 Thank you all for being here. My name is Patrick Valdez. I am the project director for the Diplomax program, which you are going to hear a little bit about over today and over tomorrow. Before we get started, I was telling Jacob that when I walked in here, I thought, oh, this is going to be a little bit more comfortable. I'm MCing, but this seems kind of like family here. Like we're a smaller group. At times, we have to be in these big halls. And so that's the tone we want to kind of set in here today and through tomorrow, right? That we're all kind of familian. That would fit the tone of being in San Antonio, I guess. So I thought I'd start off with kind of a joke. So it's a good joke. So this spouse woman is getting dressed in the morning. She looks over and she notices that her husband hasn't gotten up for work. So she comes over and she says, excuse me, hun, but you're going to be running late. You haven't gotten up for work yet. And he's like, yeah, he goes, I just don't know if I want to go to work today. And she's like, well, what's wrong? And he goes, well, I don't really know if I like the people that I work with. And he goes, and to be quite honest with you, I don't really think that they like me very well either. And there's a lot of picturing and a lot of people got to work together and put aside differences. And then they talk about each other and nobody wants to kind of really work together. And he goes, so I just don't know if I want to go. She goes, well, there's two reasons you have to go to work. And he says, well, what's that? She goes, well, the first one is we have bills to pay. OK, she goes, the second is you're the project director and I get your butt to work. So that was the hell kind of set the tone for what we're about to do over the next few days. And we have important work to get done. And what I want to do real quick before I introduce some very important people that are here today is give a quick overview about why we're here. Many of you are familiar with Lumina's big goal. If you're not, let me just be the first one to kind of give a quick overview over it. And basically the big goal that Lumina has is Go 2025 is to increase the number of post-secondary degrees in the US to 60% by 2025. Those of you that live in the state of Texas are familiar with the Closing the Gaps initiative that's been going on. And those of you that live here in San Antonio, which everybody does, I'm making that assumption, some of people have come in from out of town, but there's the SA 2020, which also has some very aggressive goals. And we're going to talk about those today. And so Lumina's big goal of 2025, they figured there's only really one way we can get to that if you look at the demographics that are taking place in the country. And the way that one way that we're going to do it is by investing in communities that have large Latino student populations. Because we know that this is the growing population. And so in terms of the K through 12, and so they decided that they were going to start investing these monies into these areas. They picked, I believe, 13 communities throughout the US, and some have a long history. And that's important to say here in San Antonio, because there are some efforts that have been going on for several, several years. I mean, San Antonio has that history, and that is important to this project. They also picked some communities like Kentucky and Indiana that, to be quite honest, are kind of dealing with this growth and not sure how to do it. So they spread the money around into different places, California, New Mexico, and so forth. And so San Antonio was one of those. And so I have the honor of being hired to be the project director for here in San Antonio. So I will be working closely with each of you, and each of your districts over the next few years. And so I'm glad that I had the opportunity to meet you here today. And so when you think about the Diplomas project, there's a scent on the A, right, Diplomas. And so one way to think about it is Mas Diplomas, right? Like we want to do more, but also when you think about the collective impact principles that surround this initiative, and let's make no mistake, this initiative is based on collective impact. That is why we have all of you here today. It's about everybody kind of coming together and figuring out how do we get some place together? We know how to do it individually, or at least we know that we can have success individually, but how do we do it as a community? And again, there's a history of this being, of taking place in San Antonio. So we want to just kind of emphasize that and build upon that even more in this project. And so when I get up in the mornings now, I think of Mas as in Mas organizacion, more organization, Mas intelligencia, more intelligence, Mas fuerza, more power. And so that's what this program is all about, or this project, this Diplomas project is all about. It's about how do we all come together to move the needle when it comes to Latino student success in the city of San Antonio, the great city of San Antonio that is located in the great state of Texas, as I would often say. And before I turn it over to our presenter, I do wanna announce some very, again, important people because they are not only our facilitators, you know if you've ever facilitated a group of high powered, very opinionated and intelligent people that that's not always an easy task. So we definitely appreciate them being facilitators today. And we also wanna introduce our funders, which is the Texas Guaranteed or TG as they're known. And we have Jacob Frey. Jacob, can we just raise your hand? Elizabeth Stanley is also with TG. TG is always there. I can't tell you how many projects I've been involved in with Latinos in different places. And Jacob and I, we've known each other for years. We both went to St. Edward's University. And so we have that in common, but we've also just kind of run into each other over the years and these initiatives at TG Fund. So we're definitely appreciative. Incidentally, I should brag on SEUs. Elizabeth Stanley also has a connection to St. Edward's University. And so does our Advice Texas partner here, Jennifer Tywater. Incidentally, on age here, I hired Jennifer to be a peer advisor when I was at St. Ed's. She was 21, the age of my daughter now and that's just scary. Not scary that you're where you are, but scary that I'm just getting that odor. And here's proof I had to highlight and make like 20 font. Zero that or wear the bifocus. The next person I want to introduce are our facilitators. And we have Alma Garcia, if you would raise your hand from Educate Texas. I have Judy McCormick with the P16 Plus Council. Gina Amatangelo from the Office of State Representative Mike Villarreal. And Jean Russell is the Office of the Mayor, Castro. Jean, back there. We also have with us a very special guest, Greg Darnier. Greg is with the White House. And the next thing I'd like to do is introduce our, I'm sorry, oh, of course. Can't forget the most important person. Person who signs my checks. Ira Perez, who is the Executive Director of the San Antonio Education Partnership. Because I couldn't see you back there, Ira. That's the only reason. I'd like to introduce next is Sonia Rodriguez. She's gonna give us some opening words. She's a partner at Branton and Hall. She's one of the tri-chairs of the SA-2020 visioning process. She's been a chair of the Mayor's Commission on the Status of Women under two mayors and was a founding board member of SA-2020. And so if I could now turn this over to you. Good morning. Good morning. I am delighted to be with you guys this morning. And I'd like to welcome you to what is sure to be more than just an education conference on college readiness. I was thrilled when Mayor Costil asked me to become involved in SA-2020. SA-2020 was a grassroots, really intense focus group of an entire city, which of course I have to confess I thought was impossible. How many of you participated in a focus group? Okay, imagine that with a thousand people. And the whole time I'm thinking, okay, Mayor Costil, I'm with you, but I just don't know how this is gonna work. I'm a trial lawyer. I'm trying to convince 12 people in a jury box of one thing, and that's hard to do. And it was done. We did it. And the City of San Antonio did it. The community members did it. How many of you participated in any one of the SA-2020 focus groups? Not many. Let me tell you what happened and what we did. So over the course of five different meetings, focus groups that had different themes and ideas and developmental focuses each meeting, community members were invited to come and discuss what do we want the City of San Antonio to look like in the year 2020? No parameters. Community involvement, community investment, community dialogue, what do we want the City to look like by 2020? And on their own, over the course of these five meetings, tailoring the issues very narrowly as we progressed, the City came up with 11 different items. City members came up with 11 different items. So on education, being one of the big items that the City focused on for itself, we were very ambitious as a city, as community members, as neighbors. We were very ambitious for ourselves. And so what the City of San Antonio, our residents decided was that in the area of education, we were going to orchestrate the greatest turnaround in the United States on education. That we wanted for ourselves, 85% college readiness by the year 2020. These were ambitious goals, people. And so the product of the five focus groups and community discussions are in this report. And so we've got a chapter on education and what the community wants for itself in education. And so I encourage you to go online at say2020.org and look and read the report and look to see what your parents, the parents in your schools, the neighbors in your neighborhood want for itself in the year 2020 when it comes to education. The reason that I think that that is so important is because what that tells you, what that should tell each of you is that you're not in this alone. What SA 2020 revealed and what the recent election on pre-K4SA revealed is that it's not just you who has a personal stake in the public school systems in San Antonio. It's our neighbors and our friends and our politicians and our policy makers and our corporate partners. So what SA 2020 revealed to me and what it should reveal to you is that you're not in this alone. We're not in this alone. We have a goal for ourselves. And so the work that you're gonna do today and tomorrow is critically important to setting the framework of moving forward. My stake in education is personal. I'm a product of the public education system. I went to school in the Edgewood Independent School system and I'm sure my mother had no idea when she dropped me off in kindergarten that the Edgewood Independent School district was one of the poorest in the country. But she talked education up so much from the time I was born to the time I was four years old ready to go to school that I thought kindergarten was the most important thing in the whole world. I insisted on getting a full length gown and wearing it to the first day of school. She has all these terrible pictures of me now being the only kid in school wearing this full length gown because the way she talked about school it was such a big important thing in my life I wanted to be dressed up for it. So I can't tell you how important educators were in my life. I was the first in my family to ever go to college. There was no one in my family who I ever knew had ever gone to college. All through school through high school the only people I ever knew that had ever gone to college were my teachers. And so when you talk about investments in our kids you guys are on the front line and your teachers are on the front line. I wouldn't be where I am today if it hadn't been for Miss Batita in the first grade who pulled me aside and said you're gonna be a great author someday because you're a really good writer and I thought I'm gonna be a great author one day. And so sometimes if I was acting up or getting distracted or staring out the window Miss Batita would look over at me and she'd nod and I'd think oh I'd better sit up straight because I'm gonna be a great author one day. And so I didn't become a great author. I'm a trial lawyer and I'm proud of what I do. But ironically I ran into a schoolmate of mine several years after high school and he says oh do you remember Miss Batita yes we love Miss Batita and he goes you know she always told me I was gonna grow up to be a great author one day. And he went on to college. And so the lesson is sometimes it's a personal investment in those kids and so what you're doing here today is so critically important. Thank you for what you do every day and thank you for your focus the next two days. Good luck. Miss Batita she knew that one good line could get you a long way. Before I go any further and introduce our next guest one thing I do I remissed if I didn't and I didn't do this and I apologize is to actually announce the school districts that are here because you really are the ones here doing the work. I mean the rest of us are here to augment and to provide support to you and help pull some of the things together. And so I wanna make sure I'm gonna introduce individually before the presentations East School District but I do wanna recognize the teams and so we have the Harleville Independent School District is here if they could raise your hand. They were here early. And then we also have the Southwest Independent School District believe it's here the San Antonio Independent School District and then the Northside Independent School District and again I wanted to make sure that I didn't say that at the beginning but as I was sitting there thinking about it I mean you are the ones who are doing the work and it's a tremendous giving of your time for this initiative but also you work on this every day and so to come to this event over the next two days and say hey how do we get better how do we find some shared objective shared measurement across our school districts says a lot to your commitment and I don't want to undervalue that and how much that means to us especially to me as I move forward in this project. So thank you a couple of other housekeeping that I didn't mention we if you're not familiar with Cafe College it is how many of you how many of you is this your first time at Cafe College raise your hand. Okay awesome so most people have been here so if you've never been here though if you've never been here if you step out this door and you take a left right and then a quick left there's a ladies men's and ladies room so you have to take care of that as much as you can do there and then we do have some meet rooms in the back that we will use to facilitate the dialogue a little bit later. But before that let's move on to our next session. We have I want to introduce our next presenter who's going to kind of help set the table around some data regarding the city of San Antonio and this essay 2020 go that we have and that person is Jorge Elizondo. Jorge heads the research department at HEB and he brings a strong background to data analysis. He's a South San and Yale graduate and has a passion for improving student outcomes and in addition to the data he's leading for essay 2020 he sits on the Generation Texas San Antonio board. So he will now come up and provide some groundwork for us and help us understand this very ambitious goal that we have here in San Antonio and how we're going to work towards it. So Jorge.