Hillary Clinton avoids email controversy, fleshes out college affordability plan
New York, N.Y. As more revelations about her private email account made news Friday, Hillary Clinton kept her focus squarely on her presidential campaign with the announcement of two new proposals to help students who are parents.
"They're up late studying, they're earning a living, they're trying to be the best moms and dads they can be," Clinton told a crowd of about 400 in Dubuque, Iowa, where she appeared for a town hall. "They need help."
Clinton pledged to create a new scholarship program to defray the cost of paying for college for student parents. The SPARK College Scholarship, which stands for "Student Parents in America Raising Kids," will award scholarships of up to $1,500 per year to as many as one million student parents, according to her campaign. SPARK was inspired by another scholarship fund that Clinton helped create in 1990, when she was the first lady of Arkansas. That fund, the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship fund, has since awarded nearly 40,000 scholarships to single parents, Clinton said.
Clinton also announced that, if elected, she would drastically increase federal support for childcare programs for parents who are also full-time students. Under her plan, funding for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Program, or CCAMPIS, would increase more than 15 times from $15 million to $250 million. CCAMPIS provides grants to college and universities that provide child care spaces and support to low-income students. With its $15 million budget in 2014, CCAMPIS made 86 awards to community colleges and public universities across the country. According to Clinton's campaign, her plan would create 250,000 childcare spaces for student parents through grants and a new requirement for states and institutions to match funding.
It would also tie into another one of Clinton's biggest priorities.
"I want the universities and colleges to run these childcare centers so that students who want to go into childcare, into early childhood education, can be part of that," Clinton said. "I think it would be a great way to really turn out a new cadre of early childhood education teachers."
Her new pair of proposals are part of Clinton's "New College Compact," a comprehensive plan she introduced earlier this week in New Hampshire to bring down the cost of going to college and reduce the debt burden on students. It was well received by activists and the American Federation of Teachers, which has formally endorsed Clinton's bid for president. On Thursday, the influential former Democratic senator from Iowa, Tom Harkin, added his endorsement of Clinton ahead of her trip to his home state.
But another announcement -- that Clinton directed her staff to turn over the private email server that she used during her tenure as secretary of state to the government -- has threatened since Tuesday to overshadow the rollout of her plan.
Clinton has repeatedly denied using her private email account to send or receive classified information and on Friday in Dubuque, she made no mention of the emails. Her campaign, when faced with questions about Clinton's trustworthiness, has instead emphasized her legacy of and commitment to fighting for children, women and families. Her focus Friday on student-parents is unique to Clinton's approach to college affordability.
Clinton wrapped up her remarks at the town hall meeting by contrasting herself with her Republican counterparts, with a line that is now becoming familiar on the campaign trail.
"If you watched the Republican debates last week, you may have noticed something," she said. "Seventeen candidates talked for four hours. Not one of them said a single word about how to address the rising cost of college. Not one."