIC BELL PIONEERS PROGRAM, TUSTIN, CALIFORNIA - SEE APPENDIX I

Ms. Sanchez. Next we have Pat Halberstadt who is the Executive Director of the Garden Grove Boys and Girls Clubs. She has been there since 1974 and she is a presence to be reckoned with.

Pat?

Ms. Halberstadt. Thank you, Congresswoman and Chairman Castle for this invitation to speak today and I would also like to recognize the Leadership Academy. Keep up the good work and if you are looking for any place to do community service hours, we can always use you at the Boys and Girls Clubs, so consider that. We can use good people like you.

Our role as a Boys and Girls Club in our community and like other nonprofits is to enhance and support education and the family. We really depend on the business and community members in order to do that. We consider ourselves a nonprofit business to begin with so we have to have good business practices. We really look to business to keeping our doors open and in fact, businesses were instrumental in helping us all get started when we opened in doors as a Boys and Girls Club.

We looked to United Way. We looked to groups like the Junior League of Orange County. We also are expecting at our Boys and Girls Club site during the summer UPS will come out and do some painting and Taco Bell is going to come out and work in some of our gardens and on some of our athletic fields. So we see a steady presence of business in our sites and they really frost the cake so to speak. They really help us do our programs better.

I might also mention that the Congresswoman's office in itself gave computers to our computer lab and these types of donations are wonderful as we get them in from different businesses and offices in Orange County.

We are just one of sixteen Boys and Girls Clubs in the county and there are 33 cities, so less than half of the cities in Orange County have programs like ours after school. I contend that because we offer nine sites in Garden Grove alone that you could probably put a Boys and Girls Club or an after school program on about every six square blocks and be able to keep those doors open and keep the program thriving.

I would like to talk a little bit about our club and what it offers. It is very similar to what is offered by other recreation programs and after school programs in the county. I will do this in order to give you an example of how business support really enables us to provide some valuable services.

I have seen a lot of change in the past 25 years as far as what needs there are in the community. Twenty-five years ago when I started at the club in Garden Grove we had what we called the Kool Aid Moms dropping their kids off afternoon as they went to go maybe do their grocery shopping. They would come in and do some ceramics or perhaps play a sport or something like that and then their moms would be back to pick them up after groceries were shopped for at 5 o'clock and then go on to dinner. While I am sure Orange County is much like the rest of the United States, most of those Kool Aid Moms are out there working now. In a lot of after school programs we are seeing that almost all of our families have either two parents working or in the many cases, 40 percent of our families, single parents who are supporting a household. So they need a place for their kids to be not only after school, but before school as well.

I appreciate your belief in the need and the value of after school programs because I believe that today we are doing our most important work in our history. In Orange County, in particular, never have the needs been greater, the circumstances more critical for recreation, education and guidance programs for youth outside the classroom. Every day at one of our nine neighborhood centers we see very compelling reasons for our programs. Our children are the neediest that they have ever been and those needs exceed and extend far beyond the financial needs. Many kids face very real threats of violence, have experienced first hand the effects of abuse, witness the aberrant behaviors induced by drugs, and struggle with language and culture barriers which expose them to prejudice, limit their potentials and sometimes make them easy prey for gangs.

Our nine centers serve about 1200 children a day in providing what children need in three different forms. We offer a safe, enriching alternative to the street. We make achievement in school a priority and a reality. We focus on the development of the whole child through family support.

That was mentioned earlier today when one of the teachers and the educators had a chance to speak. We too provide positive role models and in talking to some of the alumni who have come back to the clubs and being there 25 years now I am even seeing some children that I worked with bringing their own children. I am waiting for them to bring their grandchildren, then I know it is time for me to really get out of the business, but we always ask them what was the most important thing that you experienced when you were at our clubs? Even though we have lots of great places to play, we have lots of great equipment for them to use. We have a lot of fun activities and things like that, it always boils down to one thing, there was a positive role model that provided them some sort of guidance at a very critical time in their life. And it always boils down to that human element.

I guess I would just like to close by saying that we can prove that as long as a child is actively involved in our activities, they are not just staying off the streets. They are staying out of trouble. They are learning in our computer labs and homework assistance programs. They are being fortified in our cooking and nutrition programs. And they are growing strong and confident in our gym and on our play yards. They are also being enriched in our craft classes and shops and they are building character in our leadership programs.

After school programs have made a positive impact on the youth and families that have been served. Children have improved their status in school, raised their aspirations and developed personal assets to use the rest of their lives.

Parents, too, can come to our programs to improve English and cultural skills and participate at a higher level in their children's lives. In short, after school programs are not just building better kids, we are building better families and a better future for all of us.

Thanks for letting me tell our story.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Pat.

[The statement of Ms. Halberstadt follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MS. PAT HALBERSTADT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GARDEN GROVE GIRLS AND BOYS CLUBS, GARDEN GROVE, CALIFORNIA - SEE APPENDIX J

Ms. Sanchez. Max Madrid who is the Director of Community Services Gang Prevention Programs in Santa Ana.

Max?

Mr. Madrid. Thank you for inviting me to come and speak. I am Max Madrid. I am the Director of Gang Prevention for Community Service Programs.

Ms. Sanchez. Max, can you get a little closer to the mike?

Mr. Madrid. How is that? CSP was started back in 1972. It was started by Dr. Binder. He was from UC-I and he was in a human services group that has been in service for over 26 years. We are in all the cities in Orange County. We have over 200 staff members and we are in the schools. We are in the police departments and we have offices all over the place.

Mainly, what we do is we work with at risk and wannabes and the gang members. One thing about working with those individuals is that a lot of them have real low test scores and what we have been able to do like for a good example, I have brought the Spanish Club from Cal State Fullerton over. These young people from Cal State, and they come over and they tutor our young people.

One thing that I learned, I retired from the Navy in 1992 and the last ten years I was in the Navy I was a recruiter in charge. I had five offices here in Orange County and I tell you, I had these young people that would come over with a high school diploma who could barely read third or fourth grade level. I thought to myself it must be the schools. When I started working with CSP in 1992, I started going out in the community of the schools and I found how difficult it was with parents working all the time, you know, the culture, the language barriers that we have. So what I thought, and I know for a fact that we need a whole community working with the young people so we can get it up to par, because right now we are not going to be able to do it or we are going to lose a whole generation of young people.

Right now we are having parenting classes, a lot of parenting classes, because one thing you have got to do, you cannot just teach the young people and then they go home at night and the parents really do not know how to read or write. So what we are doing, we are getting those parents to come in and a lot of the fathers nowadays are coming in to our programs and they are starting to learn. They are starting again. Their self-esteem has started to go up. Basically we deal with about 98 percent of the Hispanic youth, we deal with them. A lot of the youth, they know the English language, but the parents, a lot of them do not know it. What happens is that they start learning the English language and they become the man of the house or the female of the house and they leave their parents below so they tell basically their parents what to do. So what we have done in reverse, we have got the young people and the parents working together and doing homework and learning computer skills in classes. We have all kinds of classes like Gang Awareness, Anger Management, the Youth and the Law that we are doing with these young people.

Like I say, another resource that we have, our organization is so large that we have Dispute Resolution. We have Victim Witness and all of us work together as a team. We are all the way from San Clemente, all the way up to Cypress and in all those cities, different cities need different resources for the young people. Not every city is the same, so we tailor ourselves to the cities that we are in and we go in there with the cities and the people that work there and we tailor our program to those individual cities. A good example, for Staten, we are in Staten right now and that is very low test scores throughout the whole city. So we are doing a lot of the mentoring there with the young people. And another thing we are bringing is the community businesses and this is really crucial because a lot of these individuals, they live in Staten and a lot of them have never even been to Disney Land. A lot of them have never even been to the beach. And what we do is we get the businesses to come in and we do like a career day. This career day, we get these young people to go out with the managers, for example, the Irvine Company, Wells Fargo Bank, the Mission Viejo Company and all of them go out and they take these young people out for a whole day and I tell you what, they come back and their eyes are just glowing. Then in the evening we give them a nice big dinner and we give them certificates. I had a young man that got so involved with one of the construction managers that that construction manager is paying him to go to college right now. So this is what we need. It takes a whole village to raise these young people nowadays. I say it is very difficult in Orange County. The parents are working. Nobody is home, basically, all the time. So with that, that is what basically we are doing.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Max.

[The statement of Mr. Madrid follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MR. MAX MADRID, DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY SERVICES PROGRAMS, SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA - SEE APPENDIX K

Ms. Sanchez. Last, but not least, of course, we have Sergeant Joe Vargas who is the President of the Anaheim PAL League, Police Athletic League.

Joe?

Sergeant Vargas. Thank you, Congresswoman, Mr. Chairman, and yes, I can say that Ms. Sanchez does, as one of the kids says, boy, she kicks hard for a Congresswoman.

Recent tragic events have really brought attention to what a vital role law enforcement and public safety have in meeting the diverse needs of our schools. You have only to read a newspaper, or watch television to see that our schools need help and as police departments we have a vital role and a function there.

Let me tell you have the Anaheim Police Activities League is taking care of part of that, at least. Back in 1993, Detective Chuck Knight and I were discussing ways we could start a martial arts program for some of the children in our community. We both had a variety of experiences working with the martial arts over a period of years and our own children had been involved in it and we knew if we could get these kids into a class like this, things would be much better. So what we ended up doing was working with the California Police Activities League to form our own PAL here. I never knew there was so much paperwork involved in helping children, between insurance and nonprofit status and everything else, I became a cop for a reason. But let me tell you, it was very successful.

When we looked for a group of kids, our community policing team said, go to this neighborhood here. So we went to Anna Drive, an area that had a history of crime, poverty and substandard conditions, but we needed a place to hold class. Well, right next door to this neighborhood was a school that Ms. Sanchez is very familiar with, Sycamore Junior High, since she is a graduate from there. Well, I went to the principal and I thought oh my God, she is going to have a million reasons why we cannot use this gym. A decision was made right then and there. We did not have meetings. We did not have discussions. We did not talk to lawyers. Starting this Friday, you can use that gym. The classes started with 15 kids.

Since that time we now have classes ranging from over 60 kids. Some of the kids are only there for a matter of weeks because they move constantly. Some of the kids have been with us for the entire four years and I have watched them grow and it has been an amazing feeling to watch them grow. One of our little girls, Jasmine, back when she graduated from Sycamore Junior High came up to me and she invited Detective Knight and I to her junior high graduation and she goes, ``I would like you guys to come because you are so special to me.'' I said, "Why do you want us there, Jasmine?'' She goes, "You know why, Sergeant Vargas? Because you are the most important people I know.'' That touched me so much I showed up in full uniform for her graduation and I found out she was one of the keynote speakers. We have had a positive influence on that young lady's life. She is now a junior at Catella High School. We are encouraging her towards four-year college, and not letting deviate from that path.

But we just do not do karate any more. We now do beach play days, snow excursions, golf, basketball, soccer teams. All these we do in partnership with organizations such as the Anaheim Youth Center Downtown and Boxing Club, the Anaheim YMCA. There is no need to go out and look for our own group of kids. There are kids everywhere that need our attention and we are there to give it to them.

Let me tell you, every officer who participates, is a volunteer. Most of the activities do not take place on duty. Our budget needs? Well, logistically, the police department supports this, but our budget comes from the United Way donations of our own officers from within the department.

As an outgrowth of working with the kids, I found that parents were desperate for classes on what to do about gang and drug awareness. So working with the Anaheim School District, I did those classes at about eight different schools now and have always been asked to come back to do more.

The parents who are raising the kids are mostly from immigrant communities with little experience in the parental skills necessary to raise a child in this often-permissive American culture. They have little understanding of the destructive influences of drugs and gangs in the lives of our children. And speaking of parenting, some parents are very good. Others are not and because of lifestyle choices or maybe substance abuse, they are never going to raise up to par no matter how many parenting classes we give them.

We have to believe in the concept of institutional parenting; that is just because the parents cannot do the job does not mean we just sit there and blame them. We have to, as organizations and as many of these do here, pick up the ball and run with it. We cannot just complain about how terrible parents are without fixing the problem. They need to know, the children do, that someone cares about them and is there for them.

What we learn in community policing is that we have to partner. Law enforcement cannot do it by themselves and schools cannot do it by themselves either. If our schools are having problems, our entire community is having problems with gangs, drugs, delinquency, the problems are there.

We need to be collaborative about solving these problems. We need to be results oriented, focusing on positive instead of just dwelling on the negative all the time. If we continue to bring diverse groups of people together, all striving for the common good of our children, we cannot help but succeed at making our communities a better place for them.

Thank you.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Sergeant.

[The statement of Sgt. Vargas follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF SERGEANT JOE VARGAS, POLICE ACTIVITIES LEAGUE PROGRAM, ANAHEIM POLICE DEPARTMENT, ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA - SEE APPENDIX L

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Sergeant. Mr. Chairman?

Chairman Castle. Well, thank you all very much. This is a very interesting panel, a lot of diverse, different subjects you have brought up. I do not know if we are going to have a chance to get into all of them, so I am going to try to ask questions and hopefully get brief answers so we can go through a number of things here.

I am going to ask all three of you who participated in youth programs, basically the same question, Pat, Max and Joe here. That is this, how do kids come to you or how do you sell yourself to kids? I am thinking about the kids who are shy, who are reclusive, who are antisocial, who do not want to be involved in anything that is structurally positive. Max, in your case, maybe they are more assigned to you, but the others, may be a matter of choice.

I would be interested, briefly, if you could describe that. Obviously, your programs are there. You get good kids who come and get involved and that is fine. But I am worried about the kids who, maybe we need to get involved, who are not there.

Pat, could you start us off on that?

Ms. Halberstadt. Yes, I think that is primarily why we expanded so quickly. We realize that there are always going to be those kids that are going to want to come, and generally there are young leaders like this that want to be involved and doing something. The kids we really want to reach out to are the ones who do not necessarily have those opportunities or that drive. So we work very closely collaboratively with our school district and with our own police department and get referrals from both of those groups for children who may either be on the brink of getting into trouble or those who you are saying who may be just a little bit shy, maybe having problems at home that the school is aware of, where they think that it might benefit them to participate in a program such as ours. Then we do a lot of outreach on our own. It is all about marketing too. We make sure that our programs are important enough and relevant enough to kids to where they will go out and talk to each other about that and we are real proud that our word of mouth marketing works very well for us too. But it is a constant effort to make sure that the right kids are there.

Chairman Castle. Thanks. Max? Bring that microphone as close as possible to you.

Mr. Madrid. You know one thing for sure, these young people that we are dealing with, you know, they are not dumb. They are very smart and when you go in there and you start working with those young people they know if you care or not. That is the main focus. If they know that you care and you feel good about them, they will open up.

I teach little classes at Juvenile Hall. Some of those young people are real hard core individuals, but if you go in there and you do not lower yourself or lower them or anything, you just go in there with a straight face and tell them the truth, I tell you, they come out, once they come out of Juvenile Hall, they are always coming out to look for us. I have a tattoo removal that I do. This doctor, this is what I mean about the community, this Dr. Mills has been doing this tattoo removal for over two years, free of charge. We have not been able to get money from the State. We get those young people from Juvenile Hall and we bring them out and if they are going the right path, we will take their tattoos off. I tell you with their self-esteem, they are just motivated and they get jobs and that is what we need. However, they know, those young people know how you are. As soon as you walk in, they will know in one or two seconds, if you are really out there to help them out as a person or not.

Chairman Castle. Sergeant Vargas.

Sergeant Vargas. I agree that kids have to know you care, but one of the things I find with kids is all kids want to play. They may not be good at it. They may not have the opportunity, but if play activity is structured activity it allows kids to develop character skills. So you provide the activity that they want to be involved in and they will come. We do not have a shortage of kids. If anything, we have a lack of resources for kids. But play activity is good activity and that is one of the reasons our program is so successful.

Chairman Castle. Do you have any tutoring or mentoring requirements at all in any of your programs or is it pure recreational? Just in the case of you, Sergeant.

Sergeant Vargas. In our particular program, basically it is the interaction that develops the character skills that they need. We sort of go from the Character Counts Program of Dr. Michael Josephson and we try to emphasize fair play, honesty, hard work and efforts. We would love to do long term mentoring and tutoring, but it is one of those things where the resources just are not there right now.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Sergeant. I like what you have to say. We will take you back to Delaware and we will make you a Captain so you come on back with me on the plane.

[Laughter.]

Sergeant Vargas. I enjoy my job.

Chairman Castle. I am sure you do. Bruce, let me go to you and I could spend a long time talking to you because I am very interested in the finances of education. I know Loretta has done some work with you before, but I want to learn a little bit about California as it relates to the federal government. My understanding of a couple of things you said and other people have said here, your bond, your referenda for bonds are two-thirds votes, two-thirds vote. Is that a State law or is it a Constitutional requirement?

Mr. Kerns. It is a State Constitutional requirement.

Chairman Castle. What does it take to change the Constitution in California? Do you have any idea?

Mr. Kerns. It takes a two-thirds approval of the State Legislature to put a new proposition on the ballot that would then go before the voters, and then by their majority, 50 percent majority vote, they could change it.

Chairman Castle. How are your schools funded? Is there a percentage of State funds and a percentage of local funds if a bond referendum does pass in a particular district?

Mr. Kerns. Are you speaking of capital projects?

Chairman Castle. Capital projects, excuse me, yes.

Mr. Kerns. Right now, the State, as an incentive to get school districts to seek local funding has two programs in place one of which would provide 80 percent state funding for a 20 percent local match for the renovation of older schools, and then a 50 percent match of State money to a 50 percent match of local money, for the construction of new schools. Generally, state-wide, the percentage of funds that have been provided by the State account for probably less than half of the total of schools constructed over the last several decades.

Chairman Castle. This I do not understand and you did not mention it, but I do know that in California you have a mandated, perhaps by referendum, reduced class size. Does that strike a chord of some kind or another?

Mr. Kerns. The class size reduction program is a program put in place by the previous Governor and continued under the present Governor where--

Chairman Castle. So it was done by statute.

Mr. Kerns. It was done by statute.

Chairman Castle. Has that had a huge impact on the need for schools and the need to renovate and re-do classrooms, maybe subdivide classrooms? I would assume, particularly in an area like Anaheim which is in a huge growth situation that that has had a tremendous impact on the physical structures of schools in California. Is that correct?

Mr. Kerns. That is correct. It has made a phenomenal impact, particularly in places like Anaheim and in Santa Ana where the class size reduction programs for grades K through 3 and then partially in grades 9 where the effort is to reduce in the K-3 grades to a 20:1 ratio of students to teacher.

Chairman Castle. Was that thought out before all this was done or is that something that has caught everybody a little bit by surprise? I am not sure -- I guess it is a political statement when I say this, but I mean I will tell you why I ask. I have not heard it from Loretta, but I have heard it from other Members from California who said this has had just an incredible impact on some problems in California. In terms of schools, and in terms of being able to find qualified teachers, because obviously in a time in which teachers are retiring and we are having trouble attracting people to teaching, all of a sudden there is this greater need for teachers. So there are a couple of -- it is a double edge sword in terms of problems, and I just did not know how carefully thought out all this has been. Maybe you do not want to comment on this, I do not know, but I am just curious about it.

Mr. Kerns. I will agree with you that it has caused too difficulties, both a capital difficulty and an operational difficulty. The State provided funding to assist school districts who accomplished this class size reduction, provided money both for the relocatable classrooms or portable classrooms that were most often necessary to accommodate this quick transition to a 20:1 ratio, and also provided supplemental funds to hirer additional teachers.

Probably in the near term those monies might be marginally satisfactory because a lot of the teachers that are being hired are younger teachers at the lower salary scales. Over time it will probably most certainly be an underfunded program, because as the teachers advance in years and tenure, their salaries will be higher and the districts will no longer be able to have a good match between their program costs put in place by this program and demands for accommodating these lower class sizes.

Chairman Castle. Let me finally ask you about federal programs, a couple of things. One is and this always bewilders me a little bit. We have a program which you may have heard me mention earlier called IDEA, Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. We fund about 11 percent of that right now. We created it, the federal government.

We said that children with disabilities need to be educated, absolutely worthwhile calls and we indicated in statute that we would fund 40 percent of it. We are funding about 11 percent of it and that is through Republicans and Democrats, both in Congress and the President, so it is not really any political blame, but the more we fund of that, the more money is freed up on the state and local basis. In other words, if we took our level from 11 to 40 percent, I think it is about a $10 billion gap across the country, it would free up money on a local basis.

I am not really asking you to comment on that, but to me it is just something that I would hope the federal government would commit to over some period of time. You cannot do it in one year. It seems to me over a period of time that we can start to make that commitment, which would help with some of the problems that you have.

You also went through some of the federal programs and I am not sure I am as familiar with those programs as I should be. Can you tell me in a little more detail about the various federal programs that impact on the funding of the -- the ones that exist now, not the proposed ones? The proposed one to help with the funding of construction of schools, but the various tax credits and other things which exist now and what is helpful and what is not helpful.

Mr. Kerns. The program that exists currently is the Qualified Zone Academy Bond Program and it is in the second year of a two-year authorization so to continue, it would need to be renewed. It is a tax credit program that provides funds to schools in the form of interest-free loans that would be -- the benefit would be to the purchaser of the bonds would be given a tax credit in lieu of interest payments. It is for the renovation of existing schools. There are restrictions on its use for construction of new schools. It is available to school districts that satisfy certain enterprise zone or empowerment zone qualifications as well as schools that have 35 percent or more of their students on free or reduced lunch programs.

Until just this last week the program has been used by only a few school districts, in large part, because of technical difficulties in applying the U.S. Treasury regulations to its implementation. Last week those Treasury regulations were changed, so you should be seeing very shortly quite a number of school districts taking advantage of that.

Chairman Castle. Thank you. Let me just close with this and I may have other questions after Congresswoman Sanchez asks her round of questions. In Delaware we just, our Legislature just closed its session and a bill that failed was a bill that would have allowed the educators by school district to be able to prevent any construction in their district, simply by stating that it would have a negative impact on education in terms of schools being overcrowded, etcetera. I will tell you one thing, it scared the heck out of the developers in Delaware, but it was very interesting. At least some Members of the Legislature had taken enough interest in education to at least look at that possibility.

This whole business of, I believe this whole business of lack of ability to build proper schools, the unwillingness to fund schools, the voting no on referenda across the country is a tremendous problem. While maybe we can help in part at the federal level, it is not going to be solved there. It is going to have to be solved locally and as we pass more restrictive laws in terms of percentage of votes, etcetera, it really plays havoc with our ability to be able to educate young people, that combined with the ability to attract, of course, good teachers to our schools. So these are very, very important matters.

Let me yield to the distinguished Congresswoman.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Any time you want to sit down and talk about school construction and how to fund it, I think Bruce and I have been through a lot of wars on this, but I will tell you a couple of things we are doing in California.

The Legislature did try to pass the two-thirds, to get two-thirds of the vote to try to get this on what we call an initiative process in California. Unfortunately, we fell short. There is a private group and it is mostly the high tech companies, to tell you the truth, who are going to try to qualify a referendum, an initiative at the State level for voter approval to reduce just for school construction from a two-thirds vote to a majority plus vote.

I think it is just a reflection of business, when business people are leading this charge, that indicates just what dire straits we are here in California. Yes, the impact from the smaller school class has had an impact, but the impact was there even before that.

I told you earlier that in Anaheim alone we grow by a thousand kids a year. When schools are built for 600 or 700 kids, and we are not building a school a year, it is bad. When we look at Santa Ana and one of the reasons why we are trying to do a bond issue at the local level in Santa Ana, we have 26 elementary school sites in Santa Ana.

If you took the portables that are on those school sites, the added classrooms that are portable that are taking up grass space and playground space, etcetera and put those classes and made permanent schools, you would have 27 schools. So the impact is just incredibly undeniable in this area and any time you want to talk about this, I certainly will. The Cueset bonds have been watching, of course.

I have a school construction bill that mirrors the Cueset bond for new construction and it basically requires a local community to pass its own bond initiative. They have to take the responsibility at a local level to get this passed. In California it is still two-thirds and then we would on a $1 to $1 tax credit, credit those people who purchase the bonds for the interest which means that basically do not send your money to Washington, leave it at a local level. I think two very Republican thoughts there and I still do not know why you are not on it, but maybe we can discuss that later.

Anyway, we have been working very hard in California, especially in this District, to try to alleviate this.

I have a question actually for Danny because I do know that your program is such a large program and you do have retirees as well as, you mentioned 4,000 on-going working people in PATCO.

Do you think this helps the attitude of your employees or the employees that are working for Pac Bell? Are they happy that the company is involved in it? Is it something they talk about in the work place? Is it something that you could say is a positive, really, really, you can see a difference in the way people feel about the place they work?

Mr. Wong. Like I said before, we have employees who like to bring their families out and their children out, so it is like a family gathering in some aspects. It is a very positive thing. I also believe that people in our corporation like to give back to the community, sometimes maybe not financially, but a lot of people like to go out and just do the work. So a lot of people are very proud to be Pioneers.

Ms. Sanchez. Does this ever get discussed in recruitment of people who might want to come and work for the company?

Mr. Wong. We talk about it the minute people hire on. At one time we used to have to have 20 years to become a Pioneer. They have dropped it down to 15, 10 and now you can become a Pioneer the minute you hire on and usually we get a lot of new people coming in with new ideas, new projects, so they do bring a lot of involvement in with our company.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Danny. Laurie, my last question really is going to be for you. One of the things that we have here, of course, in Anaheim is the Science Foundation Program where we have set up a foundation to raise monies to send our fifth graders for a week up into the mountains to see what a dark sky with lights looks like in reality because here we have so many lights. Mr. Chairman, do you know that we do not see the stars at night, or to send children to the Pacific Ocean. We live eight miles away from the Pacific Ocean. Eighty percent of the children I represent will never visit it in their lifetime. It is that type of a situation here.

Being so interested in science, invoking the whole essence of science in a young person which is where it needs to start in order for us to have those research scientists that we so badly need here in this country, what is it that the public can do to help and what should be the role of the federal government in trying to get science and math skills early on in children?

Ms. Smith. I think it would be to help create environments within the classroom that support the natural curiosity and the inquiry so that students and teachers are in an environment so that invokes the questioning that students can take on.

As they do that through their younger years and stay involved with that, it can carry through to the middle school and to the high school and definitely after school programs, add on programs is important. I think the big thing is to facilitate that inquiry and questioning type environment.

Chairman Castle. Let me thank this panel very, very much. What they had to say, I hope everybody was able to really listen to them because what they had to say was very interesting. The programs they are running, the science programs, the involvement of employees, the Pioneers, by the way, is all over the country, does a wonderful job, also of financing and involvement with the kids. They are things of great significance to all of us.

Just out of curiosity, somebody mentioned this in the audience, I am sort of curious as to who everybody is out there and I am not going to have everybody introduce themselves, but by category, I assume -- and this is going to be duplicated in some cases answering more than once. How many are students if you could raise your hands? A vast majority of the people here are students.

How many teachers do we have in the audience? A few teachers.

How many administrators, those who are not teachers, but administrators here. School board is another category, that would count.

How about just people interested in the community or not necessarily directly involved in education?

Any other categories? Anything I missed out there?

University, in general, good. Anything else? Very good. Child care. So some other programs. Some community programs and child-type programs, good.

We appreciate your involvement. I am sure I can speak on behalf of Congresswoman Sanchez when I say this, but we are both vitally interested in education. I believe and I am sure she does that starting young people with the best education we can is perhaps the most important service we can provide beyond health and security of the country, perhaps, particularly to our young people. We have to start at an earlier age than ever before. We have to start considering 365 days a year. That is why so many of these programs are so important and perhaps educators themselves cannot do it alone.

The earlier panel talked about the importance of parents and I cannot stress that enough. We understand that parents have to work, in order to stay up they both have to work, but you can still be involved even if one is working and that is significant. It becomes harder as you deal with parents who themselves have not gone through a full educational system and I think we all have to work on that as well, but across this country this is crucial.

We have had some awful experiences lately at Columbine and other places showing that the societal problems we have are even a little greater perhaps than they used to be for a variety of reasons so we have to deal with that too. I consider the work of our committee to be of extraordinary importance. We devote a lot of time and energy to this. We are very thankful for our staff.

They are very caring and interested people as well. I particularly appreciate the involvement of Loretta Sanchez and all the committee and having this hearing today and the participation of all of you in Anaheim. This is a beautiful facility, by the way, and I guess I am one of those few people who is going to visit Anaheim and not go to Disneyland, but that is the way it goes sometimes when you are doing a little bit of work.

Again, I would just like to thank all of you and there may be a continuation of this program. Loretta mentioned that before, so I am going to turn to her for whatever closing she wishes to make and whatever explanation of what is going to be next she wishes to give us.

Ms. Sanchez. Mr. Chairman, first of all, let me again thank you for allowing us to have this hearing here in Anaheim.

As you probably noticed, this is a community that really cares about its children. I know, because I have lived here all of my life. We have a lot of outside forces and forces that obviously come together here and affect the way our children are raised in this community. We have one of the largest Vietnamese-American communities in the nation. We have a large Hispanic influx. We have a large immigrant influx into California, as you know. We are, right here in this Congressional District, the fourth largest Silicon Valley of the nation. We have Disneyland which has its own, if you think about it, we are about to open in a couple of years a second Disneyland.

So all of the construction you have seen in the next two years and the last two years will have been $4 billion worth of private investment, plus all of the public infrastructure that you probably, you will know why it takes you so long to get back to your hotel today. We live in the middle of a changing society.

We live with the Pacific Rim right to the west of us and the South American countries right to the south of us, so it is a great place to live, but at the same time we receive all the impacts of what is going on and we are trying so desperately at a very local level to solve our problems, and now at a State level because I think in a lot of ways over the last few years, the State has been remiss in its responsibility of helping with the school situation and we are trying to address that.

But I am convinced that our national security is dependent on our resources and our resources are our children. It is our educated, it is our minds, it is our thinking power that is going to make us a global competitor in the world.

Because it is such an issue of national security, and I sit on the National Security Committee also, I think that the Federal Government does need to have some oversight and some involvement. If we cannot build schools because of the states not doing the right thing, then we need to do something to help our local school districts build schools.

If we are having two parent families that are working or one parent families that are working, then we need to think about how we address some incentives to businesses to get involved in our school systems because they want to, they are right now, but we desperately need more help on the local level. And I have always said and people know this, that it is the local level that makes the decisions, but we need to be a partner in that.

I know that you feel that way because I have seen your votes on the other side of the committee. He is a Republican, by the way, which by the way, you are in the majority in Orange County.

I have seen your votes on the other side and I do know that you care about education, that you understand that there are some communities who are working very hard, but still do not have all the tools at their disposal and I hope you will go back to our committee and discuss what you have seen here today because we have a lot of people working very hard from all sectors, a lot of interested people in this and we need help. We desperately need help. Thank you.

[Applause.]

Chairman Castle. I have to, this is sort of a wandering minstrel show. We are going to take our suitcases and go to the airport and head off for Texas now for a hearing tomorrow morning. Congresswoman Sanchez wants to talk to some of you and she is going to have sort of an open mike session for those of you who might not have had a chance to speak.

So we will take a little break now so the Panel can step down.

Thank you for being here. We really appreciate it.

WRITTEN STATEMENT OF MS. ANN EDWARDS, SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD - SEE APPENDIX M

[Whereupon, at 11:25 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]