During Thursday's town hall in Pittsburgh, PA, Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) discussed President Trump's cuts to the FAA and the rise in plane accidents.
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00:00Because of the work that we do in the Hill District I wanted to give voice to these questions.
00:09They came in later than a lot of others, so I'm not asking you to answer, but I do want to give a voice.
00:15And whoever asked these questions, I ask for you to expect follow-up from the office.
00:21This question is specifically, in common, is specifically about seniors.
00:26How can your team help all seniors to live in renter housing, get their rent rebate refund,
00:33and stop being rejected because they are not living in a home, a house, but still paying to make their rent?
00:45So that's something that I'm going to actually go back to because we have another question.
00:49Well, I can actually answer that very quickly.
00:51Your state rep are the people who do that. That's the answer. Go to your state reps.
00:56They run the rent rebate program. They do a lot of work on it, and they're very good at it.
01:00Okay. This one is more about the area median income, which is designated by the area in which you live
01:08and the public rents are determined.
01:12When will the area median income be changed to ethically and honestly be affordable housing?
01:21So that's an important question that I'm going to ask.
01:24Your office is going to get all of these questions.
01:26Everyone who is not going to get an answer tonight, that's probably a federal question, an accounting question,
01:32an important question nonetheless. It is a very important question.
01:35Okay. So I'm going to do this last clustering, and I think that that's going to be –
01:40and then we'll close after that, so please stay after the Congresswoman answers this final clustering.
01:46The last clustering of questions is geared towards federal agencies and for services.
01:54Okay. So this is Val Weller.
01:58I have to give a shout-out to Aiden Drucker because he's a high school sophomore,
02:03and he probably didn't know how to answer this.
02:06Mark Mancini, Nicole Patterson, Serenity Clem, Annie Rainey, and Monique Berdil and Leanne Doncher.
02:30These people have specific questions about public education, busing, and protecting public schools,
02:38or they want to know if they can apply to the federal aviation administration,
02:47or they want to know if you are supportive of House Resolution 70 regarding the population of the post office
02:57and if you are not yet knowledgeable about all of the details of that.
03:03I got it.
03:04The bottom line is they don't want you to know.
03:06Yeah, I got it. I got it. I got it.
03:08And they want to know if that's going to be protected.
03:12And then there is a federal employee here who wants to know if they can do to protect their jobs and their communities.
03:20So again, this relates to the status of various federal agencies. Thank you.
03:24OK, this is a really unfortunate time to have to fly twice a week.
03:28God, I'm horrified. I'm just not even going to lie.
03:30I am horrified because there are cuts to the FAA.
03:34There are cuts to folks who are working in the powers.
03:40And I'm not a conspiracy theory.
03:43I do not have the answer for why these planes are falling out of the air.
03:46I do not know.
03:48But I do know that in times like this, we are supposed to have confidence in our government.
03:54Not fear that they're going to make it worse.
03:56And I know too many people who fear that it's going to be worse.
03:58If this had happened any other time in history, the reaction immediately wouldn't have been, is there a DEI in the cockpit?
04:04It would have been we are going to take every measure to make sure that the skies are as safe as we know them to be
04:11and to keep them safe and to make them safer.
04:13That's the type of leadership that a president is supposed to offer.
04:17When we have insecurities or when we're scared, he's supposed to come in as a sound voice
04:22and say that we are not going to fire more people.
04:25We're going to hire the best and they know what they're doing
04:28and that we are going to be on the front lines of securing whatever it is that we're doing.
04:35And we are unfortunately in a time in our country's history where we can't say that we feel that security.
04:43Department of Education. Public schools. That was the question, right?
04:48Blessing. I haven't heard a blessing question in a few decades.
04:54But public education is really important to me. I went to a public school.
05:00I went to a public school from K-12 through freshman and senior year.
05:05I went to Woodland Hills. I went to a public school that is underfunded.
05:11And in that public school I found sports and music.
05:15I got to learn how to play the clarinet, the bass clarinet, and the tenor saxophone
05:19and then learn how to direct the band.
05:22I learned how to play basketball and use the blocks and track.
05:26I learned how to read and to write. I learned how to be a congressperson
05:31and prepare me to go to law school and be successful there.
05:34But not just me. Public schools serve all students.
05:38And it doesn't... Yeah, that's what it's happened for.
05:41Because public schools serve all students.
05:43Public schools serve students who are transient or unhoused.
05:47A student who is in foster care and maybe doesn't have two parents to advocate for them.
05:53It serves the kids with disabilities. No matter what that disability is.
05:59The IDEA, I know that the wrestling lady doesn't know what the IDEA is.
06:05But it is an important piece of federal legislation that ensures that every single child,
06:10every single child has access to a free and appropriate education.
06:14Because the reality is that some schools do not take kids with disabilities.
06:18They will not educate them. They cannot educate them.
06:21When we privatize and we use vouchers, we're using public dollars to discriminate against other people.
06:27And that does not mean that public schools are perfect.
06:30It means that we have work to do.
06:32It means that at every level of government, we need to be making sure that dollars are being used appropriately.
06:37We need to make sure that we're cutting through bureaucracy that doesn't work.
06:41That if testing doesn't work for students, then we shouldn't continue to invest in it.
06:46We can make changes to public education that serves all children.
06:50But if we cut and gut public education, then that means that any child can be left behind.
06:56Every child can be left behind.
06:58And I know that you think it isn't going to be yours.
07:01But if your child makes it and your neighbor's child doesn't, what does that mean for the future of America?
07:06What is a country that doesn't invest in education or a country that doesn't invest in health care?
07:11I said that that's not a country that's investing in its future.
07:14So when we talk about busing, I go back to my school.
07:17My school was a desegregation case.
07:19My school was a desegregation case in the 80s.
07:22You remember or remember the Titans?
07:24We're that. Decades later.
07:27Because sometimes the federal government, the government is the only mechanism that we have to ensure that we don't have discrimination.
07:34So it is important that students go to schools that are equitable.
07:38They go to schools that are diverse.
07:39Every child benefits from a diverse education, from diverse teachers, from diverse curricula, from diverse worldviews.
07:47You all, we all benefit from that.
07:50It makes our country safer.
07:51It makes our country stronger.
07:53And it makes our country more competitive.
07:55And if our administration believes in national competitiveness, they talk about China a lot.
08:00Well, how are we going to be globally competitive if we're not investing in STEM education?
08:04How are we going to be globally competitive if we're saying that we want those kids to have it, but not those kids?
08:10You don't see other countries doing that.
08:12They invest in all kids because the high tide lifts all ships.
08:16That's what public education is.
08:18What was the other question?
08:21I don't understand the busing question.
08:23I got bused.
08:24Let me clarify the question about busing.
08:27Okay.
08:28The question is how can we prevent more closures of schools?
08:31Oh, okay.
08:32Oh, my God.
08:33I was like, I don't understand the busing question.
08:35Yeah.
08:36I don't actually.
08:37So the Pittsburgh public schools?
08:40Yeah, because Pittsburgh public schools and the proposal to close a lot of schools.
08:45And sometimes when we see those in public transportation.
08:48Okay.
08:49Yeah.
08:50A lot of schools.
08:51This is actually going to be a very difficult question because one of the problems that school districts have with public transportation is actually charter schools.
08:57And I know a lot of people don't want to hear that.
08:59It actually costs, any time a child goes from a public school to a charter school, the money falls.
09:05But they also, if that public school is a school that buses, that means they have to pay extra to bus a kid that doesn't go to their school anymore.
09:11So the buses actually cost a lot of money, and that's why we see a lot of districts that actually just don't have buses.
09:18Because they can't afford to pay for both their kids to be bused and other kids to be bused.
09:23So that is a really intricate thing.
09:25This is a state-level policy, state dollars and how we spend it.
09:29Our courts, our commonwealth courts in Pennsylvania deemed our funding scheme to be unconstitutional.
09:35And at the state level, they have to go back to the drawing board to figure out what is a more equitable way to fund public education that is not actually overburdening in property tax.
09:44So homeowners and renters.
09:47As instead of getting out more equitably, because we have school districts that have vastly more by your zip code than others.
09:54So we have school districts that actually don't bus, not because they don't want to, because it's expensive.
09:58The cuts. I am actually concerned about cuts.
10:00We know that people want schools in their neighborhoods.
10:03Black kids deserve to go to the schools that are also in their neighborhoods.
10:06Black kids, brown kids, poor kids should not always be sent to other schools.
10:11And too often when we do cuts, we are usually cutting.
10:14Those are the first ones that are on a chopping block.
10:16Too often when we see schools that are in disrepair.
10:19My Republican colleagues on the Labor Committee talk a lot about COVID and those COVID era when, well, these schools didn't open up fast.
10:26These schools open up much faster than these schools.
10:28This public school gets this much money, but they didn't open.
10:31Yeah, because it actually costs more to educate kids in poverty because the schools in Pennsylvania have its best in land and heating and cooling issues.
10:39It's actually very hard to educate somebody in a pandemic if you can't ventilate the rooms.
10:44So the investments that we need to make in the infrastructure of our schools, we have schools that kids go to that if it was a government building, we would not work in it.
10:53You would not work in it.
10:55They would be called uninhabitable if there were anybody else going but kids and teachers and staff.
11:01And as a state and as a federal government, we should be ashamed.
11:04We should not have schools like that.
11:05So even if we're talking about closing schools, we can also talk about fixing schools.
11:08We have to talk about replacing them.
11:10Right. If they are in disrepair, then that doesn't mean that they just go in this neighborhood is now out of luck.
11:15So I think that is a really important question.
11:18I think we're going to hear that debate a lot because the parents in Pittsburgh and not just Pittsburgh public, but parents across the Commonwealth have been really, really engaged in that.
11:25And that is the answer right now is that engagement is most critical right now.
11:29So I know that you all everybody can't go to school board meetings every time you work.
11:33You have other obligations and it's unreasonable to expect you all to always be able to go to town halls and school board meetings.
11:39But we do have to find ways of registering our concern.
11:42We have to find ways of, you know, bringing ideas to the forefront or saying, hey, I need to understand that idea a little bit better, especially as we see other people using school boards to do other things.
11:56So those go hand in hand, that sort of engagement.
12:00I'd like to think that the people, the school board members that we have sent on our behalf to care for our students will listen to the concerns that we have and will explain out the parameters that they have.
12:12But we have that right to be able to get that information.
12:15We have the right to be in that conversation about which schools are open, which schools are closed, about how we can collectively save some of these schools.
12:23But a lot of this comes down to funding.
12:26And as we talk about the Department of Education being eliminated, we are talking about the federal government possibly not being that support structure that we need now more than ever.
12:36The states have dismantled public education funding in Pennsylvania and have been doing it for decades.
12:43And we've never replaced the level of funding that we had pre-Tom Corbett, if you remember that guy, pre-him.
12:48We've not replaced that level of funding, which means that school districts around in the poorest areas are still not getting the dollars that they need to be able to do everything that they can.
12:57And they're making dollars stretch, and they're doing the Lord's work with them kids.
13:00But the state isn't doing its part to fund public education.
13:04And when we got a rainy day fund, and we're not using that rainy day, and it is pouring down raining, and we've got tarps over top of us, that's what that is for.
13:13So we need to see state engagement right now.
13:15So that's where you go. Go to the state.
13:17Because that's where they dictate in the budget where dollars come, whether those dollars come to this school or that school, how we do funding schemes.
13:23And that's going to be a really important conversation happening there.
13:26Okay. Thank you all so much.
13:29I'm sorry. I was going to say I'm so sorry for any questions that I didn't get to.
13:32I'm so sorry for any questions that I didn't get to.
13:34Again, if you have those pressing questions, this is not the last time, the last opportunity that you have to ask them.
13:40We want to answer them. We want to get them back out to you.
13:42We want to continue to engage.
13:44So this won't be the last time we do this.
13:46Please come out. Send somebody else the next time.
13:49Continue to engage us on all of our social media platforms.
13:52I'm Rep Summer Lee, and I'm Summer for PA on other things.
13:54We have about five offices.
13:56So our brick and mortar is in East Liberty at 211 North Whitfield, I think.
14:01We have other ones.
14:02We just opened up a satellite office in Monroeville.
14:04We have one in Beachview.
14:05We have one in Jeanette.
14:06We have one in Bethel Park.
14:09So those are offices that we have opened up to make sure that it's easier for you to access us.
14:14But we will go to you where we can.
14:17So you can reach us at those places.
14:18My staff is, of course, here.
14:19Our phone numbers exist.
14:20We have little handouts that tell you what services we do that we can help you with.
14:24Please share that information out with other people and continue to stay tuned in.
14:29But before we get here, I hope that you don't leave discouraged.
14:32I hope that you leave recognizing that this game is not over
14:35and that our democracy is worth fighting for
14:37and that we have power in our communities to stand back up,
14:42that we will not be backing down from Donald Trump or anybody else who stands in our way.
14:46And I feel encouraged because I know that this community, that's what we are doing.
14:51So PA12 will be heard in Washington, D.C.
14:55PA12 will be heard in the Democratic Caucus.
14:57It will be heard on the floor, and it will be heard in everything that we do.
15:00So thank you for taking the time to share with us.