Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006

STUDENT AND TEACHER SAFETY ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - September 19, 2006)

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, as one of the original cosponsors of the Zero Tolerance for Guns and Weapons in Schools, I have long supported the effort to make our schools safer, and, in fact, schools are among the safest places in our entire society for children, but this legislation, I do not quite understand what it is trying to do.

The suggestion here is that if we just pass this law, that somehow schools will become safer. The fact of the matter is every school district, every State has a policy with respect to the bringing onto campus of drugs, which it is illegal to have on campus, off campus, in your own home or anywhere else, and the use in bringing on weapons, which we have a very strong zero tolerance policy against the bringing of any guns or weapons onto school sites.

It seems to me that this legislation is somehow founded in the idea that if the Congress just votes, this will, in fact, happen.

Tragically, what we have seen is while people are asking us to vote on this policy, which is already in place in most school districts, or all school districts in all of the States in accordance with the State court decisions and in accordance with the Supreme Court decisions, what we have is that the Republicans are masking the fact that what they do is they keep gutting the Safe and Drug-Free School Grants to the States. They cut those grants from $437 million in 2005 to $346 million in 2006, and the House Republicans want to cut them even further to $310 million next year.

So the very funds that this Congress has determined and we worked in partnership with States and school districts over the last several years to make our schools safer, to help educate children about the dangers not only of the drugs and of weapons and various kinds of social behavior, they are now in the process of cutting those, but they want to pass a law that says to do what we have as a matter of existing policy, except that this law, in fact, exposes the district to much more litigation now because now, under the guise of this law, they have to go back through, and if a student is searched under this law, the questions are raised all over again which many districts have tried to settle under State law, under State court interpretations, so that they can have a policy that works, that the schools are on notice of, and the students are on notice of, and that the parents are on notice of. The fact of the matter is that the policy appears to be working across this country.

So, when we get all done with this, I think what we have with this legislation is an effort to try and cover what are the more serious votes taken by this Congress to slash the funding for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools legislation.

Also, this legislation, if it were to be passed into law, fails to take into account additional legal standards that have been imposed by State courts. A uniform search policy can cause difficulties for school districts and would require it to establish policies to address requirements of H.R. 5295, as well as legal standards that apply to respective jurisdictions.

The Congressional Research Service adds that enacting Federal legislation with respect to school-based searches could, therefore, interfere with areas of traditional State and local responsibility, of which there is no showing that the States and local school authorities are not meeting their responsibilities to their students, to the teachers, to the staff in the schools, to the parents and to the communities.

The question is, I guess, just a question of whether or not you think you trust the Congress more simply to pass a law, of which there have been no hearings and no discussion with local officials about how to do this, or whether you trust the people who are running the schools--the school boards, the school administrators, the principals, the district superintendents--who, in fact, have the responsibility for the safety of the children of their districts and of their schools.

It is not much more complicated than that, and you do not have to take it from me, because the fact is that the National School Boards Association, the American Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers, the National PTA and the Great City Council Schools all oppose this legislation.

Why do they oppose this legislation? Because this legislation only makes it a very difficult job that they have been working at and policies for the safety of our students that they have been refining over the last decade.

This legislation just throws all of that open to new interpretations, to new exposure to liability on the questions of their actions that they take on a daily basis to keep our schools safe, to keep our children safe.

They understand this policy. They have developed these policies they have done in conjunction with the communities that they represent. Now Congress wants to fly over on suspension without hearings and drop down a new policy, one size sort of fits all, for all of these school districts, for all of the schools, when in fact the people we represent in our communities have been working on these policies a long time before this legislation was ever suggested. They have been working on them successfully, they have been working on them within the intricacies of State and Federal law, and they have developed the policies in cooperation with the communities and with the parents.

And I would hope that we would reject this legislation, and we would let those who have to take the responsibility, those who absorb the liability for their actions, and those who have local cooperation within their communities on engaging these policies, that they would in fact be allowed to go forward and continue those policies, and we would heed the concerns of the Congressional Research Service that we now have a Federal policy that, if it was to pass, requires this kind of reaction by all of the States to see whether or not they comply with this Federal law when in fact they are already complying with the efforts in their communities to keep their schools safe.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

It is rather interesting that this legislation comes up with no hearings, no discussion with the school districts, no discussion with local authorities who have the obligations to meet the demands that we cavalierly talk about here. This Court decision I believe is 1985. That is what school districts have been struggling with is to try to put in a policy that meets the test of reasonableness and also protects them in terms of liability and the teacher in terms of liabilities.

We cited Columbine here. I can't believe there is a school district in Colorado that doesn't have a policy dealing with guns on campus in compliance with Federal law where there is zero tolerance for guns on campus or you can lose your funding.

Paducah, Kentucky, and the tragedy there, I can't believe there is a school district in Kentucky that has not responded in the years since those tragedies.

The fact of the matter is every school district in the country has a policy like this because they can, in fact, be sued for not having a policy, for not taking reasonable steps to protect their students and faculty and staff.

Here we have the United States Congress apparently read a report of statistics and studies of all of the activities which is illegal under State and Federal law. They have read that now and have decided 10, 20 years later that the school districts are not doing anything, are not taking action, and the Federal Government has to tell them to take this action. It is incredibly arrogant and an insult to people who every day live on the front lines for the protection of those students and those faculty members and those staff members and for those children whose charge they have to think that somehow they have not developed the best policy they possibly can within the confines of the fourth amendment, within the confines of their State interpretation of State laws.

That is what school districts struggle with all of the time. That is what they do for a living. Those are the measures they can take. This idea that somehow if you codify this Supreme Court decision, the TLO decision, that somehow if you codify this and they are immune from liability, no, they are not. Someone would go to the court and decide it was an unreasonable search, and you will be right back with liability, just as is done all of the time under the fourth amendment.

What school districts have tried to do is to build a policy over a period of years to try to make it the most effective policy and also make sure that they are not exposing the district and others to all kinds of different liabilities, but to have an effective policy.

Does anybody here suggest that is not their purpose? Does anybody suggest that they have not done this since Columbine, they have not done this since Paducah, or they have not done this since the shootings in Oregon? Of course they have.

And you know what, they would probably be in a much better standing if you would keep cutting the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Act, if you quit cutting the money that is available to them in education so they could make these policies even more effective, and they could spend even more time with the students working on why these behavior patterns should not be allowed, why schools should be a safe place, why schools should not be allowed to be the street. There should be bright lines between the schools and streets. That is what schools are seeking to do all the time.

But here is the Federal Government 10, 20 years later after the policy was announced saying, I guess you are not doing anything, and we are going to tell you to do it. We are going to tell you to do it this way or the highway.

It just doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't comport with what all of us know is going on in the districts that we represent. Either that, or you have never visited a school, you have never talked to a school administrator, or never talked to a superintendent or a teacher. The fact of the matter is that they struggle with this all of the time, and they do it within the confines of the decision that you say is controlling. They know that. That is why they hire attorneys. That is why the policy parties that are responsible for coming up with this, that is why they oppose this.

But this will be the Congress who tells them, do it our way, that is the only way; and now we will have to go back through all of these policies and start over from ground zero. It just doesn't make any sense. It denies what we all know is, in fact, taking place in school districts and schools all over this country every day as those individuals struggle to keep those educational institutions safe for the students who are attending them. I urge my colleagues to vote against this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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