Hillary Offers Education Plan Here As 1.1 Million Return To School

As 1.1 million New York City schoolchildren returned last week to a trouble-ridden school system, Senate candidate Hillary Clinton called for an overhaul of the nations education goals in a spirited speech to hundreds of cheering Queens College students.
Accompanied by her college student daughter, Chelsea, Clinton said "kids go to school in New York with no promise and no hope."
She pinned the blame on a creaking national educational structure.
"In Queens," she said, "Ive seen classes conducted in closets, textbooks available only to teachers and many schools without principals. There are too many schools that just dont deliver."
She agreed with an earlier speaker, Borough President Claire Shulman that said "were just treading water," a reference to the citys inability to keep pace with its classroom needs.
Shulman, who urged Queens voters to support Clinton, said that she would be instrumental in getting Queens the schools it needs.
"We must turn out students who can compete for jobs in the world marketplace," Clinton said. "We must react the way we did in the 50s when Russia launched a satellite, the Sputnik, and awakened us to the need for vast improvements in our math and science programs."
Clinton drew cheers and applause when she cited a series of "gaps" in the educational system.
"Were woefully short of principals, are confronting an affordability gap which keeps bright students from attending college and must provide our children with skilled teachers."
Clinton gave details of a plan to help schools recruit 10,000 principals over a five-year period. She said the federal government should award a total of $60 million a year to school districts that sorely need principals and assistant principals. She said schools could also use the grants to provide stipends to "master" principals who would train and provide support to new principals, ideally with the help of nonprofit groups and universities.
She urged the federal government to award $5,000 bonuses to outstanding teachers.
"If we do this for athletes then we should do it for teachers," she told her enthusiastic audience.
Clinton drew an analogy with the past.
"I want to do for children today what my parents and their generation did for me and my classmates," she said. "Lets take the federal surplus and do the responsible thing with it and end plans to give trillion dollar tax cuts to people doing well."
After a demonstrator called Clinton a "Jew hater," the First Lady said that "I am absolutely opposed to any unilateral declaration of statehood by the Palestinians."
She criticized her opponent, Rick Lazio, for his failure to support needed school construction in New York. She also accused him of supporting former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in closing the federal government.
Later, during a question and answer period with Queens College students, Tim Rosen of Kew Gardens Hills, a senior and member of the schools academic senate, took off on Lazio, Gingrich, Tom Delay and other conservative members of the House who voted for the presidents impeachment.
"The impeachment was a case of a shameful coup detat attempt by the Republicans," he told Clinton. "I felt terrible that you and Chelsea underwent such indignities."
Rosen said that history will look back on the impeachment attempt as "unwarranted."
When the conference ended, Queens College students made a beeline for Chelsea. She posed happily for photographs while under the watchful eye of the Secret Service and her beaming mother.