Pubdate: Fri, 12 May 2000
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191
Fax: (619) 293-1440
Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: John Marelius, Staff Writer

GORE SPENDS FULL DAY IN SCHOOL, SHOWS SELDOM-SEEN LIGHTER SIDE

Center Went From 50% Dropouts To College Goals

CUDAHY -- Vice President Al Gore sat cross-legged on a schoolroom floor 
yesterday morning getting clobbered.

As he does almost once a week as the unofficial Democratic presidential 
nominee, Gore spent a full day at a school -- in this case the Elizabeth 
Learning Center, which has transformed itself into an oasis of educational 
excellence amid the crime and poverty of this section of southeast Los 
Angeles County.

In Linda Stewart's first-grade class, Gore joined youngsters who were 
playing a card game on the floor designed to teach them the proper use of 
contractions.

"Got it! Got it!" squealed 6-year-old Aleena Gonzalez, who tossed a card 
bearing the appropriate contraction onto the game board. Next word. "Got 
it!" Aleena shrieked again and tossed another card.

"No, no," Gore wailed as he jokingly pressed his hand to his forehead. 
"What are you doing? Now I'm in last place. You're clobbering me."

Time-consuming though they are, Gore's "school days" offer a way for his 
campaign to display the vice president's seldom-seen loose and good-natured 
side in contrast to the wooden speaker or harsh attacker usually on display.

"He really gets a sense of what the parents and the kids go through and the 
schools go through at every level," said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane. "He 
could come in and do a photo op, read a book for a kid, spend 10 or 20 
minutes and then go off to a fund-raiser, but he wants to do it differently."

The Gore campaign keeps reporters at bay during school days -- and most 
other days, for that matter.

But that doesn't stop troublesome issues from coming up.

During an afternoon meeting at the Elizabeth Learning Center, a high school 
student asked Gore's position on medical use of marijuana, saying he had 
just finished a science project on the subject and concluded it is a good idea.

Gore demurred. "Right now, the science does not show me, or the experts 
whose judgment I trust, that it is the proper medication for pain and that 
there are not better alternatives available in every case."

He said medical marijuana, once legal in Tennessee, failed to help his 
sister, who died of lung cancer.

"Her doctor prescribed medical marijuana for her and she used it and it 
didn't work. He prescribed another medication and it did work much better," 
Gore said.

In December, he seemed to break from the Clinton administration, which 
strongly opposes medical marijuana, while campaigning in New Hampshire.

There, he cited his sister's battle with cancer when asked about marijuana 
at a town meeting. "Where the alleviation of pain in medical situations is 
concerned, we have not given doctors enough flexibility to help patients 
who are going through acute pain. Many of us have seen that ourselves," he 
said.

Later that night, Gore backtracked, stressing that he opposed legalizing 
marijuana and that its possible medicinal uses have not been sufficiently 
researched.

Gore said he wanted to visit Elizabeth Learning Center to see how a school 
could transform itself from one with a 50 percent dropout rate to one where 
90 percent of its mostly Latino students go on to college.

Although Gore did not acknowledge it, the school is a product of former 
Republican Gov. Pete Wilson's Healthy Start program, where schooling for 
all ages along with child care, health care and mental health services are 
linked at a single facility.

"How many of you plan to go to college? Can I see a show of hands?" Gore 
asked students gathered on the schoolyard at the end of the day. When 
nearly all of the hands shot up, Gore exclaimed, "That's what makes this an 
excellent school."

"In my campaign for the presidency I am trying to make a case to the 
country that the single most important investment in the future we could 
make is to bring revolutionary improvement to all of our public schools and 
make all of our schools excellent schools," he said.

After the all-day school visit, the vice president attended two 
fund-raising events in Los Angeles that were expected to raise $750,000 for 
the Democratic Party.
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