 All right we're now rolling. Hello and welcome to the Texas Public Radio Town Hall meeting on pre-K for SA. I'm David Martin Davies. This is a public forum being recorded for broadcast on KSTX, Texas Public Radio. We're also live on the internet with Nowcast SA. This event is made possible with support from the members of Texas Public Radio and the Vethan Law Firm and ESD Digital Advertising and Communications. On November 6th, San Antonio will vote on raising the sales tax one-eighth of a cent to fund a citywide full day pre-K program. Mayor Julian Castro says this will change the education future for San Antonio. Opponents say the plan is too weak on details and won't provide the promised results. This is a chance for the community to speak out on the issue and ask questions from the experts and policymakers. So here's how the town hall will work. We're going to give each of our panelists three minutes to open up and explain their view on things. I'll ask questions. We'll open up to the floor. We've got questions from the internet we received from our listeners. Also I'm looking forward to a civil exchange of ideas. I want to hear from all sides. Try and keep your comments or questions brief so we can hear as many people as we can. And I'm sure you know we are all interested in a city. We're trying to do the best for our children in San Antonio. So let's quickly I'm going to introduce our panelists and then we'll come back around and we'll have a chance to get comments from them. First off we have from the City Council District 6 Ray Lopez. City Council District 8 Reid Williams. Jeff Judson, he's a senior fellow and director of the Heartland Institute and a member of the local Tea Party. Dr. John Folks is a retired superintendent for Northside ISD. Richard Perez is the president of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and we have Lori Taylor. She's a professor of Texas A&M's Bush School of Government and Public Service. We also have some other experts with us from this city who are here who could answer some of the tough questions like City Manager Cheryl Scully. She's also present. But let me get some questions some opening comments from our panel and we will open up first with Ray Lopez from District 6 City Councilman. Well thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and quite honestly thank this crowded room for taking the time. Quite honestly quite a bit early well I think we're 50 days away from the election but to take an interest in this issue early on to make sure you understand the ups and the downs the lefts and the rights of it is important. It says a lot about our community. We have been on a path to trying to figure out what the city should be doing with respect to our SA-2020 initiatives. As most of you know and probably many of you participated in our SA-2020 initiative over the course of several months with an awful lot of people talking about what we thought we wanted to look like. There were a lot of issues that were identified the two largest issues one being education the other one being transportation. But that's easy probably easier to come up with those two topics to go after much more difficult to figure out how you go about doing them. And both of those issues are incredibly difficult you know to come to a consensus around and to then crystallize a plan that's effective and well received by the entire public. This is our initiative to try to do the education piece of it. As many of you know there was a panel that was convened by the mayor headed up by Mr. Butt and General Robles from USAA to pull together folks that kind of understood what direction we wanted to take and start at a high much higher level than where we wound up. We started talking about where do we attack this issue first is and we talked about all those issues that all of you know are relevant is it at the parental involvement level is it at the you know early education level is it at the dropout level which one of those those initiatives do we want to take on first. And after a lot of study and a lot of discussion we focused in on the early childhood component of it and went through that process to try to identify how we would go about doing it. I think there's a lot of perhaps misunderstanding perhaps misinformation. We hope that we have the opportunity to clear that up not only tonight but as I said earlier in my opening remarks do we still have time between now and the election date. I know that you're interested. I would encourage you to also let your friends and neighbors know how important this is to all of us regardless of what side of the issue we're on that education is vitally important to our community and to ask the tough questions. I'm here ready to take those tough questions. I've had an opportunity to speak to a lot of my friends and unfortunately most of them know that my background and education and all those kinds of things and maybe don't challenge me to the point that I need to be challenged and answer the questions correctly. I look forward to that lively dialogue tonight and continue it until the election. Thank you very much for having us. All right. Thank you. Councilman Lopez. Now Councilman Reed from District 8. Thank you. Well it's a real pleasure to be here tonight. Thank Texas Public Radio for doing this because as we went through this process all the way from SA 2020 to our last vote just a couple of weeks ago we've all had a lot of learning to do and we've learned a lot. There's a few things that I think we've gained some consensus on as a council and there's a few things that we still are split on. The kids consensus side is we began to believe that really early child education is key and and I think I didn't know much about it but I got an opportunity to hear a lot about it and so I think that is a place we've kind of come together and said we need to need to focus on that not just pre-k probably all the way up to third grade. The second thing is there was a big discussion about well should the city be involved in education. Is that even an appropriate activity for the city. And I went back and looked through Cheryl's budget. It's about that thick and and there's a lot of education in that budget. So the city has been in education they have just not been directly in education. So as you move from delegate agencies are indirect support to direct support it there's a there's a lot of debate and and that's what that's what we're in the process of having. Unfortunately we didn't really see the full program until just a few weeks ago Cheryl and her folks worked really hard. They put a program out that I think if people study it they can decide whether they're far against it. This is not something that's got a lot of hidden things to it. It's pretty transparent. But it is expensive and it does require that we have a development corporation that's appointed. It does require that we enter into joint venture agreements memorandum of understanding whatever you want to say it with the school districts. Now people have different opinions about whether this would work. My personal opinion is I think it is maybe not the most effective way. I've been advocating and continue to advocate for direct schools the city to do direct schools on charter bases or in some other way. And I'm advocating from K through three and I'm advocating for the teachers to stay with those students through those five years. So I've got a little different take on it than some of my colleagues. Everybody says well read it's a little late free to have that take. I don't think it's ever too late to have a take. That's what we do all the way even us old folks we keep learning and we got to. And so I hope that and I'm encouraged with all these people that are out here today because you want to learn and we want to work with you on that and we look forward to the time when we can all vote. Thank you. All right. Thank you Councilman Williams. Now Jeff Judson senior fellow and director of the Heartland Institute and member of the San Antonio Tea Party. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. I believe that a majority of voters would be happy to raise taxes if they thought that this plan would work. But if you look at the details of this pre K proposal you find out that it costs a quarter of a billion dollars over eight years. It is designed to directly serve only two thousand four year olds each year at a cost of fifteen thousand five hundred dollars per child per year in four new centralized pre K mega centers which will cost taxpayers thirty five million dollars to build. There are supposedly twenty three hundred unserved children in San Antonio. But we don't know who these twenty three hundred children are or what their individual needs are. We don't know their names or their address. They theoretically exist in census data. And as we spend a quarter of a billion dollars to start a new city run program there is no guarantee that parents will use it. Why do I say that because these children are already eligible for free pre K near where they live and where their parents work. But they are not using it. They may be enrolled in private programs. There are six hundred and seventy eight publicly funded or privately operated pre K facilities in San Antonio today. Why is it necessary for the city which is not responsible for public education in Texas to step in to reinvent pre K build four huge model centers in various parts of town and expect the parents of these children to put their four year olds on a bus or drive twice a day across town to deliver and pick up their child from this all day program. Some or perhaps most of these parents have made a conscious decision not to participate in pre K. Maybe they are homeschooling their children. Maybe a grandparent is caring for them. Maybe they are developmentally not ready for pre K. All of these are valid reasons to not be in pre K. The research shows that children are well prepared to enter school if they simply have someone reading to them at home helping them to learn about shapes and colors and letters and numbers. That is why only certain children are eligible for free pre K. Because the research shows that homes providing this type of learning environment don't need outside pre K to prepare their kids for school. So this is not rocket science and does not require sixty or seventy thousand per dollar per year teachers to teach these children. Certainly there are some children who ought to be in pre K and their parents are not making a wise decision and we should work to improve existing programs and reach out to these parents if we can find them and encourage them to do something better. But this pre K plan is more about politics than it is about children. It is more about building for pre K mega centers which will no doubt be adorned with the names of local politicians or their mothers who are still living. OK. All right. I have two sentences. It is is about removing two hundred and fifty million dollars from the local economy and spending it on a non productive activity which will hurt not help the economic future of the city and we can do much better than this. And I do hope voters will vote no on this proposal when they go to the polls. All right. Thank you Mr. Judson. All right. Moving on. John folks retired superintendent for the North Side ISD sir. Thank you very much and it is an honor to be here this evening and I do want to say that I was very honored that I was asked to be a member of the brain power task force by the mayor which was chaired by General Robles USA and by Charles Butt from H. E. B. to really look at what could be done to enhance education in San Antonio. We looked at a lot of things. We looked at career tech. We looked at dropout programs but the bottom line when it was all said and done and after the we were presented programs by certain individuals what we really came to the conclusion of was that we really needed to look at pre K education. We needed to look at early childhood education. I've been an educator for forty two years. Twenty one of that is a superintendent. Four is a state superintendent of public instruction. Three of that is a dean of a college of education. Much of that is a teacher and I will tell you that it is so important for kids to be ready for school. What occurs in kindergarten and first grade today is so different than what most of us went through. What we do in pre K and in kindergarten and first grade today is very very academic in pre K. all students benefit from that but especially students who qualify under the state regulations for pre K education. We really talk about preparing kids to be ready for the workforce and for college and in education we talk about a ramp to college success a ramp to college readiness that has to begin at the pre K level and in fact we start really at the twelfth grade level and we back down to the pre K level to see what students really need at each particular level to be ready to go on to college and to be successful. The bottom line to it for me as an educator and as a teacher is that to better prepare our students for success it starts at the pre K level. We again can say there's all kinds of issues and things about the program but as a as a person who has that knowledge and that experience of what I have seen in public school systems throughout this state and I've seen also what has been emphasized by this state even with the state testing which I do not agree with a lot of that let me assure you of that but I will tell you I will tell you very simply we have to have our kids prepared and ready to start school because let me tell you their academic career begins at the pre K and kindergarten level. All right. Moving on Richard Perez president of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. Thank you David and thank KSTX and now cast for providing this wonderful opportunity for the citizens of this great community to listen and learn and understand the importance of this issue. I'm here today representing 1700 different businesses that employ over half a million people in this great community that we call home and we did a tremendous amount of analysis looking at this proposal. We were skeptical. We said here we go again creating something that already exists but I will tell you this after our analysis and we analyze this. We had presentations by the brain part and task force. We had the city manager. We had the director of finance. We tore this thing apart and we were looking for a couple of things and the first thing we were looking for was the need and that was very clear. There is a tremendous amount of need in this community. Second we were looking for accountability. We wanted to make sure if we were going to spend one dollar that that dollar was spent well and wisely and made a difference in the lives of children. Third we wanted to make sure that this program was going to move the needle so that our young people are the littlest ones can have the opportunity to succeed because one of the biggest challenges that we face in this business community is having young men and women prepared to go to the workforce. That is a challenge. And so we have been convinced by the analysis and by all the work that we have done that a quality pre-K program is that path to success for those young people. Furthermore we believe that the accountability system and the various boards that have been set up that are going to be governing this structure makes sense and will be populated by good people of this community, business people of this community as well that can help make sure that whatever dollar gets spent it is a dollar that is well spent. You know we talk about education in this community all the time. We talk about wanting to move the needle. We talk about wanting to be a tier one city. I can tell you the path to tier one is education. And I believe and the business community and the greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce believes that this pre-K for SA is the path to that greatness. And also on the panel we have Lori Taylor. She's a professor of Texas Indian Bush School of Government and Public Service. She's not really for or against per se the proposal but she provides quite a bit of research and knowledge about how these programs work. So Lori. And I want to thank you all very much for the invitation to be here and to participate in this forum just talking about one of the very, very important issues for the future development of the state of Texas and the city of San Antonio. Unlike the rest of the panel I don't really have a dog in this hunt. I drove three hours to get here to participate in this conversation this evening and I'm going to be driving home three hours tonight. And what you choose in San Antonio is something that's important to you. I'm here to be basically a resource as part of this conversation. To tell you what the policy wonk and scholar community have to say about pre-K. Which is can kind of be boiled down into three little sound bites. One of which is that the return on investment to pre-K education is huge. You can look to a number of research scholars. I particularly prefer to look to the work that James Heckman has done. Looking at the return on investment to pre-K education he's going to tell you that pre-K has one of the largest returns of investment of any type of investment a society can into whether you're talking about kind of investment in physical capital whether you're talking about investments in plants and machinery whether you're talking about investments at other levels of education. He's going to tell you that pre-K is where you get the greatest return on your investment. And since the man has a Nobel Prize in economics I tend to listen to the guy. The other thing he's going to do the other thing the researchers going to tell you is that there's a lot of difference between a high quality pre-K program and a custodial pre-K program. And that there is a lot of variability in the quality of existing pre-K programs throughout the country throughout the state undoubtedly throughout the city. And that there are some programs that are able to generate the kind of return on investment that Professor Heckman is talking about. And there are other programs that are really basically glorified daycare and aren't really contributing to the educational attainment of children. And pre-K based on the research is kind of a go big or go home kind of situation where if you're not going to offer a high quality program there's really no return on the investment other than mom and dad don't have to pay for daycare during the period of time when the kids are in that custodial care program. So if you're going to talk about pre-K you have to talk about high quality pre-K. You have to talk about a curriculum that is research-based the curriculum that is going to be academically preparatory for children and not simply a situation that's teaching socialization skills although socialization skills are very valuable that's not where the return on investment to pre-K is going to come from. And the third sound bite that I'd like to to emphasize here is that it's important that you think to get the full benefits of a high quality pre-K program to think about a full day pre-K program. Because one of the aspects that frequently gets overlooked is some of the very very short term benefits of high quality pre-K which is that it provides an opportunity for the parent who would otherwise be caring for that child to re-enter the labor force and to become a tax-paying productive member of society. Every additional year of experience that someone has in the labor force enhances their lifetime earnings. And so a full day pre-K program that allows the mother, typically the mother, to re-enter the labor force more rapidly leads to higher earnings not only for the child but also for the mother because of the increased lifetime work experience that she's going to have. It's only an additional year or so but that in and of itself can be important to lives. Thank you very much. So if you folks would if you have questions or comments you'd like to queue up in front of the microphone now's a good time to do that. And I'll just get started by asking a question. This is one that we received from our listeners. It was about you know people are wondering I've heard this quite a bit why do we need a pre-K for SA if we already have Head Start in San Antonio and there have been some studies that have shown that Head Start has not provided all that it could. And so let me ask you that Laurie since you've studied this what is it with Head Start what are they doing wrong or why isn't it working, why isn't it enough? Can we learn from Head Start what not to do if this passes and we want this to be a success? Well basically I don't claim to have studied Head Start myself what I've done is stand on the shoulders of giants and read the work that my very talented peers have done on the area of Head Start and basically what they're finding is very little return on investment to a typical Head Start program because the typical Head Start program is such a variable set of possible programs and initiatives are being offered to kids with some of the programs being very high quality some of the programs being very low quality on average not really able to detect much of a bang for the buck in the Head Start programs themselves. So I think that what the research is going to tell you is to reinforce this idea that if you're not going to offer a high quality program by which I mean a program with a well founded curricular component you might as well not bother. And Mr Lopez Councilman Lopez so how do we avoid those problems if this happens to to make sure that there's not going to have a high level of curriculum and then Mr. Jetson. Sure you know that it is a great question of one that I think that's a lot of folks are raising regardless of what side of the issue that they're on and the reality of it is accountability is going to be incredibly important not only for the students that are there but also a parental component of the accountability. We've got to do much more than what has been talked about what's been talked about as far as being a just a daycare or an even enhanced daycare. There has got to be accountability there's got to be accountability with the parents and the children that are participating as well as an accountability of the system to train the teachers that are there to make sure that you bring in top notch master teachers and then take their expertise and leverage it across the rest of the teachers that are in the environment. Remember we're only going to have a small piece of the of the education community on these campuses the vast majority of that education community is going to be back on the campuses back in the ISDs. We've got to figure out a way to leverage what they know what they're learning and what they're experiencing and get it back into the classroom because after it's all said and done these children the following year will be back in the school districts. I mean it isn't an opportunity for us to make a significant difference with a with a program that has significant accountability and that's what's going to make the difference between this and any other program that's been tried. So Mr. Judson are you does that register with you you think that there's going to be accountability on that would avoid some of the pitfalls that Head Start has suffered. Yeah well I think I think there's two main issues here one is do we want high quality pre-k and I think the answer is totally yes whatever the research says we should do we should do those things. I have not heard a discussion from many of our city leaders about improving pre-k up until this election why aren't they advocating to the school districts and the state legislature and to our federal lawmakers to improve Head Start and to improve the existing enormous pre-k infrastructure that we already have in the city. The totally separate issue a completely separate issue which has nothing to do with quality pre-k is should we create a totally new governmental layer system of education that does not have direct accountability to the voters because there's not there's no elected board that will be controlling this it'll be an appointed board. Should we be creating a whole another system for an entity of government that is not responsible for for public education in Texas. All right okay from the floor Alice My name is Alice Canistero Garcia I am a recently retired early childhood educator from Houston Independent School District we have in place in Houston an excellent early childhood pre-k only schools throughout the city now Houston ISD is a huge ISD there are a number of other school districts in Houston but my question is and thank you Laurie Taylor for for your comments about quality research does show that students who attend pre-k have a much greater chance of going on to a university. If this curriculum is based on brain research active learning age appropriate curriculum because the brain and the body especially in little people are are hardwired even us now half of us are falling asleep because they've been sitting down for more than 17 minutes my question is what what um where is this curriculum is it coming from the TEA which is what Houston has based theirs on and augmented it and let me tell you sir it's highly accountable teachers are highly accountable for each of the students in their classroom. Dr. Folks can you handle that? Well there's no question that you have to have a quality curriculum where if it's a high school math program you have to have a quality curriculum there is no question in my mind that once this program is established that the people that are the experts which are really people like yourself who are the early childhood teachers are going to be able to go out and find the best program they can find for especially for the centers of excellence because these will be set up as models for school districts to look at as examples of what they need to be doing they will also be training centers for professional development so if the TEA program is the best program for that then I would say yes that's the program we need but if there's another program that would be better than what TEA because I don't always agree with TEA on everything but if there's another program that would be better that's a national program we need to get the best curriculum we can get and I'll look to people like or I would look to people like yourself to Lori and others who really have the knowledge and expertise in that area. Councilman Williams. Thank you and when we first started in on this and the proposal was first made from the brainpower initiative we were going to have two curriculums and the two curriculums are going to compete over a period of time and we said no no we need to understand what we're doing here we don't need a competition and four or five years later figure it out I think this is really an important question because we haven't heard a lot about where the curriculum is and what they're going to do and so that's a little bit of my concern is that it's very hard when you are given something maybe four weeks to put a plan together it's just simply not there yet and and so I understand your concern I have the same concern but to this point I haven't really seen the exact curriculum. Just want to remind our listeners that this is the newsmaker hour on KSTX 89.1 FM San Antonio we're holding the town hall meeting on the pre-k for SA vote and another question from the floor sir. Sure the question is why did the task force choose early childhood education versus let's say dropout prevention or college preparation. You run the task force Mr. Folks right? Can you answer that? As I said in my opening remarks and I think that's an excellent question because I think we looked at a lot of things we looked at career tech programs. I happen to be from a state that probably has the best vocational technical education program in the nation and as we look at workforce needs we talked about do we look at the need for vocational technical education. We talked about the dropout program and what needs to be done in school districts as far as dropouts were concerned when you look at all of those programs then what we basically came to the conclusion of and I say we because there were a lot of people on that task force that had different opinions but what they came to the conclusion of and finally a consensus of was that the best thing to do if we were going to invest one eighth of a cent in a program we needed to make sure that we did it in a way that the children of San Antonio would benefit from the preparation that they need to be ready to start school and especially those early formative years are so important if we don't do it there we're not going to affect the dropout program if we don't do it at that point we're really not going to affect career tech programs in college readiness and as I said earlier we have to put kids on this ramp to workforce readiness and college readiness at a very early age because now kindergarten and first grade is much more academic than what it was when you and I most of us in this room uh went to school Lori Taylor can you discuss I mean if you show up for school first day of kindergarten and you don't know your colors you don't know your alphabet you're just a blank slate are you really destined for a life of academic failure I don't think colors are destiny on the first day of class there is a long list of things that can can influence the outcome for a child I think if you encounter an amazing teacher that in and of itself can offset an enormous number of disadvantages at home the issue though is what can be done to put kids on a reasonably level playing field at the start because on average children who come to the classroom ready to learn or on on the same level as their peers tend to succeed more than students who come to the classroom behind and the problem with some home environments is that they are not academically enriching and that that's not to say that there's any lack of effort on the part of the parents but it's very difficult for parents to have the kinds of dinner table conversations that folks who are extremely well educated themselves are going to have and exposing children to a vocabulary that's substantially more rich when you yourself use a deeper vocabulary in general conversation so there are a lot of advantages that kids whose parents are well educated already bring to the table we have a lot of evidence suggesting a perpetuation of advantage that that the educated have educated children and that people who are not educated have to work harder to get their children to a level playing field so mr. Judson in your opening remarks you talked about how it would be better for parents to take on these roles and to teach these children these skills but do you acknowledge that there may be some sets of parents who who don't really aren't equipped or maybe they're work all the time and that pre-k could have a role in in bridging that gap yes no absolutely what I said in my opening remarks was that the research shows that a rich home environment is equally as good as a good pre-k program if you don't have a rich home environment and there are some homes that they don't speak English and and you just don't have the large vocabulary you don't have the things going on in the home that would prepare the student and that's where pre-k is very very effective and no argument about that and that's why we have eligible groups of people that are now eligible for pre-k and and people that are in higher income homes are not eligible and so my only argument again is these kids are already eligible they already are in pre-k there's a very very small number who are not taking advantage of this and if and if they aren't we don't really know why they aren't but that's not a reason to start pass a new tax and and start a whole another city program yes sir on the floor yes my name is Sal Epicelli I'm a neighborhood group leader with the San Antonio Tea Party and my question revolves around some of the comments that have been made that pre-k is very important to give a child the ability to be able to enter the workforce and go on to college not all kids go to college for one thing but my question is to me it seems to beg the question are our children today in the San Antonio area being prepared for the workforce and are they being prepared for college if the answer is no then the question is why not and I would like to know if you considered that question in proposing this program Richard well I think there are many programs right now that are helping and moving the the bar up on those children that decided that they don't want to go to college for whatever reason those that want to go to college the bottom line though is we have so much need in this community that there are a population of young kids right now that are not getting touched for whatever reason whether that's a home environment whether that's resources whether that's a transportation issue this program I believe is a key to getting those kids to where we need them to be tomorrow is tomorrow and we need people to jump on the bandwagon today this is going to help us you know one of the biggest challenges we face in this community is workforce development issues I hear it every single day from small corporations large businesses we need an educated workforce and that is at all levels whether it's someone that has a four-year degree a technical degree or some kind of training beyond high school and I believe that this is a foundational program that will allow our young people to be prepared to make that decision in their life when the time comes okay wait a second right so all righty then all right Councilman oh Mr. Judson you wanted to take that I think I think that's a very good question I think we're going to be first of all even if this pre-K program were to help the 2,000 kids out there there's tens of thousands of other ones that are still failing in our schools we have a 30 or 40 percent attrition rate in our high schools of dropouts it's an abysmal situation and there's very little hope that there's no hope that this pre-K program is going to address those fundamental issues of the utter failure of our public school system and I do think this is a missed opportunity I think there are a lot of things the city could have done of a positive nature to have addressed some of those fundamental issues but this is not one of them all right from the floor yes my name is Deborah Perish I taught in Texas public schools for 32 years my mother taught gifted and talented and was involved in many of the programs that are locally known of I have two friends who teach Head Start and San Antonio ISD they are both superb teachers and they would be able to teach those kids anything that needed to be taught to them however their biggest problems are that they are dealing with parents who are illiterate who had these children in their teens there is no male regular figure in these children's lives they are normally being raised by I mean Project Worth said that there were children four years ago that were 10 years old having babies this is sinful this needs to be stopped some way I can't even imagine a 10 year old girl having a baby but it's it happened four years ago in this city now most cases that my two friends are dealing with that children are completely out of control because they have no structure at home that's got to be the first thing you deal with if you've got 22 little four year olds in your classroom they have no concept of how to behave that wasn't how I behaved when I was four my mother was a teacher and I knew how to behave at four so what is your question then my question my question is and my suggestion is that that if you're going to do something like this you spend half the money on the pre-k and don't get into these fancy buildings we don't need that just give the money to the regular schools and let's back up and then the other half put into a program or any child who is capable of being involved in conceiving a child either the male or the female has to have once a week some kind of training on how do you be a responsible citizen because these kids are not being taught this Councilman Lopez can you address that well I couldn't agree with you more that some of those are some of the things that are happening in the families today I mean it's just not enough education not enough discussion not enough engagement not enough parenting all those kinds of things and if there were a way to say we can fix all of that I can assure you that the committee would have said let's go after one of those when we had the discussion and and quite honestly we were talking about about a pre-k initiative we're talking about what could be affordable we're talking about in pre-k not because we're going to make the big difference in pre-k but where the measurement really was was what are they doing when they're in the third grade because what winds up happening is if they don't get the basic fundamental instruction and habits they're being attacked ma'am ma'am and I couldn't agree with you more we're overtaxed but the issue is what can you do that gives you the best return on investment on the if you agree that there are children out there that are either underserved or unserved do how do you go after that and where do you identify them and where do you measure them you measure them I think I think the and the the statistics show it that you measure them in the third grade but you don't start in the third grade you start in pre-k to start that basis of getting the numeracy and the literacy introduction so that when you get to the third grade they're not learning to read anymore they're reading to learn I mean that's where we have to be if we don't do that then we failed and this project won't work just like any other project didn't work we've got to do those basic core fundamentals and those elements are included in this and as we move through the process I will be more than glad to continue the opening dialogue this is over an eight year period and I can assure you that this program will evolve all right yes ma'am hi my name is missy watz um and I appreciate what the professor said I heard a third point about parents being able to enter back into the workforce my primary concern is that in 2007 they looked at low income families and why they chose the daycare that they did and 70 percent of them work irregular hours think second shift third shift think retail so if they're in school that's great but if they have to be transported from somewhere at three because school's over at three and their parents start work at three how in the world are we covering their needs to make sure that they're gonna choose this program that was 70 percent that our low income have these odd hour jobs that a normal program will not fit but their mom or their grandma or their neighbor or their friend across the street does and I realize and I realize that those friends and neighbors may not have the skills but they are available so that mom can go to the workforce so why are we not enabling the friends and neighbors to be better friends and neighbors and to really make a difference in those kids lives so that and we have to find those 70 percent that are there that's my question councilman Williams okay one of the problems and she's really bringing it up is that I guess from a from a business background we always took an incremental approach as opposed to just wipe the slate clean I never could come up with enough money just to come up with a whole new deal and she's right we have to start with the environment we're in and that's why you know when we were talking about this it always concerned me that well we've got it's amazing we've got 82 over 82 percent of our children qualify for free pre-k I mean think about that there's only five ways to qualify and and so that is a is a large number of children that already qualify the whole issue of trying to deal with this thing across the board in a large way right off before we actually know it just kind of violates my incremental principles and that's why I think we really need to focus on the children that aren't getting anything because again when I think about why none when some of these children are not at all either the parents don't know they don't care or they don't want them to go they don't have transportation as was mentioned by the last questioner or they don't have childcare or ways to deal with them so we do need to find these children that aren't getting anything we need to try to address those but those tend to be as as Councilman Lopez those tend to be social issues that we really got to think about and so the social issues and the educational issues kind of marry up you really can't separate them and so when I sat and tried to talk to people the frustration that that the questioner just expressed is something that I think we all do so an incremental approach thinking about taking it a step at a time really to me it makes a lot more sense for the city to step into direct action thank you Laurie Taylor are there studies about the demographics about how people who are poor or English challenged areas are they able to take advantage of these programs is there something that prevents them from taking of these programs I do not I'm not particularly aware of any programs that any researchers that really look closely at the question of access it makes a very logical connection the transportation is an important element here the other important element one of the elements that is in this plan is the wrap around care such that there is additional after school program care for children to offer them essentially a safe place to be after the school day so that the parent can complete a traditional work day or at least allow for a transition to an alternative care provider in the evenings Richard you know the city San Antonio pretty well do you really think there are a sizable population of parents who don't want their kids to go to an opportunity so they can learn these learn these skills or they can't be bothered to take them to an all a pre-k quality pre-care center to put them on the path of success if there are there are very few I think a parent wants the best for their children I have three children myself my wife's a school teacher we've been able to provide our children with a foundation that has allowed them to succeed but I am not like everybody and everybody's not like me and so we need to provide those families that are in need with an opportunity so that they can have this quality pre-k full day poly quality pre-k so that they can have that opportunity to succeed you know it's really very simple if we don't invest in our children at the beginning we're going to have to pay for issues that come out at the end at the back end and so we as a we as a city need to embrace that concept of helping our young people succeed and we believe the greater chamber believes that pre-k for essay is that program and will be successful but it's not going to be easy there's going to be a lot of challenges it's a new program we need to work together to make it work and I believe that it will be successful yes sir from the floor yes my name is George Campbell I live in a part of San Antonio almost poised at the center of converse and I have observed closely things related to education particularly in the Judson school district area but I also observed how things are going in the city of San Antonio and I certainly agree that the basis is very important to fortify to try the best methods but I ask are we not failing towards the top our high schools there's so much dropouts where football is the emphasis where we cut teachers where we have 14 school districts instead of four so that we have to cut teachers in order to keep administrators this sort of thing impoverishes our ideas also I have noticed that in the preparation of students on the higher level very little research is done and they go into college in shock we are the United States it's 25th in the world to understand in mathematics and physics this state is what 41st I believe in the United States and we're going to continue to be that way unless we get our priority straight it must be to cut down the administrative clutter that we have in the county of Behar and get into real education which means backing up our teachers keeping our teachers and also getting our students to do things who don't speak standard English by the way I've noticed there are a lot of non-standard English we're not even getting there as well as in our technical skills so these must be emphasized I would say and then I think our money will be well spent from the bottom to the top and then on into excuse me into college so that this state and this city our businesses will have qualified people and our citizens will have jobs we won't have to import from India from Sweden from Singapore in order to maintain the higher level so I think we must rethink the whole system of education here particularly at the higher level and give the bottom its due but also the top thank you Mr. Folks I mean you've been a superintendent you've seen how cluttered in the bureaucratic TEA can be I mean is there a way to take a a chainsaw to to that yes there's a way but I can't talk about it here the most important thing in the education of a child is a teacher in a classroom and every superintendent every administrator understands that we can argue administrative costs versus instructional costs and all that all night long with the bottom line to what we have to look at is we have to look at kids being prepared to matriculate through a very complicated system when they do get to high school I've heard a lot of statistics thrown out tonight and I read a lot sometimes in the newspaper and and yet I know the statistics fairly well and I will tell you our students and I can only speak where I was in Northside I can't speak to all the other districts but I know our students did very well on the measures which the state of Texas put in place for testing and also for graduation they did very well our completion rate for our students at high school this past year was 95.4% now I will tell you you can throw out a lot of statistics about a lot of things but when kids get to high school today just the basic requirements for graduation are four units of English algebra one geometry algebra two biology chemistry and physics and then you also have world history US history and world geography let me tell you you didn't have those kind of requirements many years ago now if you plan on going to college you can tap on top of that foreign languages you can tap on top of that fine arts you can tap on that a lot of other things and it's easy to criticize school districts because of their band programs their football programs their cheerleader programs all of those different kinds of programs which many people call extracurricular I call many of them co-curricular because I will tell you the research also shows that kids who are involved in activities at school they perform the best in school and it keeps them in school and as a superintendent I wanted to do as much as I could to keep our kids engaged yes I was a math teacher at high school I love mathematics but you know not every person loved to integrate and differentiate a trigonometric function and I just did not understand that but I will tell you a lot of kids enjoy band they enjoy being inquired they enjoy playing basketball those are the kinds of things that may help make a well-rounded individual and I will never take away from the fact that we constantly have to look at improving the academic program but when we look at preparing kids again to matriculate through a very complicated system which TEA and the bureaucracy has made it that way with all of this testing which much of it is very irrelevant in my opinion but I will tell you we still have to do it because the state tells us to do it and we have to have these kids prepared for the time they get to third grade to matriculate through that system and to be successful and an investment in kids who qualify for pre-K is one of the best investments that a society can make for its children I can't argue the pros and cons of how you do it but I can argue very vehemently the fact that an investment in our young people and especially at a very young age is the best investment that we can make to prepare these kids to matriculate from to kindergarten to first grade and on to the third grade where yes they are confronted now with the state of Texas academic readiness test which is very very difficult and as they matriculate through the system they have to pass 12 exams in order to graduate and I would love to bring the algebra 2 or the physics exam in this room and administer that test to the people in this room it's a tough test I've seen what they have they're confronted with so you know as we look at the challenges that education is facing I will tell you there are many there are huge I understand all that but let's help our kids be successful that's the bottom line to what I say all right Mr. Judson sure the questioner asked a fundamental question about a fundamental problem that again this pre-k program will not address and we talk about investing in our kids and that's that issue is settled we're already investing in pre-k the question is why not fix the investment we're making instead of adding another investment on top of what we're already spending I would also just say that that the issue of administrative bloat in our schools is an issue we just can't seem to get beyond I know we live in the Alamo Heights school district and the Texas Association of School Boards did an audit of Alamo Heights then told us that we were 47% understaffed administratively and I'm just I'm just thinking how can we even survive when we have half the staff that the education establishment tells us we should have in our administrative office that's one of the problems that we have in our public school system all right Mr. Folks real quick I'd like to agree with him on on the point about the state of Texas is going to have to address the funding system and the equity system within our school districts because that's one of the biggest issues that we have when you look at Alamo Heights it's a whole different catalog but that gets into the issue that that he is addressing there and that is a totally different issue than what we're talking about okay and it's a whole different firestorm I'll tell you all right well I'm going to break format a little because we're lucky we have a resource here we have a city manager Cheryl Scully and she was very instrumental in putting this together and I would like to hear from you particularly about some of the questions that if you can want to step up to this microphone that Mr. Judson brought up or here's a wireless that's working you know they said questions about multimillion dollar facilities that have to be constructed is that true or how how was this how will this actually work who qualifies for this so the program that we were asked to put together was a business plan to support the task force recommendations and what we did was take a look at the amount of revenue that was generated by the one eighth cent and I should point out that there is a state limit 8.25 percent Austin Dallas Houston El Paso corpus they're already at that limit some of them have been for a long time so San Antonio is the one city the one major city that is not at that limit this will generate about 30 million on average over the eight year period and we have taken a look at all of the existing school buildings that are vacant or perhaps will become vacant we've looked at vacant structures in the community and we expect that we will through with the four facilities be able to renovate existing structures and or work with the private sector in lease a structure that is either constructed or renovated by them because the tax hasn't passed and there's a little bit of chicken and egg here we don't have all of the facilities identified yet for the program but we are working on that and have looked at more than a dozen school buildings in the central city as well as vacant structures throughout the facility in the adopted budget that the council just adopted last week there are some capital dollars that are savings from other capital projects where we've come in under budget that have been identified to make them available for renovation of some existing facility so that's taken into consideration as well so the actual program is and it's a balanced budget for the eight-year program and it is sustainable the operating revenues not only generated by the one-eighth cent but also the additional dollars that will be available from the state and federal programs that will be able to leverage because we're investing more in our early childhood education will bring more dollars for education to the community and but for these dollars being available for pre-K through the sales tax we wouldn't be able to bring those additional state and federal dollars to the community couple of things as I was making notes as people ask questions on head start there are 21,000 children in Bear County who are eligible three and four-year-olds for head start with the dollars that come into this community only 7,000 of the eligible children are served so that those that's the facts today secondly the research that the task force discussed and all of that is available to the public if anyone wants copies of what they looked at what they studied is compelling that the best return on investment is in pre-K education and the city has been in the education business we have about 104 million dollars of our budget dedicated to public libraries to the head start program that we manage for the community literacy programs after school academic programs in partnership with the school district summer job youth employment so scholarships to the San Antonio education partnership so we are in the education business as you noted earlier parental engagement this program will require will provide wraparound services as was mentioned that is so necessary to help and support families but it will also require families to commit to work with their children so there will be so to speak contractual arrangement between the families and those who are participating in the program so that they will support and participate in the activities at the learning centers the program will be ramped up so it's eight years the first three years will be a ramp-up of the program that is two centers open the first year two more centers the second year year three will be of operation fourth year will get into the competitive grants so in when we're operating in full capacity about 3700 children per year will be able to be served and that's 3700 four-year-olds on an annual basis over the eight-year period about 22,000 children 22,00 four-year-olds who don't have full-day pre-K today or are in half-day programs but want to be in full day will have access to this program and so the council when they decided to place this on the ballot their conclusion was that it was worth the investment to serve 22,00 four-year-olds to give them a better chance of succeeding completing high school and being prepared to go on to college okay one this is newsmaker hour on KSTX 89.1 FM San Antonio we're holding a town hall meeting on the pre-K for SA vote we just heard from city manager Cheryl Scully and councilman Reed Williams you said you wanted to respond well quickly just a couple of questions questions you asked by the end of about four years we'll have about 35 million dollars in these facilities so that's just so everybody'll know that and and and I know this is a point of contention but when we we voted to put this on the ballot we didn't all support this we thought that the plan was quite well defined and well enough to find for the public to understand it but there were three of us that didn't vote and said that this we thought this was the answer we thought that this was a clear enough plan so that people could make a decision and that the public should make a decision thank you Mr. Judson one of your points that you brought up in the opening statements is that you didn't want to have senators named after the mothers of politicians Cheryl Scully didn't address that fact but was there anything else in there that you wanted to respond to well in fact that I'll disagree with councilman Williams a little bit that this is I don't think this is ripe for a voter approval yet I think there are so many unanswered questions that the voters really shouldn't be asked to vote on this in six weeks or whatever the election is we don't as we heard we don't know what the curriculum is going to be boy that's a fundamental issue we don't know where the location of these senators are going to be if you're looking at whether or not your child is going to go there that is a fundamental issue we don't know to my understanding we don't have any idea how many school districts are going to be participating in this the memorandums of understanding are being negotiated now and those MOUs will not be not be completed until the end of the year at the earliest so after the election we will know if the school districts are going to participate which ones if any and under what restrictions that the city is going to put on it and to me those are such fundamental issues that affect the success or failure of this that we we should put this on hold and at least work those out before we're asked to vote okay good evening I'm I'm I'm Charles Vethan can you move the microphone up a little bit absolutely go ahead my name is Charles Vethan I'm with the Vethan Law Firm one of the underwriters of this event so you may wonder why is the law firm underwriting this event very simply our business focuses on engineering high-tech and the medical industry in the last four years when this country has gone through its present recession my clients involved in this sector have not been able to fill jobs that require an expertise in math and science so as a result what we've had to do is have to shepherd in individuals who come in here on H1B H1B visa or other promotional programs to assist them I've got kids and I'm looking at the San Antonio market we're one of the major metropolitan centers in the country we're attracting businesses from Mexico because they want to get away from the violence there and resettle here because of the linguistic advantage as well as the cultural advantage they can't hire people who have the basic skill set in the high-tech market if San Antonio intends to lead in this digital century and you want to establish some basics as to getting your pre-k kids hardwired to learn math, science and technology I've got a question to both Mr. Judson and Ms. Taylor how do you make sure that this program would have a institute a non-custodial pre-k program and if you didn't want this program Mr. Judson what are the options you would propose to have the kids in school today be able to have these high-paying jobs in 20 years Mr. Judson can you respond I think that we do need to continue to improve the pre-k programs that we have and that's obviously a herculean effort but we have a system that's funded and operating and we should try to improve that existing system as far as improving the school system I have long been an advocate of greater parental authority over the education of their children by being able to choose the school that's most appropriate for their child and I think in the Texas legislature this coming year you're going to see school choice coming up and I think that and the research shows that the effect on the public school systems in the cities and states where school choice is available around the country that it has improved the public school systems because when parents have the ability to make that choice which is best for their child the child immediately benefits from that and the schools quickly see that when they're losing children they need to focus on the things that are really important to those parents and when that's the hardest thing is getting large bureaucracies that have all of these demands from Austin and all these tax tests star tests and all of these bureaucratic things that are pulling them in all directions it's hard to get large bureaucracies to focus on a customer that has no choice they're assigned to a school and there's nothing they can do but have their child enrolled there so I think that's the fundamental thing that we can do to improve public education right what I'm hearing is there's a sense of urgency that something action needs to be taken now to try and and resolve this or put kids on the right path and we have kids if we every year we skip we lose more kids who don't have the opportunity to break out of a cycle of poverty and so question was also addressed to you Laurie so can you kind of talk about how a program like this would lead eventually to more stem qualified employees sure well I think I'm probably better qualified to speak a little bit about how you get to a curriculum sure that would lead to those kinds of stem-prepared individuals and I think you have to have a a continuously iterative process you start with research that's formally looking at what kinds of curriculum have been adopted elsewhere what they're doing in in Houston ISD what they're doing in other school districts that are successful in Northside and the like then you adopt and implement and then you have to have a a period of evaluation you can't become wedded to your first blush curriculum model such that you're not willing to adapt it in in the face of evidence and so one of the things I do very much like about the pre-k4SA program is the evaluative component that there is in the budget what looks like a little sliver of the budget but from a researcher's perspective looks like a lice sliver of the budget to to look at whether or not the programs are working assessment an assessment of the success of the program in outcomes for children and I think you need to use that not simply as an evaluation of the program but in a formative sense of helping you to iterate towards a more effective curriculum figuring out what's working do more of that figure out what's not working do less of that and I think that one of our problems nationally is that we can point to some very effective high quality programs but we aren't particularly well informed about which elements of those programs are the key essential elements that have to be replicated and which elements of the program are frills and what San Antonio is proposing might help us answer some of those questions all right, time for two more comments or questions from the floor and then we're going to do last closing comments from the panel yes sir thank you Mr. Davies my name is Rudy Rodriguez I represent the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and I think first and foremost there's no doubt that the advancement of our children's education is job one number two I'm very sensitive to many of the comments that were made here tonight certainly this young woman's message on parenting hit home I mean it's one of our key issues there's no doubt about it but as we look at the emotional issue here of whether it's an educational drive or a political drive for us in the business community it's also about that return on investment taking the pure emotion out of it what we as a chamber have come to the realization is that we are not keeping up with the workforce demands for the next decade or two given the attainment that we have today and that we strongly feel that we have to advance that and implement a program that will supplement that to the degree possible I would perhaps direct this question to either Mr. Bettis or Councilman Reed or Councilman Williams but while many times the various chambers in this community are not always on the same page or always in concert I can tell you that for the first time in a long time all seven of the local chambers are all endorsing this program and I would ask you to please comment on why you think that is strictly from the business perspective Mr. Davis thank you for your taking my question was there anything in response want to respond Mr. Williams if you want to yes sir well we're in tough economic times there's no doubt about it and it's not going to get better any time soon so I can tell you that if I'm a business person out here the last group I'm going to try to irritate is a city we put a hat we put about two million dollars a year billion a year in our budget we ever five years we approve a five hundred million dollar budget so I'm not saying that are voting one way and saying another but right now today I've heard from several people say well you know it's not that much money over eight years it's two hundred and fifty million dollars that's a lot of money but more importantly if we don't get this right we're leasing eight years of kids and that's my concern is is is how do we make sure that we work on this and find those twenty three hundred kids or twenty five hundred or two thousand that are getting nothing that that really are not getting served at all and and I I believe that yes the the mayors are all for it the chambers are all for it but I'm still not convinced that this is the very best we are even a successful way that we can go about approaching our children in this pre-k program I believe it's a linear thing takes more than one year you have to stay involved in it and I'm just still looking for the answer thank you okay yes ma'am sir my name is Pamela Gabriel Craig I'm an attorney here in San Antonio this is for the superintendent sir can you tell me why you've extended the half-day pre-k program into a full day there are two districts in San Antonio that have half-day programs that's the northeast independent school district in the north side independent school district primarily the reason they have half-day programs rather than full-day programs is because of the growth in those districts and the facilities just not being available there is no question that the research shows a full-day program for students pre-k students is better than a half-day program we would love I think both in north side and northeast and I'm retired I'm not speaking for them but I can tell you when I was there I would have loved to have had a full-day program in our district we just didn't have the facilities I see this as an opportunity to move some kids into the centers of excellence that could be in a full-day program there would be some there but eventually the school districts are going to receive some of this money and it's going to allow school districts like northeast and north side to expand their pre-k programs and very possibly in those pockets in areas that really need the full-day program they can do that so I really see this as a great advantage to those districts who right now only have a half-day program one last question from the floor then we'll take final comments my name is George well seen with the defense language and I'm the chief of the general english my question is about the feeder schools it's great to have a pre-k program but what is being done to marry the feeder schools with the pre-k program to define the curricula and to assure that the kids that are moving through the school system at the third grade or at the sixth grade are actually achieving the goals and the objectives of the education that you've laid out for them that is the that's the real concern you have to have the whole community involved in the education of the child it can't be just preschool it has to be the system working together we know that even with head start programs it doesn't just affect the poor it also affects those people who are slightly above the poverty line the schools become better if the schools especially the feeder schools are partnering with the with the pre-school program what is being done to marry this these two groups Mr. Folks can you address that at all because it's an education question I can address it I'm gonna go I think uh I know I'll go ahead I think Ms. Golly could be much more specific than I would be about that it's a great question and in fact many of the task force members and the school superintendents as we've talked with them have brought up the same question so this program needs two things from the school districts their children identified in the pass through additional state funding and in exchange we will work with early childhood educators for additional training and professional development and it is about not just the pre-K teachers of the four-year-olds but also the K-3 teachers and so the memorandum of understanding that's been drafted with the help of experts one of the leading attorneys in the state of Texas David Thompson who is an expert on education law in Texas helped us develop the MOU for this program specifically addresses making sure that the education training and development is for K-3 teachers and so in exchange for the school districts identifying the kids passing through the additional state funding we will provide professional development and training for early childhood educators including K-3 working with the school districts on curriculum alignment so that the teachers in the school districts are best prepared to take on these better prepared children so we will provide better prepared five-year-olds as they enter kindergarten will track their success rates adjust the program as the program continues to make those adjustments and also professional training and development for their early childhood teachers because we know that the public schools have suffered tremendous cutbacks in funding and when they get cuts they often cut training and development for their teachers and that falls sometimes on the kindergarten through third grade teachers so this program will provide in-service training it will provide substitute teachers for the teachers to participate and shadow master teachers at the centers for the centers of excellence and provide that training so that they're better prepared can see some of the best practices share some of their own knowledge of early education so this last question is a good summary one because it really speaks to the heart of the issue how do we not only prepare the children to go into kindergarten ready to learn but then help them succeed K through three as well as those teachers that are so important in their lives all right so let's we're going to have to wrap up we're just simply out of time they're just going to just going to rule briefly going to summarize we're just going to have to wrap up unfortunately we're out of time it's just the reality of things I'm sorry about that all right we'll begin with councilman Lopez of district six thank you and I'll be brief in my in my closing remarks the big question I think that all of us should walk away and trying to get answered is do we believe that there is a class of kids out there that are either underserved because they're only going to a half day program or not served at all because they're not taking an advantage of any kind of a early childhood program if that's the case what number is okay I know that there's been some suggestions that there's not a whole lot of those kids well I can tell you that there's thousands of them and that is not the number we want in the city so I think as we walk out of here trying to answer the question the first one is to do we think that there is a class of kid out there that is either underserved or unserved and if there is what are we going to do about it this is our best attempt I think and a very good one that's been well thought out you know to make an impact on those kids clearly there's going to be accountability issues we intend to work on that and I want to thank all of you for your time and interest we do have right around 50 more days before this election goes and there'll be a plenty of opportunities I hope I'll certainly make myself available I think everybody else will that wants to get the information out to have that dialogue so thank you very much for being here this evening councilman Williams well thank you very much I want to appreciate everybody being here and I'll also say I'll stay around if some of the people that didn't get to answer questions we can huddle up over here and I'll pass my time thank you all right and Mr. Jeff Judson of the sent to NT party I think this as I think I hope we've gotten across that there's a lot of agreement about the importance of pre-K education the disagreement is whether this new program is necessary and if this program is going to deliver what the city needs and I think the answer is clearly no this has the aroma of politics all through it and I think that's what's really driving the the issue here in San Antonio it isn't really about it's not really about kids it's not really about education well what does that mean has the aroma of politics well what I'm about to explain what it means is that this is education is a very very important issue to the to voters every politician wants a little piece of education so that they can say they've done something well the city doesn't really have jurisdiction over education so they have created now a large pre-K program so that they are now doing education to please the voters and I think this is rushed it was rushed through city council and it's not appropriate to take it to the voters when there's so many unanswered questions so thank you all right Dr. Folks the state of Texas cut 5.4 billion dollars out of public education the state of Texas has not but put a priority on public education I'm thankful that I as a teacher am in a place where we have a mayor we have a city council and we have a city staff that have worked with school superintendents and other educators to come up with a proposal that yes will put some money into education but will put it into an area of education that is a vital importance to the success of our kids it's up to the voters there's no question about that it's up to the voters but I'm just thankful that we have the opportunity and especially as a teacher that I have the opportunity to go to the poll and to vote how I feel about this particular proposal 12 and a half percent of one penny is something that I'm willing to say yes to as far as the support of our kids thank you Richard Perez president of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce thank you successful businesses invest in themselves successful cities invest in themselves this community deserves the best and as Dr. Folks has said we're talking about a very small investment to move the needle in a very positive direction that's very necessary for all the citizens of this community the business community is 100 percent behind the pre-k for SA we believe that it is an opportunity for us to move the educational bar in a positive way for the citizens of this community this community deserves it and this community needs to do it thank you very much and finally Lori Taylor professor Texas A&M Bush School of Government and Public Service you obviously you said before you don't have a dog in this fight you're not going to lobby one way or the other but you know as an educator as a person who studies this I mean what do you what do you draw from this exchange I draw from this exchange that this is a model for the policy debate about programs and initiatives throughout the state and something that I would encourage my students to participate in this idea of bringing together people from all sides and asking them tough questions and listening to their answers is remarkably innovative and very attractive I think that there is a strong consensus in the literature that high quality pre-k has an enormous return on investment I don't think that's the question under debate here I think the question is one of implementation and I think that reasonable minds can differ on the question of implementation I'm just very pleased and honored to be able to participate in the conversation thank you this has been the Newsmaker Hour on KSTX 89.1 FM San Antonio we've been discussing the pre-k for SA San Antonio proposal goes to the voters on November the 6th for more information about this issue you can go to our website tpr.org I'd like to thank nowcast SA for videotaping and streaming live this public forum thank all of our panelists and all our great folks in the audience a big thanks to our underwriters who helped make this event possible Vethan Law Firm and ESD Digital Advertising Communications and the fine members of Texas Public Radio I'm David Martin-Davies good night