Chris Roe: First of all, I would like to welcome up to the stage two really important people and close colleagues of mine, Herb Brunkhorst and Susan Hackwood. Susan is the executive director of the California Council on Science and Technology, and a true leader in STEM for our state. And also I am very pleased to say that she is one of our board members for CSLNet, which I am very pleased. And Herb Brunkhorst from CSU San Bernardino who is, I am going to get this wrong, department chair. Herb Brunkhorst: Well, no longer. Chris Roe: No longer? Herb Brunkhorst: Transitioning. Chris Roe: Transitioning, that is good news. Anyway, Susan and Herb are also co-chairs of the STEM task force that you have heard quite a bit about this morning. So they are going to give a couple of brief comments and introduce our first luncheon speaker. Susan Hackwood: Thank you Chris. And I am sorry, we are responding slowly. I think weve got many Susans in this room, you know. Unimaginative parents, what can I say, I am sorry. I am delighted to be here today. Thank you Chris for inviting us, and this is a wonderful group of people. I am standing in a room only, it is terrific. Do not take my seat please, I am still eating. And Superintendent Torlakson, thank you very much for being here, also, and being so strong on this. And Herb and I head up the task force that the Superintendent has put together on Science Technology, Engineering, and Math. You will hear more about it this afternoon when Phil Lafontaine will be running a session at 2:45. But roughly, the task force has a volunteer group of about 40 people. They represent all the aspects of STEM education in the state. They are a terrific group, they are super active. When you see this report come out, this has not been written by anyone in the Department of Education. It has been written by those individuals who know very well. And I say that because it has brought a breadth and wealth of dialogue into the picture, including the amazing new things that we have been hearing in, like, from our speakers this morning, talking about the Hole-in-the-Wall. So we are focusing on new stuff as well. So we are exploring the start of STEM education in California, including the curriculum, instructional practices, professional development for teachers, student testing, existing infrastructure, and partnerships with the community in business. We hope to have this completed in January. And we have some wonderful partners, one of whom Herb is going to introduce right now. Herb Brunkhorst : Okay. Thank you Susan. I also wish to convey my welcome to the group and thank Chris for a wonderful summit conference, he and his staff. It is my pleasure today to introduce Assembly Woman, Susan Bonilla. She was elected in November 19, '10. Represents California's 11th Assembly District which is primarily comprised of [background conversation]-- 2010! I am sorry. I have to add a little humor here to make sure you are all awake. I never lied being a luncheon speaker. And represents California's 11th Assembly District, which is primarily comprised of the northern portion of Contra Costa County. She previously served on the County Board of Supervisors there on the Concord City Council, and as a Mayor. Prior to serving as a public official, Susan worked as a high school English teacher in the Mount Diablo Unified School District. Currently, she has chaired the Assembly Budget Sub-Committee No. 2 on Education Finance; where she is focused on renewing California's commitment to high-quality K12 and a higher education. Susan is the chairwoman of the Select Committee on high-quality early childhood education and the California Science, Engineering, Technology, Math, STEM task force, along with the Superintendent. It is my pleasure to introduce Assembly Woman, Susan Bonilla. Susan Bonilla: Oh, I am the original member, I think, of the granny club if I was, been serving since 1910. Thank you so much. And I just want to start by asking, I am hoping we have a lot of teachers in the audience. If you are a teacher, can you raise your hand? I just want to recognize you. Thank you so much for what you do every day in the classroom. If you want to know why I was crazy enough to consider going to Sacramento, from local government. It was because, in Sacramento, I could really be as far more involved in education, at the county level, that was not something I could do as much about. And so, that was my main motivating force for taking it on. To loosely paraphrase, Winston Churchill, he said, Democracy is a terrible form of government until you have looked around the world with all the other forms of government. He also said, I was looking at the quote; If you are going through hell, keep walking. And sometimes I feel that way in Sacramento. Do not stop, you know. There is got to be an ending sight, we are going to make it through. And coming here today, certainly encourages me in that undertaking. I want to thank Tom Torlakson. I currently hold the seat that Tom held in Sacramento. So I would really recognize his mentoring, his encouraging of me to actually run as a teacher; as a very, very great influence, and actually getting me out of Concord and up to Sacramento on behalf of our students, our teachers, and families here in California, and sets a very, very important role that each one of you in this room is playing right now. The people you influence, the things that you are saying that changes the course of their lives, and really underscores their commitment to what we are all trying to do here, which has really revitalized and moved forward with education because it is such a very important issue. I do chair the budget subcommittee on education, and I honestly did not believe when I went to Sacramento, that one of the first things I have to do is start voting on cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from Art [inaudible] state system on our UC system, along with child care cuts, subsidized child care. People sometimes wonder, I was a high school teacher, I taught English. So that is the other thing. I do need to clarify that I do not think the arts are going to be lost because we are focusing on STEM. I think, as an English teacher, would simply adapt to what we are talking about here today, and how do students learn. Is it, you know, inquiry, design, creativity, problem solving, and just put that into my English lessons, as a way to adapt to STEM. I do want to recognize also the Contra Costa County Office of Education and their early efforts. And I believe a lot of our county offices of education have been kind of forerunners on the STEM issues through our ROP classes. They were there long before we had an acronym for what STEM was, doing these very hands-on interactive courses that engaged a lot our students. And in Contra Costa County, we have really been very privileged to have them leading the way as we have built and continued to build our network as well. I want to recognize also Don Gill, superintendent from Antioch within my district and the incredible work he has done as a superintendent. As you know, to take what we talk about here and apply it requires leadership. And it requires leadership from our administrators, certainly from those of us in government, I think our main job is to try to get out of your way and not spend the money somewhere else. But yet, you know, on the ground, it is our administrators within our districts that are so very critical to us actually, achieving all the goals that we are talking about. And Don has done an incredible job within my district in terms of really leading and applying, and bringing about what we are talking about over the next couple of days here. I think that, as a teacher, one of the most important things is that we have administrators who are strong leaders, who are aware, who are held accountable, who understand how to let teachers do what they are very good at, and encourage them and support them in that. And so I just would hope as I saw the priorities of CSLNet here, and we talked about accountability, that we really do focus on what is flowing down from the top of a school district, because it flows right into the classroom. And I will tell you, teachers cannot fight a battle on all fronts. They have got enough of a job in front of them without constantly tangling with the front office or their principal, and feeling that they are not being supported in trying to do innovative things and push through new ideas and engage their student in a new and existing ways. And that is an absolutely critical component that we need to focus more on. So what do we do in Sacramento? Well, we work closely, I work closely with Tom Torlakson on legislation. You know, one of the comments earlier was, you know, how much of education is pretending to know what we do not know. And I would say, Boy, being a politician, 90% is pretending to know what you do not know. You know. In one day, I mean, the number of subjects that come walking through the door that you are supposed to have some kind of at least, you know, intelligent look in your eye, you know, to talk about, it is pretty phenomenal. But certainly, you know, when it comes to education, as legislators, we can go to Tom, and I am very privileged to have a friendship with Tom as well. And one of his main roles is to come to us and say, Here are some legislation that we need. Here is a way that you can actually help us educate our students more effectively. We also hold a number of hearings, of course, around the budget all through the spring. We got the governor's budget in January, and it is usually, well the two years I have been there, so yes, you know, we are up there for such a short period of time that everything becomes very, very compacted. But it is bad news. And then we seek to interact with the governor through a hearing process. And I would just encourage all of you to really engage in that advocacy role for education to realize how important it is from your perspective to you educate your legislators, so it is not just pretends, so they know what we are talking about. That is one of my jobs, is to help my colleagues understand what STEM is, where we need to go and how to get there. There genuinely is an interest in education among those who are elected. It is just that they are pulled in too many directions and they do not have the expertise maybe to know how to, get where we need to get. And that is why, this type of conference and what Chris is doing through CSLNet is so incredibly valuable, and I want to thank Chris for his leadership. And the board members, those on the advisory board for coming around this issue, because you are the experts and you inform us in Sacramento about what we need to be doing and where we need to go, and that is invaluable. Otherwise, we will just continue to stir the pot, go round and round on issues and we need your help to actually move forward in a very decisive and meaningful manner; with our legislation, how we determine budgets, you know, where money should be best spent; what can we do to raise more money for education, for the other things and issues that are very important to us. So I rely a great deal upon this organization, and encourage each of you as you interact with your local elected assembly woman or state senator, that you would take that role of making an appointment. Go in, introduce yourself, tell them what they need to know about where education needs to go. Do not assume that they do because they probably do not have that acronym down yet, and then you can play a very important role in bringing them in as a stakeholder around this issue of STEM education. So one last thing I want to touch on and I talked a lot about money beating around the bush here. You heard Tom mentioned it this morning and I have to mention it again because, otherwise, I do not know what I am going to do. The rest of this year is going to be quite a nightmare if Prop (Proposition) 30 does not pass. We really do, and I ask for your support on Proposition 30. I know that-- and I guess I ask for them the basis of the fact that we do need to balance our budget. We have worked very, very hard, and Sacramento does get attacked a lot, and some of it with good reason, and some of it just because it is more fun to write articles about, you know, what we are not doing and how stupid we are than it is to actually say that we are doing anything good. But I will say that the structural budget gap has been, being closed in the last two budgets with all of our votes to making enormous billions upon billions of dollars of cuts. We have been doing our part, we have demonstrated. The votes have been made, the cuts have been taken. We are not coming to the people of California and asking for revenue without having first demonstrated that we are spending less; and that has been very, very painful to many constituencies, and of course, to education as well; because education makes up 50% of our state budget. When the pie shrank because of the economic downturn, that is why you have seen such a dramatic decreases in our funding to education. It is not because anyone wanted to do that. It is simply because the money is not there. And so I would ask for you to consider supporting Proposition 13. It is not-- Oh my gosh, 13. Let us not get in to that one. It could go all day. The reason [chuckles] that we have to do this, yeah, the history lesson, and the flashback I guess of Governor Brown's first time on office, anyway. Yeah, everything comes from the roots, does not it? [laughter] One of those laws of nature. But yes, 30, thank you. That is like me being, you know, taking the office in 1910. It is important, and it is certainly not a [inaudible], I do not want to oversell it because we are still going to have serious problems. We are still going to have a long way to go and a lot of work to do to fund education the way we should be. But, I am so encouraged to be here. One word stood out to me this morning in that very, very inspiring talk that we had, and it flashed on the screen and it was joy, it was joy. It is the look on that little boy's face when the world opened up to him. If I came for no other reason to this conference, I think it was to reconnect with what I am doing, what I am doing, why I went into the classroom. And the most important thing, I think, that we are all engaged in, and that is, that joy that a child can have when they realize what there is out there for them to learn, and we are all a part of helping them engage with that. So thank you for your participation, and enjoy the rest of the afternoon. Thank you. Chris Roe: Well, thank you Susan. And thank you for your exceptional and passionate leadership for the 11th district and the State of California. We are very fortunate to have somebody in your leadership position who not only gets it from the perspective of a teacher, but has the passion that you bring to the job every day. So we are really fortunate to have you as a friend and a colleague. So thanks again. Now, it is my pleasure to announce something that we are doing different this year. We are, for the first time, awarding a 2012 STEM leadership award to one individual who has provided exceptional leadership to our state in STEM education. We are pleased to name Chancellor Charlie B. Reed, or as many of you know him, actually he his officially known as Charles B. Reed, but many of us know him Charlie Reed as the 2012 STEM leadership award by CSLNet. Chancellor Reed has been the chief executive officer of the country's largest senior system of public higher education. The CSU has 44,000 faculty and staff; 427,000 students in seven off-center campuses and an annual budget of more than $5 billion. In 2004, the governor called on the State's two public university systems to develop programs to prepare significantly more teachers in STEM fields. And Chancellor Reed at that time made a commitment on behalf of the CSU system to double their number of STEM teachers produced annually from a baseline of 750 to over 1500 by 2011. And I believe Joni and Beverly are in the room, they will say that the CSU did meet that goal if I understand correctly, which is pretty amazing, especially given a downward trajectory in terms of the numbers teachers that were producing annually in the state. Chancellor Reed has also played a significant role in the development of the CSU-NASA partnership which has been instrumental in growth sector STEM summer institutes in the STEM teacher and researcher, or Star program which is based out of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, it is just an amazing example. And two of their Star students this past summer worked on the Mars Curiosity Rover Space Laboratory. And it is very fit in that our next speaker is going to talk more about that as well. So again, we are seeing this connections across the entire state made possible by leadership. Chancellor Reed has also been highly supportive of CSU after-school, and STEM an out-of-school time work, and invited the California Teacher Pathway's leaders to meet with campus presidents in order to scale up the program from 1 to 10 campuses. Finally, Chancellor Reed has been exceptionally supportive of advancing STEM opportunities for Hispanic students working in partnership with Great Minds and STEM, and HENAAC to increase numbers of minority students, and particularly Hispanic students at the CSU campus. Although he cannot be here today, CSU Vice Chancellor Beverly Young is here to accept this award and I would invite her up to the stage. I saw her earlier, there she is Beverly Young: Wow, that is very cool. Chris Roe: Would like to say a few words? Beverly Young: Just a few. Chris Roe: Right. Beverly Young: Hmm, this would look good in my office. [laughter] No, he will get it, he will get it. Although I know he would very much have liked to be here today, Doctor Reed was unable to join us. So on behalf of Chancellor Charles Reed, I accept this honor, this award, and I thank the STEM Learning Network for this. As you all have seen by the work that Chris just mentioned, the CSU's work, and actually more than doubling the number of Math, Science teachers through our MST project. The development and expansion of our professional science master's program across the system, and the emphasis on STEM education in the projects you mentioned as well as many others, Chancellor Reed shares your deep commitment to this important work. And we look forward to continuing our partnership even as Chancellor Reed is getting ready to retire, we planned to continue our partnership with CSLNet and many of the rest of you as we move ahead. So again, on his behalf, I appreciate this honor. Thank you.
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