The Way Forward: 56,000 Children, Everyone's Support

25 ERIC MC DONNELL: Good morning and thank you all so much for being here. My name is Eric McDonnell and Im the Executive Vice President of the United Way of the Bay Area. Quick shout out to the United Way of the Bay Area table. Woo hoo, theyre in the house. And Wilson our CEO and our team, thank you so much. And Ive also had the privilege of being the Chair of the San Francisco School Alliance Board of Directors. And I would like to welcome you all to our second annual school alliance luncheon. Lets give it up for the jazz band from the Youth of Solace School of the Arts, their director Malessa Magdeleo. Fantastic, I hate to put her on the spot, but I did notice that the young lady who was playing the bass guitar was doing so so smoothly like casually, leg was just swinging like la, la, la, la as she doo, doo, doo. Very good, very good. Awesome, very impressive. We certainly want to take a moment also to thank our sponsors without whom we probably wouldnt be here. So we want to pause to say thank you first to, and hold your applause and I will name them all then we will thank them all at one time. First AT&T, the Doris and Donald Fischer Fund, J.P. Morgan Chase, the Hellman Family Foundation, the Silver Giving Foundation, Helen and Charles Schwab, the Peavey Snow Foundation, Gerson Baker Foundation, Joyce and Larry Stupski and Walter J. Hofps. Please join me in thanking our sponsors. And then we also are grateful for a number of volunteers who have helped and worked really hard to make it possible to be here. Certainly a thanks to the Alliance Board and staff, Im going to put them on the spot for just a moment, my colleagues on the board, if you would just stand where you are. Board members of the Alliance, if you would please stand everywhere that you are. Remain standing just for a moment, just for a moment. So there are two in particular, every board member has worked really hard to make today possible, but there are two who deserve MVP awards that I want to just single out and shout out yet again. And that would be Mr. Phil Halprin. Phil stand, thank you so much. And the other would be Ms. Susan Hirsch. Please stand, Susan. Thank you so much. They both will make me pay for that later. So our primary mission at the School Alliance is to be a champion for great education for the 56,000 students that are in our public schools. We are that independent, non-profit organization that partners with the district and in many respects we act as primary agents to secure community and corporate support for the districts strategic priorities. In short, we try to be as much as is possible their business development arm to ensure that we are bringing to bear and leveraging all of the collective good will and interest and then support intellectual capital, financial support for and on behalf of our students. Today weve come together and we are a wonderful group, cross mix of our community of corporate philanthropic civic leaders, parents who want change, K 12 and higher education leaders, non-profit reformers and students to create a new way forward for a better future for our children. As San Franciscans we face not just a short term crisis, but really a new reality, a new reality of inadequate funding, an education skills gap that will be with us for the next few years. And we must -- and I would underscore must-- we must work together in new partnerships to fix the problem. In the meantime we have to still ensure that our students are graduating college and career ready. So we hope that todays program will both inform you of the challenges that we face and the ways that we can work together to meet those challenges. Whether you want to engage at the school level, the district level, or the state or federal level. We also want to inspire you to support the work of the alliance and take action as we leave the room today. And so as you enjoy your lunch there are on your tables what we call action cards and you will hear more about those later. We want everyone leaving the room committed to some action at a number of different levels. I happen to be proudly a product of the San Francisco schools, so I went to John Swett Elementary School. I went to Winfield Scott. I went to Ben Franklin which was then Ben Franklin Junior High School and then just a few years after Warren Hellman graduated from Lowell High School I was proud to follow in his footsteps and then went to City College for those who might be in the room, and then went to the University of San Francisco. I certainly know the value of and the importance of supporting our students and how graduating college and career ready gives them hope and skills to build a better future for themselves and the tools to build a better future for us and the state of California. So now it gives me great pleasure that as we begin our exciting program today to welcome and introduce Ken Mc Neeley who is the President of AT&T California. He is one of our top corporate leaders. He is a major sponsor, he and AT&T of our event, and he is personally a statewide champion of programs to help underserved students get a shot at the American dream. So please welcome Ken Mc Neeley. KEN MC NEELEY: Good afternoon and I would like to also extend my welcome to all of you as champions for education. Its so wonderful to see such a roomful of like-minded people all striving and working for the education of our children. It is so critically important that we can continue this journey. We are all familiar with the recent reports that show that by 2025 we will be short one million college graduates in the state of California. As a business leader in the state, that very, very much concerns me and its also one of the reasons why AT&T decided a few years ago to make its number one philanthropic goal to really challenge ourselves and to do what we could as a corporation and as a business to really work within our communities and work to improve the quality of public education around the state and around the country. AT&T created the AT&T Aspire program where we have set aside 100 million dollars to work with middle school kids around the country, particularly in underserved communities and focusing on getting our kids college ready. And Ive had an opportunity to work with a number of leaders in this room today in working to improve the quality of education here in San Francisco and I look forward to continuing to work with each and every one of you as we really work to shore up the educational system and the lives of our kids here in the city of San Francisco. Thank you and welcome again. ERIC MC DONNELL: Thank you again, Ken, and certainly for your leadership both here locally and across the state. Our event coaches represent a wonderful cross section of constituencies who believe that we can in fact create great schools for our students. Corporations, individuals, and public sector and so I would like to bring up another of our co-chairs to bring a welcome from the city to you all. So please join me in thanking Supervisor Bevin Dufty for his support. BEVIN DUFTY:Thank you. For a moment I thought I was going to achieve my dream and be on The View, the way we were seated there. I want to just say how could you not be up about the future of public schools in San Francisco walking into this room and seeing all of the great young people that we saw walking in here from our different high schools, and the band thats here? To reflect on what Ken shared as one of our great business leaders in San Francisco, we know that the growth for the city is going to be in fields like digital media, clean and green technology, and bi tech and the opportunity that we have now and what the school alliance is about is really capitalizing that and making these opportunities real for our young people so that they can stay and live and have great jobs and live great lives in San Francisco. I can tell you that six years ago I helped to found a program at Mission High School, the Athletic Scholar Advancement Program. It just happened that my first week as a supervisor I got invited to the owners box and I took the athletic director, Scott Kennedy, to meet Denise and John York and when they heard how little money there was for the sports teams, how the girls track team had to wear the boys warm-up, Denise immediately wrote a check. It got written up in The Chronicle. More checks followed and we started a program to send kids to four year institutions for sports and academic camps. We started with 29 and this past year over 330 Mission High School students went to four year institutions for summer experiences. What has happened over the past five years is that weve tripled the number of student athletes at Mission High School; weve tripled the number of students going to four year institutions and taking A.P. programs. It is possible. I think each of us should find our own inner Warren Hellman and connect and do great things with our public schools. And I would just also like to take a moment to thank the men and women of Local 2 of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers for making it possible for us to have this great lunch. Please give them a round of applause. Thank you. So please enjoy your lunch. I will be back in about ten minutes and we will continue our program. Again, thanks so much for being here today. [LUNCH BREAK] ERIC MC DONNELL:That video really does capture why were here today and why each of us in many of the ways that we do everyday show up because we do believe that, forgive me, children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way. So our next speaker is a dynamic champion in our community. Champion of our public schools, countless civic ventures that make San Francisco a great city for us all including, of course, the blue grass festival that puts San Francisco on the musical map every single year. Now, what is wonderful about Warren Hellman is that he actually doesnt actually see himself as a champion. He just believes that you ought to do the right thing to make it possible for all children to succeed and so its the right thing to do and so you just do it. So hes actually not comfortable with the champion label. Were proud to work with him, proud to have him as co-leader of our advisor council, Im proud to have followed him in and through Lowell High School and certainly Im proud to then present him to you. Please join me in welcoming Warren Hellman, President and CEO of Hellman and Friedman. WARREN HELLMAN:Well, this is fun. As I usually do Im going to take some liberties and I wont blame you for walking out, they usually do when I start playing the banjo so it will be very much in character. Thanks for coming today and supporting the leadership of the San Francisco School Alliance. In particular, I worked now for a lot of years with Phil Halpern and this is the first time Ive gotten to speak uninterruptedly in Phils presence. We have a great new Executive Director, Terry Bergeson. Its been more fun working with Terry. And partly Im honored to be introducing our next speaker, Carlos Garcia, because a portion of this is going to be revenge and revenge is sweet for when Carlos introduced me so youre going to get it Carlos a bit. Hes a great teacher, a great principal; he continues to be a great teacher. The other day we were in a meeting and I was talking about a song I like a lot about how Im going to buy myself a pony and ride it on my boat. And in the song it talks about the masked man and his assistant Tonto. And Carlos said do you have any idea what that means? I said no he was his assistant, he says in my language it means dummy. So Carlos is the opposite of the Tonto, hes referring to me now as Tonto. But he calls himself the head janitor, we know him more than fondly as Superintendant of the San Francisco Unified School District. Hes a champion for kids; hes a fighter for public education. One of the pleasures Ive had, Ive been sort of, Phil and I have been involved together in a lot of fund raising for various schools district bond issues and parcel taxes and stuff. I guess we are probably going to start again. And one of the things thats really fun is to go to a meeting with some big shot -- and you know how I mean that, somebody that doesnt play the banjo -- and the person says you know I really dont like the San Francisco school system. And my answer always is, good so you dont like 56,000 kids then. You want to abandon 56,000 kids and it usually results in a check either that or check out but its normally resulted in a contribution. Hes not only a great educator, hes a tremendous, I would call, a practical or business leader. Five years ago the school district was in serious financial trouble and this was while the state had not yet semi collapsed, but the school district was in significant trouble. Jack OConnell who was then the California State School Superintendant came to see me. He said Oakland had gone into receivership and he said Im going to tell you San Francisco is next. Well, is it? No, under Carloss leadership, very able leadership from the Board of Education and others we probably have the soundest school district of any major urban area in the state of California. I dont think thats been an accident. I think the school district has consistently tried to stay ahead of the curve, tried to see what are the challenges that are going to be next and act on them ahead of time. We passed a bond issue which resulted in renovating over a hundred schools. I think David Golden is here, David who has done a tremendous job as a facilities manager, just a great job. You know, during this billion dollar renovation program he had to fight a lawsuit, he had to appear before a judge about every two hours and yet the renovation program has come in ahead of time and under budget. I think we have a lot to be proud of. We were unique in California at the time, to pass a parcel tax to support teachers. As part of that we got some important changes in how teachers are compensated which I think without the desirability of paying teachers $5,000 a piece more, we were able to -- we, Carlos, Bill -- we were able to create incentives for teachers to stay in the more challenged schools, for teachers to remain in the system more than five years, for teachers to teach the subjects that are most difficult to keep. One of the members of my band keeps saying stop turning aside, turn and talk into the damn mic. I hope Im doing that. But we have provided very unusual incentives for teachers to stay in the schools and teach the subjects and in challenged schools and teach the subjects where it is most difficult to keep teachers. Weve made sure our investments have paid off, Carlos has, in better student outcomes, Im sure he will talk about -- hey this is almost as long as your introduction of me. All of this has positioned us to be a lead district in the states second race to the top application. So Carlos, thank you for being a great friend. I think Richard [Inaudible] and I are going to start singing if youre not careful, and for being a great leader and a great partner. Were counting on you to continue leading us into a better future. Im proud to introduce you today. This is wrong though, everybody in this room knows who Carols Garcia is, and you know about four people know who I am. He ought to be introducing me; I dont think this is right at all, but at any case, Superintendant of Schools, Carlos Garcia. CARLOS GARCIA:Gee, thanks, Warren, I think thanks. No really Warren, thank you youre just a great friend, a great leader in this community and really our district could not be where it is today without the support of Warren. Hes just a wonderful guy. Now before I get going I do want to introduce a few people, I would like the board members from our Unified School District to please stand up. Jane, I know youre here and whoever else is here, please stand up. Thank you. Thank you Norman, thank you Sandra, thank you Rachel and I think Tiger was here. Anyway, those folks are our team and without us all working together we wouldnt be able to be half as successful. In the San Francisco school district weve been having a really interesting conversation over the last three years and one conversation that I dont think any school district in America would have the audacity to take on and that is to really look at and have the courage to talk about what is social justice in an educational system. Most school districts are afraid to even go there because you would have to address the issues of whether or not youre an equity system that deals with all children to get to the end of the race. Not just some children. I know its almost against motherhood and apple pie to say that you dont believe all kids could be successful, but the proof is in the pudding. Are all kids given the social justice of equity to get to that finish line? When we look at the opportunities of the world thats coming before us, if kids arent going to be ready for college or ready for careers, how will they compete in the 21st century? We must give them the awareness of future opportunities in a society that needs their talents for the future and through their experiences we can build a better California. Our country is not competing with the world educationally. If you look at the statistics and it really is threatening our future economy. Here is a snapshot of the national state of our dilemma. Seven thousand U.S. students drop out each and every day in America. In California thats one out of four. Our high school science scores are 17th of 29 developed countries and our math scores are 24th of the 29. China and India together graduate 950,000 engineers each year while we only graduate 70,000. The 2010 Higher Education Master Plan document published by the Public Policy Institute of California shows our state will be short by 1 million college educated workers by 2025. Just to put it into perspective, these are our current fourth graders in this district. San Francisco Unified School District, in spite of all the financial challenges we face, is committed to be part of the solution and not the problem in our country and in our state and in our city. We commit to a better academic outcome for all our children even with diminishing resources. As a matter of fact, were doing better. Sometimes we forget that. So let me share with you a few things. Did you know San Francisco is the highest performing large urban school district in California? For eight years in a row our test scores have gone up. Performance for all students is improving, but what were really proud of, why weve had this social justice agenda is that the performance the greatest acceleration has been among African American and Latino students in all grade levels. Our SAT scores went up 13 points in critical reading and 4 points in math. We got support from the mayor and the city to help pay for the PSAT or the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test. Now the number of tenth graders taking the test has gone from 27% to 76%. Finally, the number of advanced placement students taken by San Francisco schools went up by 20%, thats AP courses and what were really proud of is that number for Latinos went up by 62% and 41% for African American students. We are headed in the right direction, but not nearly fast enough and as you will see in the rest of my presentation the achievement gap for African Americans and Latino students is devastating. We must address this issue. Our district is committed to graduating all students, college and career ready. The proof of that, if you look at what weve been doing to achieve this goal we have chosen five key indicators that will measure and track our progress. This information will guide all our work from pre-school to graduation and beyond to post-secondary, thats why our partners are here. We work very close with our post secondary partners. These major indicators will be backed up by benchmark assessments at each level to check progress in each and every classroom along the way because things dont just happen by accident. Our first indicator is the actual percent of last years graduates that went onto any post-secondary institution. We are currently exploring how many of these students actually finished their college program and successfully went on to an associate degree, a technical certificate or a bachelor degree. We will work closely with our higher education colleagues to get good data and help both of us and improve the outcomes for both of us. These pages are hard to turn. Thats where we blew it. The second indicator is the percent of high school graduates meeting college requirements, the so-called A-G requirements. As you know these are the requirements that one must meet in order to get into a UC system and were really proud that starting this coming fall every single ninth grader and from then on every single ninth grader will be required to take the A-G requirements throughout their high school career. Thats going to be the bottom level, not the ceiling but just the floor. If you see these numbers of students prepared its substantially lower than the number that go onto college. We have a lot of kids, less than 50% of our kids take all the courses, they graduate from high school and they think theyre ready to go on to college and they havent taken the A-G requirements. I believe that we need to make students the architects of their own future and the only way they can do that is to have the classes that they need so that when they graduate its their choice, no ones going to hold them back and thats not just for some students but for every single student getting out of our school system. We owe it to them, we need to give then a warranty, a guarantee that says when you do this work you will graduate and you will be ready to either go on a career or be able to go to college. The third critical indicator is at the end of middle school, in order for a middle school student to have a good chance to succeed in high school in the A-G program, he or she should be proficient on eighth grade language arts and algebra. The fourth key indicator is that grade four, that students are proficient in language arts and math in elementary school then they are prepared for success in middle school. Now look at our numbers today, we still have a long way to go. If kids cant read by the end of third grade, were doing the biggest disservice in the world. Thats why our whole emphasis next year is going to be a literacy-based curriculum. Were going to get every kid to be at grade level by the end of third grade here. Next year we will have in place the measure of kindergarten readiness with the five key indicators. We need to ensure a level playing field for all our youngest students so that they can be successful in the foundation of the primary grades. Believe it or not were one of the few school districts, not only here in California, but across the nation that has one of the biggest pre-school programs and what were doing now is its no longer going to be an independent pre-school program. Its now going to be part of the joint pre through twelve systems here in our school district. I started at the end of high school and transitioned to college, but success at any level determines the likelihood of the success of the next level. And having clear non negotiable goals with support to our staff and students to achieve them will make us a better team across all levels in service of our students. I am committing today to an aggressive goal of double digit improvement on these measures by 2013 and I and my staff need your help because we cant do it alone. These are the elements that my staff and I are putting in place to create the system that can accomplish our college and career ready goals. Clear out comes in measures including benchmark assessments to measure progress and not just give up. You know, we use the autopsy method. After the fact we determine why the body died instead of knowing what were the causes leading to that. What were going to do now is were going to know, were not going to wait until the end of the year when kids are tested, were going to know exactly how kids are doing way before then so that that guides our instruction and curriculum because really its about the students and not about the adults. The right tools in educators hands and good curriculum will help to teach them, as well. A customer focused central office, what a novel idea. We need to get to the point where central office calls a school and on the other line the principal or whoever is answering isnt thinking, oh no what are they going to do to me now. We need to have a central office that calls the school and the school says, theyre there to serve us, because the most important thing in education is the school site and we have to serve them, they are the customer. And this one I think some of you will be relieved to hear. A lot of people said it couldnt be done, but we do have a new student assignment system thats going to be kicking in next year and thats long overdue. It is somewhat of a hybrid where there is some neighborhood and there is some choice, typical San Francisco; right? Were all involved, but this system, were going to make it work to benefit and get a lot of kids back into our system. We estimate that by the work that were doing right now that our district, believe it or not, two years ago, prior to two years ago, our district had been having declining enrollment for almost 30 years. The last two years our enrollment has gone up and we think that were going to be going up and not only by 100 but I think by thousands in the next ten years and that will be exciting. These elements make the case for your investment in our schools. Our schools must move from good to great and I need your help to do that. I need business sense and savvy, good thinking. On system changes we must make to support all the things the infrastructure that we want to adopt to support our children in our schools. I need in kind resources to improve our information and community infrastructure. Were about ten years behind in technology and we need peoples help. I know that AT & T has been a partner, weve had a lot of partners, but we need to step it up because our kids cant have the tools of the past to lead into the future. I need private investment for innovation. Whats killing this country is that drill and kill is not innovation. We need to be able to have our students have laptop computers, heck not only just our students, but our teachers dont even have laptop computers. Thats a disgrace, folks. We need to raise enough funds for every single teacher in our district to get a laptop when theyre hired and every teacher to be able to get online and have grades, have assignments and everything so every parent in this district can see how their child is doing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Thats where we need to move this district to. Thats only a measly four million, four and a half million dollars that we need to be able to do that, but we cant lead America towards the future with the tools of the past and thats what weve been trying to do here since Ive been here the last three years. Imagine three years, time flies when youre having fun. And for those of you who ask, Im doing very well, okay and I thank you for asking. Yea, weve had some tough times but weve had help, people like Dennis Kelly and Linda Platt from the union, stand up there, they helped us out. We work together to figure out problems and how were going to get through this economic mess. We need your help. We can ask everybody inside to help us, but we need the business community to step up to help share that dream, these 56,000 children are not just my children or the school boards children or the teachers children, theyre everybodys children in this room. Every single child here deserves a world class education and we need your help to make sure they get that, because we sure as heck cant depend on our state to be able to do that. So San Franciscans, this is the call to action. We must find a new way forward, so lets go out and lets get it done. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you, and thank you. I have to tell you, I always tell people that my job is really not a job, its my hobby, its what I love to do and one of the people who have really helped my hobby is one of the partnerships that have become more and more essential to me is that between the school district and the San Francisco School Alliance. The sponsoring organization for todays lunch and Terry Bergeson, the new Executive Director of the Alliance, she is such a wonderful think partner to have. Now we could sit down, we could air out anything good, bad, ugly, we could lay it out and have those conversations. Ive asked her and the alliance to help us coordinate and match between our district needs and the aspirations of their organization and also all the different businesses. Its great to have someone who knows what the heck shes talking about, I mean a lot of people talk but they really dont want the talk. Terry for 12 years she was the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instructions for the entire state. So heres someone who actually knows and understands what education policy is about and what it takes to implement it. She loves kids and wants us to succeed. She is the partner that I and the district have needed. It is my pleasure to turn this over to Terry who is just a breath of fresh air here in San Francisco. Come on up. TERRY BERGESON:Wow. That makes me feel great. Welcome everybody. We have just a great cross section of San Francisco in this room today from educators at all levels, business and labor, philanthropic organizations that are making change through various types of reform and students that you met in the hallway, terrific to be here. I just want to thank you, Carlos, for your courage, your eloquence to stand by not only the 56,000 kids in this district but all of us as citizens of San Francisco. Lets give it up for Carlos one more time. So now were going to have a little changeup in the agenda. In this part of the agenda Carlos has laid out the big picture of what we need to do and hes asked us for our help. So we have three more people who are going to join me on the stage in the next few minutes and the first person is going to give us the perspective from higher education and the issues that higher education faces today and how that partnership can work together with us. The next two people are going to be talking about a wonderful partnership in the district that has created a program that the school board is about to adopt next week, we hope, that will be available and required for every single ninth grader in the district. It will help them all know the way forward. So first were going to start with the perspective of in K 12 we dont prepare the children as an end in themselves, were a means to their future and the next step to their future is higher education. Its my pleasure today, first of all, to introduce you to someone who really in this group needs no introduction. The ninth Chancellor of UC Berkeley, Robert Bigeneau. Chancellor Bigeneau is a brilliant scholar. Hes an internationally renowned physicist. Hes a national leader in higher education. And hes a man who cares deeply about diversity and equity. Hes going to corroborate Carloss message about the importance of college and career readiness and lay out some of the policies and issues and funding issues that we face in higher education and linkage of what we have to do in K12 to deal with this gap that was just described. I know that hes going to help us as we move forward to strengthen the partnership that we already have between the K-12 system, the community of San Francisco and all of our higher education colleagues. So would you help me welcome Chancellor Robert Bigeneau to the stage? ROBERT BIGENEAU:Thank you so much, Terry. Good afternoon everyone. Carlos, Im never going to follow you again, ever in my life. What a great speech. Its very inspiring to see so many people here today concerned with improving the quality of our citys schools and supporting public education. I stuck in my notes, Ill give you a personal aside. I, myself am a product of public schools through to my Bachelors degree. Like many of you here Im the first in my family to graduate from college. Perhaps a little more unusual, Im actually the first in my family to graduate from high school. When I graduated from high school my mother had a family, extended family party to celebrate the fact that someone had finished high school and she was more excited about my high school graduation than when I got my PhD from Yale. So it wont surprise you there that I am very deeply committed to public education, the long distance from my inner city neighborhood to being Chancellor of Berkeley and not surprising, therefore, also I consider it a privilege of being able to lead one of the components of what has until very recently been the single best public educational system not just in the United States, but in the world and its our obligation to ensure that that continues for the indefinite future. Its clear that the San Francisco School Alliance has drawn together an impressive numbers of partners from a broad spectrum of stakeholders that not only includes educators but corporate, civic and philanthropic leaders. We are all invested in public education, the future of our community and of the state of California. And I dont need to tell you because we put it very dramatically all of the challenges that we face. We need to give encouragement and support in any way we can to the efforts of leaders like Carlos Garcia who are committed to results oriented improvements that will prepare college and career ready graduates across all of the districts high schools. The school alliance has stated the goal simply and eloquently and I quote, that each young person is successfully prepared for higher education, employment and citizenship in the 21st century. Let me tell you a little bit about UC Berkeley, at UC Berkeley we take great pride in the fact that over one-third of our students come from families whose incomes are under $45,000 per year. To quantify that and I apologize to any Stanford graduates here. It turns out that we have more low income students on our campus just not today, two weeks ago (because the term has ended) more on our campus at Berkeley than Stanford and all eight Ivy league universities put together. And folks, you think about it our neighbors down in the peninsula of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell all of those schools and we have more low income students just at Berkeley, so does UCLA, so does UC Riverside. This is what public education is about and this is why we must maintain the public character of our great educational institutions. We also work very hard to ensure the success of our students at Berkeley. First of all, of course, we have to make it affordable for them and that means that we invest an extraordinary percentage of our income, in fact, of the income, we put it back into financial aid for low income families. Many of you may not realize this because you often see this put in a very negative way. In fact, if you look at the student debt of students who graduate from Berkeley its the lowest of any public institution in the United States. Thats because of the fact that we have very robust financial aid programs, but these are threatened because of the progressive state disinvestment and so accessibility that our public education, higher educational system is under attack at the present time and we must preserve it. Our six year graduation rates at Berkeley is 90%, that corresponds to numbers in the 60 percentile range in typical flagship mid-western universities. And I think whats particularly impressive, at least its impressive to me is that this 90% graduation rate is the same both for students who come up from high school and also for our transfer students who transfer from the community colleges. So thats the essence of the master plan and the extraordinary part of the success of our higher educational system and that is that the three levels that actually communicate with each other and students move between the three levels. Berkeley students tend to arrive while prepared, but overall, of course the better the high school preparation the lower will be the dropout rates. Making it to college requires K-12 success. A question that I frequently ask is, especially by our legislators both locally and in Washington is whats the university doing to help solve the K-12 problem? How are you helping address the huge educational gaps for Californias underserved communities in low income neighborhoods? So I will just give you several examples. First of all, our graduate school of education is actively engaged with our K-12 schools through a number of programs and two Ill mention explicitly: The Leadership Connection for Justice in Education and the Principals Leadership Institute. And Im pleased to point out that both our current Dean, David Pearson, who is stepping down at the end of this academic year and our new Dean, Judith Warren Little, are here today. Can you stand up and be recognized? One of our most successful initiatives, the Principal Leadership Institute, its a public, private partnership funded by philanthropy and one I recognize explicitly Ken Behring whose made this program possible. It prepares leaders for our public schools. In the San Francisco Unified school district alone there are 66 PLI graduates and 98% of them who went through the program are still administrating in the San Francisco Unified School District so this is a phenomenal success. Partnership with our graduate school of education has been facilitated by the San Francisco School Alliance which for three years has funded over $500,000 for coaching of new principals and new assistant principals and for facilitating equity-centered professional learning communities for pre-K -12 education. There are also many partnerships between UC Berkeley and the San Francisco Unified School District through our Center for Educational Partnerships. The center specializes in supporting schools, districts, and the community in providing programs to increase college access for low income and first generation K-12 students. Among our major partnerships with the San Francisco Unified School District is the Early Academic Outreach Program which brings advising and academic enrichment to students in public high schools. We are also engaged in the Fischer Counseling initiative which is a college advising initiative that aims to strengthen college and career going and culture and strategies for increasing higher education. There are a number of other dramatic examples of the Center for Educational Partnership, but because time is going on let me skip through them. Two other programs I want to mention is Cal Teach and Math for America and these are initiatives that were started relatively recently and they are an attempt by us to address the shortfall in very highly trained science and engineering and mathematics teachers in high schools in the Bay Area. So there is a very successful partnership between letters in science and the school for education at Berkeley in which students come in and they can major in physics or math or electrical engineering and simultaneously take the educational courses that will allow them to teach in high schools. When I came to Berkeley I found the shocking number that something like six of our science graduates were going into teach at our local high schools. We now have well over a hundred people in this program and were just now starting to produce the results and were very excited about this. Another program which were trying to get off the ground which has worked very successfully in New York City founded by Jim Simmons of Renaissance Technology Fame is Math for America which is an attempt to strengthen significantly mathematics teachings in high schools and were working on implementing that in a partnership between Berkeley and the San Francisco public schools. Were very excited about that. In fact, Im going to Washington in a short while because were trying to get federal money for this program, were very hopeful about it. You saw already from the recent report that California is going to fall short by a million people who are college graduates. At the same time we see and we heard from all the speakers so far that California is gifted with this magnificent master plan which is now under assault because of the incredible disinvestment by the state in public higher education and this is happening not just here in California but, in fact, across the entire United States. There is an irony for me personally because as recently as yesterday I had the French Ambassador in my office and so people are coming continuously from across Europe, France, Germany. I was in Belgium a couple of weeks ago, Hong Kong, mainland China, etc. and they are all coming to Berkeley or theyre asking me to come there to tell them how does a great public educational system work? Its just the height of irony to be in this sort of life situation, we know how it works but we also are beginning to see the signs of how it can be destroyed as well and obviously thats part of our challenge that were discussing here. Clearly, California has led the nation in innovation because of its investment in education. The high tech, biotech, and green tech industries have been based in northern California because of the basic research thats taking place in its great universities and importantly the availability of a highly educated work force. Clearly and I dont have to tell anybody here about the importance of this years budget, as you know Governor Schwarzenegger in the May revise committed to a reinvestment in public higher education, but, of course, this has to survive the budget process. I hope that each and every one of you will be advocates over the next few very important weeks with your legislators by showing that the California public is willing to do what is necessary to invest in its future and support reinvestment in its public schools, colleges, and universities. The message is very simple. Investment in education is investment in our future. $5,000 reinvested by the state can help open the doors to a young persons college dreams. $50,000 annually is what it costs to close the prison doors on his or her dreams. I want to conclude by emphasizing that success takes partnership whether its part of the business leaders, civic leaders and philanthropists working together with educators, students and their families and community. We can succeed in finding the way forward. Everyones support is needed. I want to especially congratulate the San Francisco School Alliance for the work that its doing to bring all the partners together. I hope that you will continue to support the San Francisco Alliance in the important work that it is doing to help deliver the education that our students deserve and that we need for the future of our state. Thank you. TERRY BERGESON:Thank you very much, Chancellor Bigeneau. And now were going to get really down and dirty and practical. We are going to talk with Mark Nieker and Bobbi Silten, so if they could come up and join me on the stage. As youve heard the Chancellor talk about college completion and the importance of that and the connection between what he cant control is what we do in our high school system. In our high schools we can make a huge difference in young peoples lives, not only by the policies that our school board here that Carlos just talked about to make sure that every student is required to get into the program that they need, but also for the support for all of the educators in the district. But beyond that we can also get into the hearts and minds of young people. When their in the eighth grade and the seventh grade and the sixth grade and the ninth grade they need to know there is a future out there and they can find a way into that pipeline. This partnership that were about to talk about now is a very unique one between three organizations and the school district and I have today with me two wonderful people and were going to have just a little discussion here for a few minutes. First of all, the program is called Plan Ahead. As I mentioned, its on the docket for the school board to adopt, but theres been development going on for a considerable amount of time. So I want to just talk to you about the two people that are up on the stage and why theyre here. First of all, Bobbi Silten, Bobbi is the Chief Foundation Officer for Gap, Inc. and has been since 2006. She oversees the global community involvement and the investment programs for the Gap. And the foundation has a multitude of programs that are social solutions for underserved youth and underserved women. And Bobbi walks her talk. I listened to her speak the other night at Summer Search, shes on the board, the national board of Summer Search, a wonderful youth development program and she is a volunteer mentor. She not only works at this in her business, but she lives it in her life. Her partner here is Mark Nieker. And Mark is the President and Executive Director of the Pearson Foundation. Pearson is probably the most influential publishing organization in the world. The foundation, itself, focuses in the philanthropic effort. Mark leads those philanthropic efforts and has a number of partnerships worldwide. But, he also wanted me to make it really clear that for the last six years he has been involved deeply in San Francisco. Hes a San Francisco kid and hes been involved in a number of programs in the district itself, from youth academies in a number of our high schools. A wonderful program that I got to see the other night that is about 21st century skills and technology and they do that with Nokia, I believe. Its kind of a joint thing with Nokia. Its called the Middle Learning Institute. Six thousand young people at the junior and senior high have been involved in that program in the last four years. Also for the last several years they have given out books at the pre school level through a jump start Read for the Record Program, to every single pre-schooler in the city of San Francisco for the last four years. So hes in town here and hes also in partnership with Bobbi. And what were going to do is just to talk with you so Im going to go join them. Thank you. Im going to start with Bobbi. We just have a couple of questions that we want to explore about the partnership that has created this program thats about to launch this fall. So Bobbi, Im just going to start with you how did you and the Gap get involved with the district? Can you give us a little bit of history? BOBBI SILTEN:Sure. First, just a little bit of backdrop. This journey for us started about four years ago when Gap Foundation decided it was going to focus on underserved youth in the area of career exploration and job readiness. The reason why we chose this particular issue was we saw a need, but also we felt we could do more than just write a check. In our 40 year history as a company we have probably given hundreds of thousands of young people their first job and so we felt that combining that knowledge of giving young people their first glimpse into the work world combined with our cash and also just access to jobs in our store was a good way for us to leverage our dollars. So thats a little backdrop on why this issue really matters to us. How we got involved in the school district was back in August of 2007 and Carlos had just started with the district and Don Fischer, the late co-founder of Gap, Inc., invited Carlos over to his office for lunch. So Don asked me to join him and he also asked Susan Hirsch of Hirsch and Associates, a philanthropic advisor, to have lunch and to sit and talk about the needs of the district. And during that conversation we got to talking about the need for career exploration and job readiness and Carlos really agreed that that was something that was needed. Interestingly, we had a chance to talk later about our own childhood backgrounds and the neighborhoods we came from and the fact that we didnt get a lot of guidance and thought the jobs that were available were doctor, lawyer or teacher and it would have been great if someone had told us that our jobs had actually existed back then. So coming out of that lunch, by the end of the lunch we had agreed we were going to do this pilot after school. Six months later, February 2008, we were in the schools doing this pilot for schools, an after school program. One of the things when we talked to Carlos about doing this was if were going to do it lets do it thoughtfully, but lets move quickly and he made good on that promise. So six months later there we were in the schools. We had a graduation ceremony in the spring. Carlos came out to Gap headquarters. We really wanted to honor the students who were the pioneers for this class as well as the teachers who stepped out and said that they were going to teach this in the after school environment. We partnered with Hirsch and Associates to make this happen, partly because for Gap our investment in this area has mainly been in the after school environment and we knew we didnt know enough to navigate the district and we needed a partner. Its what the school alliance also offers private funders who are interested in working with the district but may not have the know how. Its great to have a partner to help you navigate. By the fall we had moved from after school into the school day and we had a nine week slot where we were teaching this career exploration and job readiness curriculum, but we quickly figured out that we didnt really have a robust enough curriculum for the school day. At the same time the district had made a decision that drivers ed was going to be dropped and that was also a nine week course, so they came to Gap Foundation and said would you be willing to underwrite an eighteen week course in college and career preparedness? It didnt take us long to say yes to the request, but what we did know was that we needed to recruit more know how, because we dont know how to write curriculum and we needed a partner who was really good at it. And thats where Pearson came into the picture. Hirsch introduced us to the Pearson Foundation. They are incredible in terms of their knowledge of curriculum development as well as knowing the whole education system and I have to say its been a perfect partnership so with that that kind of gives you a little bit of backdrop of how we got involved in all of this, but its been a really great project to work on. So, Mark, why don't you pick up on that and talk about how the program evolved? We dont have time to talk about the whole program but just the partnership itself and the part that Pearson played in that and with the teachers in the district. MARK NIEKER: The Pearson Foundation we worked with Hirsch, as well. I'm a member of the alliance so I sort of understand very clearly what the issues are here. Pearson Foundations thinks about these issues nationally. One of the things we wanted to do was to make a program sort of what Carlos was suggesting earlier -- created a program where the kids see themselves, where they can become architects of the future as Carloswas saying. In order to do that we talked a lot about what we wanted the thing to look like when we were done. We also talked a lot about what was required to get from here to there. It turns out, if youve made curriculum, that the number 1 sort of trick is to listen and also to know who to listen to. The focus was always on starting with the division that the Gap had and that Bobbi had specifically and figuring out how to be able to make that so that it can be operational; but do that in a way that sort of brought in three different groups of people. One is the kids themselves. So we wanted the kids to be able to see themselves in the work we were doing, and to themselves when the curriculum, when they had a chance to spend this semester, doing this work. For example, we wanted to make sure that they saw their neighborhoods or that they had a chance to be able to see people who looked like them or talked like them so that they could make the connection between, "I'm here in the ninth grade and this is what is possible for me to go forward." So that was a key, a key piece. The second piece was the diagram that Carlos put together with the five steps. It turns out that this wasn't the case 15, maybe 10 years ago, but it is certainly the case now. People nationally know what it takes to get kids through that pipeline you were describing. There's really specific knowledge as an example for a high school student to succeed, the student needs to be able to know the difference between the way that student may talk among his or her peers and what it takes to go on a job interview and succeed or what it takes to get through a freshman composition class. It turns out that sort of stuff, if you think that when I was a kid nobody taught that to me. And I certainly didn't get that school, so what we wanted to do was figure out how can we get those kinds of lessons that we know are important that are cultural not just sort of academic into the curriculum. Third thing is we and if youve made curriculum before youll know this -- that making curriculum is only half of it. You have to get teachers to actually use it, which means you have to get teachers to want to use it, which means that you have to get teacher to be able to use it. A lot of what we did was spend a lot of time with the district and working with teaching teams to be able to figure out Number 1 are the things that we are assuming, do they make sense? Number 2, are there things that teachers know about the kids that they are working with at the district that we should know and make sure that we incorporate? And the third, noninsignificant thing, is there enough time to be able to give the teachers time to absorb this and think about how to personalize it? As Bobbi said, you want to be fast, but you want to succeed, too. I think all those things have come together. TERRY BERGESON: You know what you are talking about. I've been there. So Bobbi, back to you for a minute. This is a complex arrangement from the way it began to the way it's evolving and some to come in the future. Can you describe what were the core elements that you think between the partners in this that is making this work? BOBBI SILTEN: So, I haven't been doing this work for very long, it has been four and half years since I've been working in what I would call "social sector." I come from the business side. One of the things I recognized that is really powerful is collaboration and of people coming together bringing their different ideas and expertise and how we can create some really innovative solutions when we collaborate. This particular collaboration is between four partners. So Pearson, Hirsch, the district, and Gap, and each of us brings a degree of expertise and also our unique point of views. Pearson brings to the table, as I mentioned, their strong ability to development curriculum. The district added to that curriculum, development, as well as bringing the perspective of the teachers and students to the table. Hirsch and Associates brought their additional public/private venture experience as well as working with other school districts. And for Gap, our experience with career exploration and job readiness in five different countries with the programs that we support. There's a fifth partner that I haven't mentioned and that is our evaluation partners. We do think evaluating, this is important. TCC group works with us and we have developed a logic model that we will measure, not only tool understand our outcomes but also to understand how can we improve this program. How can we make it better? It is one of the things we built into the plan of curriculum improvement. I would say having worked on some other collaborations that collaborations aren't easy. We all come from different cultures or corporate cultures or organizational cultures, but the thing that has made this one really work is that we all had our eye on the same prize. That prize was to develop a compelling curriculum that would help prepare the students of San Francisco to be ready for college and career. I think the other thing that came out of this particular initiative for me, and Carlos touched on it in his talk, about the role that private funding can play in innovation in the public space. I had a chance a couple of years ago to hear Mayor Michael Bloomberg speak. He was speaking to a group of private funders in New York. One of the things he said to us was there is a catalytic role that private money can play in helping to bring innovation and experimentation to the public sector. He said it is a lot easier to experiment with private money than with taxpayer dollars. And the example that he gave to us, it was kind of a neat example. I'll shortly describe it to you; because I think it is a very powerful one. He talked about this program called 1 million trees in New York City, where they are going to plant a million trees to improve the environment and to increase the quality of life. He said that particular program was seeded by, no pun intended, of private money and he said if he had tried to use taxpayer dollars he probably would have gotten a lot of pushback but because he used the private money to test the idea, this program today is now funded 60 percent by the city, 40 percent by private dollars and in three years they have planted 350 thousand trees in New York City. And that is a great example; I was touched as a member of the audience of the power of private funding. For Plan Ahead, and we call it Plan A for short, because we believe every student in San Francisco deserves a Plan A. This particular program because we started small with an after school pilot, we were pretty confident when the ask came that we were ready to go in and say yes we will support this 18 week curriculum. But what also was very clear to us was that private money was needed for this. We heard again and again from the speakers the fact that every district is challenged with funding and without that private money, programs like this innovations that the district brought over to us would not be funded. And our kids are going to be short changed. I will just say in closing that programs, organizations like the school alliance that bring us together, we are all here in this room because we care about the same thing. They bring us together so that we can make sure that these innovations and experimentation happen in our school district. And that our kids are better prepared for adulthood and they have a chance at being successful. TERRY BERGESON: We are going to let you bat cleanup. If there's a message to because we wanted people to do these partnerships. I know we are giving you a lesson plan today Partnership 101. Thank you for your patience. But this is a practical partnership, I'd like you to finish up kind of how you see this context of a group like the alliance or other organization like ours, putting those aspirations of the district and the aspiration of the corporate sector together. MARK NIEKER: I think that the thing that Bobbi just said about the role of corporate or private money to run innovation is very similar to the sort of things I say at work so I was glad to hear that. But I think, one of the reasons the partnership has worked so well, our partnership has worked so well, is that we both sort of met at a time that we were clear that we knew that wasn't enough. What is needed almost is some translation between the aspirations of individual organizations or partners, and in this particular instance, something I have not seen before, which is a very clear articulation of what Carlos and his team are going to do over the next several numbers of years to be able to make this work. So, that is an amazing start. And I think the piece that everyone will benefit from, and I understand the alliance's role here, is to be able to prioritize all these ideas and all this money and maybe help and make sure that we are doing the five things that are most essential to the kids of the district, the teachers of the district and to Carlos and his team, rather than, for example watch this planting some trees and then some shrubs and something else and not really sort of capitalizing on that vision. So I think that is what we are kind of up to. And I suspect it is going to work. TERRY BERGESON: Just to kind of sum of what I've been excited about learning from these two is, first of all, they are doing something that is substantive that is going to help young people toward the goals that the district has. So it's not smoking mirrors, it is real stuff that helps young people. Secondly, they trust and work together closely with each other. They have built a respectful relationship. So they aren't trying to adopt a school. They are making a partnership with the district that is a deep partnership with respect for the teachers and everybody else in the system. They started small, they have worked together carefully to build up to a bigger role and they really understand the balance between the private investment and the public investment that needs to be there in this partnership. So let's give it for Mark and Bobbi. And for what you are going to do in the next few months as you launch. Thank you so much for being with us today. I know there are other people in this room that have equally wonderful partnerships, but now here's I know we are pushing our luck here guys but something very special. This is a very important part of our program. The mission and the reason we are all here together is our students. They are our future. So come on up young warriors. Come up on the stage. These are the young people who are student volunteers from Mission High School, from Balboa High School, from Burton High School. Many of them are Mason scholars. They are our future. Come up and join us. Stepping forward is a young man name Jevon Coleman. Jevon is a Mason scholar. The Masons give 75 scholarships a year to worthy young people who might not be the merit scholars but they have a passion to build a better future. Jevon is a Mason scholar and he is on his way to his junior year at Tuskegee University. So he is one of those people that is going to be in this pipeline. He is going to say a few words for us on his behalf and the behalf of the students here on the stage. JEVON COLEMAN: Good afternoon everyone. First and foremost, I would like to thank you everyone for being here because if it wasn't for each and every one of you here today, none of this would be possible. My name is Jevon Coleman. And I'm a Mason scholar. I will be going on my junior year at Tuskegee University this fall. I am a business administration major expected to graduate fall of 2012. Without the Mason Foundation and the help and support from school alliance, I feel personally that my college career wouldn't be as successful as it today. I would really like to thank them. I also would like thank my high school principal, Mr. Calvin Hagan, who has changed my life. I was a student at Phillip & Sala Burton Academic High School and I personally believe that I wouldn't have thought I was college material without his inspiration. So personally, I would like and that is why he was elected awarded -- high school principal of the year. Thank you. Mr. Calvin Hagan, will you please stand up as we all honor you today? We all need your help and support here today because we cannot make it happen without your help. As gifted as I was to further my education I am proudly here today to show my love and support and to help the future of the next generation. So as our lives and our future is in your hands, we ask as a community and as a family, please join us on our road to success. Thank you. TERRY BERGESON: So these young people are our future. You are the reason I came to San Francisco. Now this is my city and you are my students and I will do everything in my power to help you achieve your dreams. You have worked hard in school, you have supported us today and we appreciate that so much. But you are also getting ready to take your place in society and help us solve the problems that we have messed up and left in your lap. I think everyone in this room would agree with me, we love you, we respect you, we wish you the best in your future. Thank you. They have to go back and take their finals. One last thing, and this is very important, this is going to be the "ask." So, first of all, as we look at what's happening in the complexity of the problems we have been talking about today, it is really hard. I was stunned when I got here and saw the hits that were coming faster and faster. I've only been here five months. So what happens is education is in crisis. It has two elements: chronic underfunding and an education skills gap. Both of them are interrelated. Both of them are critical. Both of them are deadly to our future if we don't fix them. So when you got something that big, it is easy to get it mobilized. I felt that way for about three weeks when I first found about how deep the problem was. Then, I was talking to Phil one day, he said, "Terry, get over the crisis stuff. This is a new realty. We have to find a new way to work together to solve these problems. Because our kids in San Francisco are not going to go through these troubled times and come out weaker; they are going to come out stronger and smarter, and able to build a better California. That's what this Way Forward is about." So what we have done is to try of break the problem down; to me when it is too big, you take chunks and you think long term but you start acting today. So, on your table, Eric mentioned this in the beginning, this lovely orange card. This would be an action card. And we have, as we thought about how we could come together, we are doing something pretty audacious today. We are saying let's start a little movement that is more organized. On the left side, of your card, you will see actions that you could check off. We will not send your names to people. We will send you to things that we think you might be interested in. We will not be messing with you. We will connect you with things you care to become committed in. We have really four levels of which we could operate with on that left side. This is Mission High School. The first level is school level. So, what can you do at the school level? There are two groups here today that I want to mention obviously, you might want to stay in touch with what we are doing with this but we also have the Partners for Public Schools, an organization that has been in existence for many years reaching out to empower parents and bring them back into the public schools. You may want to know more about them. Secondly, there is a new group here today called the A Team or the parentmatch group. This is a group of parents who have this wonderful idea of taking all the money PTAs raise at their schools, adding up the total, raising as much as they can at their schools, and then have a corporate match for that total and disburse the match evenly across the city because there are some schools that can't raise the money and some that can. So they want to be able to keep the money they raise obviously, but be able to make a match that can directly the impact the local schools. They are just getting off the ground. But if you put a little check here, we will be getting you in touch with them. Secondly, where are they? We have great parents that are organized. Second level is the city level. Our beautiful San Francisco, there will be some local ballot measures. We cannot get through this without doing something as we always do here in San Francisco to help our kids. There are also district initiatives on education reform that Carlos as laid out. We are going to need to find matching funds to support some of the creative parts of the initiatives because they don't have the money to spend on all the things he was talking about today. We have to figure out together. Third level is the state level, where the big bopper is. This is the beautiful capital that has to start performing in a new way. We need to figure out, we are going to be getting your help and the investigations we do, what are the relevant initiatives for education, for funding and policy that you might want to get hooked up with? I'm going to tell you something that is going to be in the news today, if you haven't always seen it. This morning I was over at AP Giannini Middle School for the first time. I'm gradually working my way through every school in the city. They had about 150200 people in the room from all over the state. And the state of California was the lawsuit was dropped at 8:30 this morning because of the state not doing the funding that it should be doing for public schools. I was there was a wonderful, firefighter named Carl that spoke there with his two young sons. He said I don't want to do this. I'm a parent. I'm a PTA leader. I want to work in the school, but we are hitting a brick wall. We have to wake up Sacramento, and we got to wake up our whole state to do something about this. That is a legal strategy. That is a longterm strategy. This problem is a big one. That is why we need to start immediately with the pieces that we can do. And finally, the federal level. The feds are way involved in education. There are ways they can help us. There are ways they can hurt us. We need to fight for good policy and good funding initiatives at that level. And then on the righthand side, is the real ask, we need money in the alliance to do our operation. We have a little group. We have six people working but we work hard. And we work smart. And we are good leveragers of ideas and people. If you can write us a check and put it in that little envelope, we would be very happy. You could give us a check or there is a credit card offering. There are people in this room that have already been extremely generous but I'm just taking a chance and ask you to be generous again because we will spend your money smart. We will involve you in what we do with it. And we want to work with many of the other groups in this room that are also trying to make a difference. But we can't do a fragmented thing, we have to be organized. We've got to get focused so that we can change this realty. So whatever you can give, we would greatly appreciate it. I want to thank my staff at the Alliance because we have worked hard to bring you together. We so happy to see you and so happy that you came. Thank you to everybody who came today. Thanks for caring so deeply about the children in this city and the young adults like we just had on this stage. Have a great afternoon and thanks a million for coming. You can stick your things in the envelope on the table.