Gore Has Education in Mind During California Swing

Vice President Al Gore returned to Los Angeles on Wednesday for his ninth visit to California this year, so obsessed with education that he seemed to aspire to be superintendent-in-chief rather than leader of the free world.

Almost immediately upon his arrival, Gore began bashing Republicans for refusing to provide $22 billion for a school construction and modernization program that the White House had sought in federal budget legislation approved this week.

But Gore also took note of the Clinton administration’s crowning achievement in the budget: $1.1 billion to launch an initiative to hire 100,000 new elementary school teachers to cut down on classroom overcrowding.

Gore plans to announce today that the allocations call for California to receive $129 million this fiscal year, which would allow 3,322 new teachers to be hired around the state.

“There is nothing more important to America’s future prosperity than giving our children a world-class education,” Gore said in a prepared statement.

But to get the teacher initiative the White House had to abandon a proposal to build new schools and upgrade aging ones in negotiations with the GOP-led Congress.

The vice president’s emphasis on education is no accident. With the midterm elections now just 12 days away, the hiring of new teachers and school modernization have emerged as an overarching issue.

Gore arrived in Los Angeles midway through a grueling, three-day campaign swing in which he has attended rallies and fund-raisers for a dizzying array of Democratic office-seekers in Illinois, Iowa and New Mexico.

In Los Angeles, the vice president attended a late-afternoon, get-out-the-vote rally at the Boyle Heights Senior Center. He then traveled by motorcade through rush-hour traffic to Theodore Roosevelt High School to speak about overcrowded schools and dilapidated buildings at a noisy rally attended by Lt. Gov. Gray Davis and other top state Democrats. Gore seemed especially enthusiastic, often uttering campaign slogans and exhortations in Spanish, much to the delight of the largely Latino crowds. He is scheduled to campaign today with Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Davis and other candidates.

Both in Los Angeles and earlier in the day in Albuquerque, Gore sharpened the focus of the Democrats’ education crusade Wednesday by emphasizing the administration’s $547-million “Hispanic education action plan” in the new budget for fiscal year 1999.

Included are programs to strengthen basic reading and math skills, to fight dropouts at vulnerable schools and to enhance skills in teaching English.

Gore described the initiative as “an unprecedented commitment to Latino youngsters,” adding: “We want Hispanic Americans to be full partners in America’s prosperity.”

Clinton announced the initiative in his State of the Union address early this year. It stems from the fact that America’s school-age Latino population--among the most educationally disadvantaged groups in the country--is expected to grow from 14% today to 22% by the 2020.

The new budget initiative includes about $390 million to bolster a special basic reading and math skills program whose beneficiaries are 32% Latino; $66 million to train 20,000 teachers over five years to more effectively teach English; $60 million to improve school programs for children of migrant workers; and $30 million to help schools reverse high dropout rates.

Studies show that Latino dropout rates significantly exceed those of other racial and ethnic groups, with one U.S. Department of Education study finding that only 63% of Latino adults have completed high school, compared with 91.5% of whites and 83% of blacks.

In the process of highlighting the administration’s broader education initiatives, Gore has told a series of horror stories about the state of America’s public school system.

All week long, he has been recounting his many personal observations picked up while touring overcrowded schools across America:

* A school in Waterloo, Iowa, has so many children, 57, and so few textbooks, 13, in a combined science class that the teacher cannot assign homework.

* In St. Louis, the space underneath a staircase was being converted to accommodate a teacher’s desk.

* In Dade County, Fla., an overcrowded school begins its first lunch shift at 9:30 a.m.

* At a school in the district of Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), a janitor’s closet was converted into a classroom. “I saw it with my own eyes,” Gore told a crowd in Moline, Ill., this week.

At every stop this week, Gore has chastised Congress for killing several major pieces of legislation this year, including measures to impose new tobacco controls, to raise the minimum wage, to empower patients in dealing with managed care providers and to overhaul election-financing laws.

Gore also has escalated his attacks on the GOP for pursuing an impeachment inquiry against President Clinton in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal. At a Democratic rally in Albuquerque on Wednesday afternoon, Gore tried out this homemade doggerel, much to the delight of the partisan crowd:

“We say legislate. The Republicans say investigate. We say educate. They say instigate. We say illuminate. They say interrogate. We say protect our children. They launch more inquisitions. We say make the decisions. They say take depositions. We know our future is nearing. They say hold more hearings. We say heal our nation. They just say investigation. We say get on with the people’s business!”

Gore was to attend a fund-raiser Wednesday at the Bel-Air home of Alan Horn, chief executive officer of Castle Rock Entertainment.