 The Cosponsors of the Institute are IDRA's new Texas Education Cafe funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and our EAC South Equity Center. Los co-patrocinadores del Instituto son el nuevo proyecto apoyado por la Fundación W. K. Kellogg y nuestro proyecto federal, EAC-SU. The Texas Education Cafe Network is expanded to inform public education policies and practices related to the implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. From successful development of comunitarios in the lower near under valley of South Texas, we are now expanding the model to other parts of the state. Nuestra educación café de Texas será expandido para informar la política y práctica de la educación pública relacionada con la implementación del acta todo alumno tiene éxito. Después del desarrollo comunitario exitoso que tuvimos en el valle del río grande en el sur de Texas, estamos ahora expandiendo el modelo a otras partes del estado. The theme for overall theme of the conference is the ESSA, the Family Engagement and Every Student Succeeds Act. El tema de hoy, durante el día, es el acta a cada estudiante tiene éxito. That doesn't mean that our concurrent sessions all are going to focus on that. But we want you to be thinking about that and to see what is relevant to you. Queremos que piensen durante las sesiones que de lo que se está enseñando hoy conecta con eso y ahorita vamos a tener una actividad muy breve para introducir exacta y cuando durante la comida va a seguir la conversación. We are going to have some activities now, very briefly, to introduce some questions about our new Title I, our federal program. And during lunch we will continue the conversation. A little bit about social media, algo sobre la media social. After today we'll be inviting all of you to participate in our online community where the conversations can continue and be amplified. Watch out for an email next week from IDRA inviting you to our online platform called Equity Connection. And all of you are going to be able to connect to that. Where you will be able to access all the videos, documents and presentations from today's event. And we encourage you to pick up the conversation with each other by asking and responding to questions in the Equity Connection forums for la semana. Después de hoy invitaremos a todos a participar en nuestra comunidad en línea mediante el internet donde las conversaciones pueden continuar y amplificarse. Estén al tanto para recibir un correo electrónico sobre la semana que viene de IDRA invitándolos a nuestra plataforma en línea llamada Equity Connection. Donde podrán acceder a todos los videos, documentos y presentaciones del evento de hoy y les animamos a seguir la conversación con los demás haciendo preguntas o respondiendo las preguntas presentadas en el Foto Equity Connection para la semana del niño. We'd love to let, for you to let people know you're here through social media. So if you have your smartphones and you're connected through Twitter or Facebook o la mamá de Facebook, you know. Share some pictures and share your thoughts, interesting things you learn and questions you have on Twitter or Facebook. Please use the hashtags, hashtag FAM engage and hashtag IDRAEDU. And be sure to follow IDRA on Facebook and Twitter. Y esta información está en el programa también. The links are in your program. Nos encantaría que les mandaran a la gente a través de las redes sociales que ustedes están aquí. Compartan algunas fotos y compartan sus pensamientos. Cosas interesantes que están aprendiendo y preguntas que tengan en Twitter o cualquier otra conexión que tengan. Teníamos las etiquetas, hashtags, FAM engage, IDRAEDU. Y asegúrese que de seguir IDRA en Facebook y Twitter. Los enlaces para sostener el programa. Today at noon, al mediodía, vamos a tomar fotos de grupos o si no se tienen que ir rápidamente en el Jardines, vamos a tomar un grupo, fotografías de grupos o individuales si quieren, para un record de hoy. Y esas fotografías también van a estar en línea que ustedes las pueden bajar después. So we'll post group pictures, we'll take the pictures during lunch, and that will be posted online for you. And also our viewing audience because we are having live streaming, so this is going out to whoever is whether in Rhode Island or the valley looking at us. They will also be able to access pictures and records and interviews that we're going to be doing. Vamos al tema de hoy. En sus mesas tienen, we left these on your tables. It's called Esa Action Pack. And then there's a longer sheet that has some questions that they're trying to understand. So we're going to want you to think about, if you don't already know something about it, the new title one. El programa título uno es el dinero federal que le vienen las escuelas para suplementar lo que ya tienen de recursos. It is federal money to supplement what schools are already doing, but especially for families who are economically disadvantaged. Es para familias pobres. El que estuvo anteriormente era no charlotte behind. NCLB ahora es esa. Okay? And so I want you to start thinking. Vean, es la hoja y puede tomar notas durante el día, tome notas porque vamos a tener una conversación al mediodía aquí. Temas sobre lo federal, estatal y local. Federal money comes to the state and through the state to the local. Some federal money comes straight to the local. ¿Qué piensan de eso? ¿Cómo se debe usar ese dinero? ¿Qué es lo que ustedes necesitan saber? There's a sheet. There's a handout in your bag that is from the commissioner of education in Texas. Every state was supposed to submit a plan. Cada Estado tenía que mandar un plan al gobierno federal. Some already sent it last month. Otros como Texas no lo van a mandar hasta agosto. It's due in, I think, August or September. The community can have recommendations. The challenge is that Monday may the first is the last day that they're accepting feedback from the community. So if some of you are so inspired today o quieren, pueden mandar información al Estado sobre este acto y lo que ustedes les interesa. In other words, you can still send information to the state. But what's very important is that your voice be there. Que ustedes, si se pasó el día o el tiempo como quieran, manden sus opiniones de que quieren para sus escuelas, what do you want for your schools and how this federal money is used in your schools. Van a hay preguntas sobre que criterios se debe usar? What are some non-academic and school quality indicators? Hay maneras de medir una escuela con los cursos académicos. In other words, grades from tests is one way to measure. Que otras maneras se debe de medir si está una escuela haciendo buen trabajo. What other non-academic measures should there be to show that a school is doing well? How should schools be helped? Como deben de intervenir los recursos que existen estatales y federales para mejorar las escuelas? Y how should you, how should families participate? Como deben de participar las familias? These are big questions and you have a task. I want you to take your time and look at this. Es bueno a cinco minutos que lo lean y platiquen en la mesa. I'm gonna give you five minutes to look at those questions just so you don't have to come out with the answers. Just look at the questions and think about throughout the day what your answers would be or what your recommendations during lunch, then we will talk about this. Vamos a hablar de esto durante la comida. Eso les da tiempo para digerir la información. Jorge, yo me llamo Aurelio Montemayor, si me lo puedo presentar. Conocen todos Aurelio Montemayor? Un plazo para Aurelio. No, no. Yo soy Héctor Bojorques, I'm Héctor Bojorques. I'd like to just briefly mention a couple of things. How many of you remember No Child Left Behind? Okay, ahora se llama ESSA. Now it's called ESSA. Every student succeeds that. And there are many, there are several changes and what we tried to put in these sheets are some of the major changes. And the major changes being about accountability, accountability, responsibility of the schools that they have to find the class of changes. If you read it, I don't know, I want you all to read what it says about accountability so you know what the biggest changes in accountability are. The other changes are in what kind of criteria. Se acuerdan que antes en COB, todo era el examen. Everything was about the test in NCOB. And what was our test, do you remember? TAS, TAX, y ahorita cuáles? STAR, in Texas. There's gonna be some changes now about the sort of things that are gonna be held with what kind of accountability, what criteria are gonna be an accountability. Va a ver unos cambios. Ahora, según, no solamente va a ser los exámenes, van a ver otras cosas que se van a poder tomar a cuenta de eso. So there'll be some, there's some changes and they're right here, some of those changes. And we tried to put them as simply and as briefly for you because this was written by legislators in Washington and it was a huge document so we put it into something short that we can understand. Also, if a school is doing poorly, si una escuela está haciendo mal, according to that criteria, va a haber dinero que se puede dar a esas escuelas para que puedan ayudarles. So if there are schools that are doing poorly, according to what those criteria changes, there'll be a criteria R, there'll be intervention strategy monies and that there's some information there about that as well. And the last piece about community and family engagement is this is supposed to be one of the biggest changes from NCOB to ESSA. Esto es uno de los cambios más grandes de NCOB a ESSA. Communities and parents are supposed to have a lot of input into almost every aspect of what's going on from planning in early childhood, from planning about the plans themselves, planning about what indicators school districts are gonna use to hold themselves accountable. Según esta legislación, todos los padres tienen, van a tener una voz la contabilidad y el criterio que se va a usar y todos vamos a tener una voz según la comunidad de los padres. Esa es el cambio más grande. Esto es de lo que se trata aquí. Queremos que tomen estos minutos ahorita. Nadie, no más, ya, ya. Ya se acabaron los minutos porque hablé mucho. It's this. Okay, so that's the information we're gonna give you. So if you have time, continue. Do you think it is that? Okay, you're gonna have four hours to think about that. Everybody got a bag, right? Let me go through the bag. What's in it? Just so you know. We got from the state a bilingual calendar that's almost over, but it's still 217. It's got children's stickers in it, really nice children's art. Then we have six policies that lead to higher dropout rates. Something for fair test, fact sheet for families on testing on young children. That one, we have it bilingual. Here is the changes that the commissioner is requesting and that we're saying you have to make first to get feedback on. May 1st, Monday. First Monday. El lunes. El lunes. So si antes de irse hoy pueden mandar información es mejor. Also you have something called mesa comunitaria one year later. Our third session here will focus on that one. We have the new education cafe brochure. Foros de acción comunitaria en prolexcelencia. To take notes in, you have one sheet for every session. This one is for right now and at the end for lunch and then for the three sessions. You're gonna be able to attend three sessions. So I'm gonna go through the program very quickly. If there's a program, does everybody have the program? Session A, the first round. All sessions are 50. Menesto de asesinos son 50 minutos. The first round. Room 106, grandparents raising grandchildren, okay, en el 106, el 406 está más allá de los baños. You go, if you're going to the restroom, you go to the end of the hall and there signage el 106. Communities United for Education, Coupe, Comunidades Unidas para Educación is time and hall. Time and hall es el único cuarto que no está en este edificio. It's the only room that's not in this building. You go out the double doors and then you go to a building, you enter the door and you go in. The stairs that go directly are not working well, so you have to go around. There were people that guide you. Allí va a estar Coupe. In room 101, family supporting public for money schools, that's this room. As soon as I stop talking, you're gonna go to your session, they're gonna put two walls up. Aquí van a ser tres cuartos. 100, 101 y 102, okay. So the ladies presenting on family supporting public money for public schools are here. They will be presenting here. It's gonna be live streamed to whoever is connected to us nationally, but also recorded for future reverence. In room 100, going to the principal's office, a principal, a parent, and somebody from the Presa Community Center, I hope they're here, will be presenting in this room over here. And room 102, graduation requirements are parted. El profesor Héctor Bojorquez is gonna be presenting over here. That's the first round. So piensen la, ¿A quién quiere y dónde? Session B, there's 10 minutes between sessions. There are 10 minutos entre las sesiones. Involúcrate, involve yourself. Un grupo de Richardson que viajaron seis horas para estar aquí, van a seguir a las abuelitas. Entonces, in time and hall, Alamo Heights listening tours. Es un equipo que fue y platicó con las familias y van a platicar ¿Qué dijeron las familias? Es muy interesante porque ese distrito es uno que tiene muchos recursos y estas familias tuvieron mucho que decir, so es muy importante que puedan escuchar. So they're gonna be talking about visits, tours they did to families, families of English learners, and they had very interesting information. In this room, we're gonna have the IDRA Coca-Cola Value Youth Program, a teacher, two tutors, and their parents are gonna be presenting here. Again, live streamed in terms of a program where you take middle school and high school students and make them tutors of little ones. Very effective and it's gonna be in this room, live streamed. In room 100, we have a lady that joins us from Gwinnett, Georgia. It's a group called Gwinnett Parent Coalition to Dismantle the School to Prison Pipeline. Very, very interesting, she's joining us from Georgia because it's one of the states that our EX South serves and we wanna make connections with other community groups that are trying to have excellent public schools for all children and she was the organizer for that effort and she's with us and she's gonna be presenting in room 100. And then in 102, we're gonna have the Mexican American Unity Council, Malk Escalada College Prep Program and they're gonna have some recipients of the service presenting too. That's round two. Session three at 1130, 1130 Central Standard Time. You have investing in education, fuels the economy. Mr. Django Salis, who's been very active in the Hispanic Chamber, he's a successful businessman. He headed a group, excuse me, that came out with a publication a few months ago called Investing in Education, Fuels the Economy, Invertir la Educación Mejora la Economía. No sabe quién va a ir, me dijo, si tengo no más cinco, está bien, pero si les interesa la conexión entre la educación y la economía, así están en esa sesión. Es muy interesante, en el room 406. And time and haul, sigue pre-K for essay, cultivating relationship and growing gardens. El cultivo de relaciones y los jardines. Cómo están usando los jardines para conectar con familias y los niños y comida saludable en los centros of the Head Start, the early childhood. Aquí va a estar un grupo. La tercera sesión aquí va a estar muy interesante porque personas que están a 200 mías de aquí van a co-presentar. Mike Seaford from the Equal Voice Network is gonna be here and then some families in South Texas, in South Alamo, Texas, close to the border, are gonna be co-presenting about their work. It's the Equal Voice Education Work Group and they're the ones that started the PTA Comunitarios. They're the ones that've been carrying out our family leadership program in the Valley for nine years now and they're gonna be reporting not just on the Comunitarios, but how a network of families are working to change schools in the Valley for those, especially those in the Colonias, the other incorporated communities. So va a estar muy interesante eso en este cuarto. Esa, este, el acta de que estaba hablando va a haber una sesión específicamente. There's gonna be a session specifically on esa and that's going to be in Room 100 and then the evolution of the parent volunteer, un proyecto donde un padre fue de voluntario hacer parte del staff. So esas son las sesiones. Por favor, este, attend the sessions and we'll see you here at noon. So ya podemos cerrar las paredes. And presenters. Okay, this audio's good. That's pretty crazy. Hang in there for a second. Okay, so this is good. This audio's good. All right, so she's monitoring the audio on here. I mean, you can see it on the green, but she's monitoring it with the purple to make sure that's good. She's adjusted it. She's turned down the house over here so that it's not, so that the audio's not coming through. For sake. Oh, okay, I'll be there. Testing, testing. Of course you can't show this anyway, so. We're going, we're the break between the sessions. We have five simultaneous sessions going on and we'll have a total of 15 today. And of course they have to rearrange the physical layout to have the room set up. One of the important things is, with the new title one, we made it the theme because we're concerned that as the federal gave states more independence and states are giving like Texas school districts more independence, if the children we're most concerned about will be left behind because there will be less and less monitoring of how well, you know, students are doing. We're really concerned that we want these families to be able to speak to that in terms of what their concerns are about their children, especially those that come from poor neighborhoods, those that are children of color. The ones that generally we're concerned about that schools might not be doing as well as they should be. And so that's one of the overall themes of our conference. Now up. Yes. And we had expected about 200, we're almost at 300, you know, so we're way beyond capacity. It's never been a large conference so we're very excited about it and the array of presenters that we have. In fact, this session is getting ready to start. Good morning, everyone. My name's Jesusita Rios. It is an honor for me to be here in front of you. Buenos dias a todos. Mi nombre es Jesusita Rios. Es un honor estar presente a ustedes. Today we are speaking about public monies for public schools, specifically the vouchers. Vouchers take away money and don't help students. As you can see, there have been many people that have also protested against vouchers. Right now what we're going to do is going to present information so that you can make an informed decision on where you stand on vouchers. Hoy lo que vamos a hacer es vamos a presentar información importante para ustedes para que ustedes puedan hacer una decisión clara acerca de los vales y lo que representan. Como ha habido mucha gente, hay gente que protesta también que los vales quitan dinero de las escuelas públicas. Por ejemplo, tenemos escuelas públicas que sirven a todos los niños. No tiene que ver la raza, la deshabilidad, no tiene que ver nada de eso, pero siempre sirven a todos. No le dicen a nadie que no puede estar ahí. Eso sí, que tienen zonas de dirección donde ustedes viven. Esas son escuelas públicas. There are public schools that serve every student whether they are disabled, whether they are bilingual, whether they are of any race. So those students come to a public school, they are not turned away unless they are not in the geographical neighborhood or in their address zone. There are also schools that are public charters. Now public charters go by a lottery system. Sometimes they go ahead and they look at, okay, let's take a lottery. Let's choose these students so they can come into our system. They usually go ahead, they look, they plant themselves in disadvantaged areas. If you can look at that, you'll be able to see that. And they do sometimes go ahead and also, well they also receive public monies, okay? They are run by corporate corporations or companies or communities and they do have a different board of directors. Okay, where is that public school? That is one of the things that they have a local board of directors. So, están localizados la mesa directiva y en la escuela pública, okay? Vamos a la siguiente. One person, Thomas Ratley, who is a Republican and a state board of education went ahead and of course, when they were distributing monies, because monies have to be distributed, wanted to see the results. Charters had said that they could do and do a better education than public schools with less money. So, one of the things was, let's look at the results and see some comparisons. So, this is public information. You can go to the TEA website and you can see this. You can compare the charters to the public schools. There is a whole list of them on the TEA website. Puede ir a la red de TEA y ahí esta esta información. Y puede a usted también hacer comparaciones sobre las escuelas charters y las escuelas públicas. Okay, específicamente, ahora. Prepared the drop, let's start with a dropout and graduation rate. How many students are tested at the public school and how many students are tested at the charter school for entrance or admission into a university that encompasses a lot of the ACT than SAT? So, we had the dark green is the charter. On the first one, we have 44% of the students tested at a charter school. At the public school, they tested 64% as you can look at those bar graphs. Okay, so let's now go to the graduation rate. At five years' graduation, you can see, again, the public school having 92% that graduated compared to the 70% that graduated in a charter school. And then you go to the four years and the four years, again, the public school is in the 90s and the charter school is in the 60s, which is 60%, 60.6%. The last one is a dropout rate, which is very important. Dropout rate at the public school was 1.5. Well, at the charter school, it was 5.5. These are the comparisons that Thomas Redliffe did, and this was a study in 2015. Este estudio fue en 2015, por él era una persona de la mesa directiva del estado de Texas. He was one of the persons from the state board of education. Sino que entonces encontró que las escuelas públicas hicieron mucho más mejoramiento que las escuelas charters. Como pueden ver en la barra, si comparan todo, el verde oscuro es el charter y la escuela pública está más esteligera en verde. Entonces pueden ver que en la universidad, para dar los exámenes, ellos compararon 44% al 60%. Luego, en la graduación de cinco años, las escuelas públicas fueron el 92% al 70%. Y en las escuelas de cuatro años, cuatro años podían graduar, tomaron cuatro años nada más, fueron 91% los que graduaron en la escuela pública al 60% en una charter. Y luego la casa de abandono, que son las personas que se salen de la escuela antes de tiempo, esas personas en una charter fueron el 5.5 y en la escuela pública fue nada más un por ciento. Hacemos el start. ¿Cuántos ustedes no han oído algo de start? Todos. Start is a very important test and the teachers just stress and everybody goes crazy at that time. En ese tiempo, cuando están dando los exámenes, todos se aloquecen, ¿verdad? Porque es un examen muy rígido y algo que necesitan pasar. They need to pass this test. Well, on the performance of start, we can see that the charter school had equal amount of passing for reading and writing with a public school. Los dos hicieron igual en el start, en la escritura y en la lectura. En estudios sociales, matemática y ciencia, ellos pasaron tres de esos cinco exámenes sobrepasaron en la escuela pública. So, three out of five of those tests, they surpassed, which was the math, the science and the social study. They surpassed that. They were equal on the reading and writing as far as public and charter, but public schools surpassed the amount of students passing those three tests. Okay? So, los datos en la investigación, no sostienen que los valores, when they give out vouchers, they're taking away some of that money from the public schools and giving it to vouchers also to pay for the vouchers for that charter school, okay? There are differences in them. They do not, as the data just said, they do not show a lot of improvement or surpassing. Aunque les quita dinero a la escuela pública para también repartirles a las escuelas charters, no están enseñando mejoramiento. Con los vales, los estudiantes no demuestran beneficios. So, with the vouchers, the students show no added benefit. So, we have seen that in the data. Also, when you look at the staff of a public school, you have teacher consistency, they're there. They last there maybe two, three years, maybe more, but when it comes to a charter school, one, because the pay is less, two, because there is no real big contract or anything, then that's when they have a teacher turnover. The civil rights project also find that if you look at it where they're placed, they racially go ahead and segregate them in different places, and they put them in a place where you have a lot of low economic people. Así que miran que tienen muchos niños con desventajas cuando ponen los charters en cierto lugar, okay? También tienen requisitos para los padres. ¿Cuáles riesgos son? ¿Cuáles son los riesgos ahora que les he dicho un poco de ellos? Es que están usando el dinero que ustedes pagan en los impuestos, en las tasaciones, por el valor de su casa, para escuelas públicas que ha sido todo el tiempo para eso, para repartir a los vales. They are going ahead and taking those public monies that were distant and have always been for public schools in order to go ahead and divide it up into charter schools, which have, again, the data says no benefits. Okay, les dejo con esto. Un país que destruye la escuela pública no lo hace nunca por dinero, porque falta recursos, su costo sea excesivo. Un país que desmonta la educación, los artes o las culturas, está ya gobernada por aquellos que solo tienen algo que perder con la difusión del saber. Así que esto es algo para que ustedes piensen y sepan la información dentro de las cosas que hacen. También los charters tienen mucha más flexibilidad. Así que gracias y la persona que sigue es Diana Herrera. You see an upside down school. The entire school is upside down like a piggy bank and money is being taken out of it. Our public schools are being flipped over like a piggy bank. On March the 16th, at Penitas el mes pasado, our United States Congress in Washington D.C. released their budget proposal for the next school year 2018-2019. The federal education programs will be slashed across the board. They want to expand private school voucher programs. They will need $1.4 billion for this year. The voucher, if the voucher program passes, taxpayers will pay $20 billion every year. I'm going to be throwing a lot of numbers at you, a lot of numbers and it but by case here, la razón que lo estoy haciendo es para que nosotros veamos la cantidad de dinero que nos están sacando de las escuelas públicas para ponerlas en las escuelas privadas. I went to Edgewood High School. Yo de niña, de estudiante, yo fui a la escuela de Edgewood. Mama también, my husband, our children all went to Edgewood. I was a teacher in Edgewood for 30 years. Por 30 años fui maestra en el distinto escolar de Edgewood. Así es de lo que les voy a hablar ahorita. Yo lo viví, ahí estaba yo. In 1997, Edgewood had no law performing schools and this is according to the state test, the state mandated test. Two of our schools were recognized and we had zero failing schools. Not one of our schools was failing, pero el siguiente año entró Dr. James R. Lininger and he came with the children's education opportunity. This was 10 years por 10 años, él ofreció 5 millones de dólares por los 10 años equaling $50 million. The vouchers range from $2,000 to $4,700 per year for the child to go to a private school of their choice. That meant that we were losing students, of course we were losing students, but we were also losing monies. More than 800 of our Edgewood children left. They used a $4,000 voucher, they called it a scholarship and they went to private schools and they went to our parochial, las escuelas católicas también, que estaban ahí en Edgewood. Edgewood lost $5,800 for every child that left. So the loss for Edgewood was $4,800,000 that we lost. Now, students did come back. Muchos de nuestros niños regresaron al distrito escolar de Edgewood, but not the money, the money had been lost. You've already heard that we get monies from local, state, and federal. But in my classroom, aquí el artículo se llama breaking down the school budgets. But in our school districts, we have to pay for teachers, for the teachers' aids, for the peras. There's an additional expense if it is a specialized staff member. Is it a bilingual teacher, special ed, dyslexia? Is it the marching band teacher? Is it a reading specialist? School classrooms, every classroom has an expense. We still have to pay for electricity. We still have to pay for books, material, water, cafeteria, office staff, custodial staff. Is it an AP class that costs more? The cost of a chemistry classroom, that's costlier. Food services, computers, maintenance, the air, the heat, the grounds, los que cortan las yardas en las escuelas, transportation, lo que cuesta nomás, just the bus system, just the transportation, the police, the coaches, the athletics, the sports, the fields, the stadium, my goodness, look at the amount of money that a school district spends. And if you have a robotics class, that's even more expensive. Dos artículos que escogir. El primero de arriba dice que esto pasó en 2016. More than 600 school districts do suit the state. The state of Texas, hablando de los distritos en el estado de Texas, they sued it because the Texas legislators in Austin cut $5.4 billion of our public education money in 2011. Now, in 2013, they went ahead and they gave us, replaced $2 million, they gave us the $3.4 billion, but we were still short $2 million. So, aunque ellos decidieron en el año de 2013, darnos $3.4 billion, they had already cut $2 million. So, we were not getting money for inflation, the cost of living, and the school districts continue to be detrimental to our public schools who were still having problems gathering or catching up with what they cut in 2011. The next article, Texas has had an average increase of 83,000 students per year over the last four years. Now, this was in 2012, we're talking about 2012 though, but every year, 83,000 students were coming in. What happened with the budget cuts? 10,000 teaching positions had to be eliminated. Cortaron 10,000 maestros, profesores de nuestras salones. About a third of the districts had to dip into their emergency fund. Every school district has an emergency money just in case we never know what's gonna happen, but they had to dip into that emergency fund to make up for the cuts that they had done. How much each state spends per child? Este artículo solamente habla de eso. Cada estado y te ponen cada estado así en orden. Quien gastó más, quien gastó menos, hasta mero abajo. In 2011, Texas ranked 40th in the per pupil spending. In 2013, we ranked 49th, and in 2014, we ranked 42nd, lastima. Texas, as wealthy as we are, as big as we are, and our public schools are way at the very bottom of the United States of America in spending in what they want to spend to educate our children. This article talks about sizing up the Texas budget. This was in 2014, 2015. I already talked to you about the cuts that they had made in 2011. Well, in 2008, Texas spent $10,222 per student, cada estudiante. Para cada estudiante, el estado de Texas either is federal or state or local bunnies, but they spent $10,000 per student. But in 2015, the budget dropped to 9,609. So they've cut the budget on how much we spent per child. We lost $611 per child. Now, if I look at a classroom, un salón, quiero de niños, 30 estudiantes por salón, that means that we lost $18,330 per classroom. The cuts for each classroom continues. In 2011, our state legislators in Austin, de vuelta aquí in Austin, cut over $208 million in state grant money, so we would not extend our half-day pre-K program to a full day. Sabemos otros y esos todos lo saben. Si comenzamos a educar nuestros niños desde chiquititos, pequeñitos, pues mejor, hacen mejor, they accomplish more. But our Texas legislators did not want to pay for a full day pre-K program. So once again, Austin, Texas legislators, cut $2.8 million from our pre-kinder program. At the federal level, y esto les voy a hablar de esto porque eso, our public school system accepts all children. It doesn't matter. Public schools, because we get public funding, we cannot turn a child down. So if a child comes to us y el niño no puede comer solito, el niño no puede caminar, el niño no puede hablar, el niño necesita alguien totalmente todo el día para con ellos, but we still educate them. Ahí los tenemos en nuestras escuelas. At the federal level, our NDC, they reduce the idea funding. Idea funding, allá lo tengo mero arriba. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is idea. Y este es dinero que se lo dan a nuestros niños ages six through 21, ages three to five. This is idea. They cut almost, y fíjense en esto, 34 million for the pre-school programs of children with disabilities. Not the classrooms. This is our special needs children. Los que necesitan más de nosotros cortaron $34 million. And this es para los dinitos de tres a cinco años. And they cut over one billion. Now this is Washington, D.C. Cut over one billion for our special ed students in ages six through 21. I know this is a lot, a lot of information, but I have to prove a point that as costly as it is to run a school, as costly as it is to educate a child, the cuts are continuing. And we see that even the budget for next year at the national level is gonna be greater again. I thank you so much, thank you. Bueno, pues yo me voy a bajar para bajito ahorita para parte de la presentación. Mr. Montemayor, if I go down and use that mic and getting front will it not interrupt? Okay, all right, sir. Okay, primeramente quisiera decirles que me siento muy afortunada de estar aquí con 12 educadoras retiradas, pero que las tres hemos educado por más de 50 años juntas. Y les do las gracias porque compartieron su tiempo en estar aquí para esta presentación. Básicamente, mi nombre primeramente es Belma Ibarra, retirada como educadora últimamente del distrito escolar de Haalandale y les quiero dar la bienvenida a mis amigas de Haalandale que están aquí con nosotros. Okay, el propósito por cual estamos aquí con ustedes como padres. Primeramente, esperamos que de este grupo van a salir líderes que nos van a ayudar a ir a dar y presentar la palabra de nuestra comunidad ahí en Austin, cuando tratan de hacernos las cosas que les han presentado aquí, Jesusita y Diana. Cada año ustedes entregan su dinero de taxas, ¿verdad? A un banco del Estado. Ahí entra todo este dinero para las escuelas públicas y aquí está el banco y tiene tanto dinero. Como les acaban de explicar durante los últimos 8, 10 años se han sacado los millones y billones de dólares de las escuelas públicas. Nosotros apoyamos buena educación para los niños en cualquier escuela, pero nuestra constitución estatal nos dice que el dinero que se recoge de impuestos locales, estatales, son para las escuelas públicas. So nosotros queremos que los niños hagan bien si es charo, religiosa, pero la ley es que es esos dineros, esas taxes que ustedes pagan, van a este banco y de allí sacan el Estado. Entonces con este concepto de los vouchers, hay tres modos sobre los años en cómo lo han hecho, cómo han hecho este experimento, Estados en los, aquí en los Estados Unidos, permitan. OK, a ver cómo me sale esto. Aquí es el banco, aquí es el dinero que hay verdad de las taxas. Entonces si los líderes hay en Austin aprueban la ley de que sí pueden entrar a ese banco de las taxas públicas y repartirlas a las privadas o religiosas, entonces lo primero hay un modo en que lo hacen muchos estados. Hay muchos estados que dicen OK, estas son las tres escuelas privadas aquí, Academy One, Academy Two, Academy Three, y van a darles vouchers, verdad, a 300 niños, por ejemplo, o 3,000 niños. Entonces esos niños, como les dijeron más temprano, alguna vez son seleccionados. Tienes que aplicar y que estoy lo otro, verdad. Pero de ese banco, verdad, les van a dar un voucher y le van a decir no se lo van a dar al padre, sino que se lo van a dar esos dineros, aquí van a ir para las private schools, OK, de 3,000, de 500 dólares, de 10,000 dólares, depende. Entonces esas escuelas reciben ese dinero público, ya se fue para la private school. Y esas criaturas que van a ir allí tienen que pagar la diferencia en la cota. Y si no tienen la diferencia, por ejemplo, you want to go to St. Mary's Hall, que como 13,000, 14,000 al año. Entonces el Estado le dio a la escuela un cheque de 3,000 para su hijo o hija. Entonces ustedes como padres tienen que pagar la diferencia. El puto aquí es que estos experimentos throughout our country, this experiment about your schools throughout our country has led to the fact that many children that are minorities and that are of low income cannot afford that difference, so who winds up benefiting? It's going to be the people that are better off and that can afford the difference. That's one way that vouchers are paid. They go straight to the schools for ads, number of children all over the state, OK? And the young ladies here already talked to you all about what the performance in academic achievement is looking like after 8, 10, 12, in some instances 15 years about your money going to private schools, OK, or to charter schools. Otro modo en que el Estado si acaso pasaran las leyes gracias a Dios lo han pasado por personas líderes como David y Nojosa, Selena, muchos grupos que han ido por años y a decirles no nos quiten más dinero de aquí. As it is, we have enough challenges in our public schools. We need to do better. We need to be more accountable. We better do a much better job or else we are going to be under the gun. But don't take away our limited resources. Another way that the state of Texas, and in fact today, I think they are proposing educational savings accounts which are just like vouchers. En los educational savings account aquí entran otra vez al banco, ¿verdad? Boom. Y le dicen al padre, mira, aquí le vamos a dar un cheque de $5,000, y a usted le vamos a dar otro de $5,000. ¿De dónde salió ese dinero? From our part of public school money. Then those parents can take that check for $5,500, $10,000, and they can go shopping. OK, yo quiero mandar a mi hijo para tutoriales en matemática aquí con esta escuelita privada. Yo voy a mandar a mi hijo para lecciones en violín, porque eso ha pasado en otros estados. Y voy a pagarle a este tutor, ¿verdad? Entonces, you go shopping with the check, with your voucher. That's called an education savings account. And that's what happens. But it comes out of this pot. There have been major issues with those education savings accounts in other states. Many of them have wound up in court. And those who go and fight, and I know you all are going to help us, I hope we're going to get your signing list, and we're going to ask you to please help us when people go and talk to the legislature, because there are many ways that these education saving accounts checks. For example, in one state, there was a parent that got the $5,000 check, went and purchased $5,000 worth of beautiful books and recorders, ¿sí que cuánto, verdad? And then they went back and got a reimbursement for private use of that money. The issue here is it's coming from the same pot, and we want to keep our part of money. And then the last one of the other ways that hurts our public schools is when a company, let's say I am the red cola soda company, OK? And I want to get a tax credit. I have to pay $5 million to the state of Texas this year. I can get a tax credit as a company. Me pueden dar un crédito si yo voy a donar eso $5,000 que yo iba a pagar en el estado para este banco, right? We go back to the pot. Those $5 million in taxes would have gone to that pot in state taxes. But if our leaders in Austin approve what they've been proposing, I as a company owner would get a $5 million credit, and I would give it to this company that's going to run and identify children all over the state that can go to these voucher schools. So I'm off the hook with $5 million. The pot of money here for the state just lost $5 million. And instead, my money, my tax money, is going to go to give you $1,000, give you $5,000, or $10,000, or whatever the state, OK? So those are the three ways that vouchers can be done. Some states have done things differently. Right now, there are about under 200,000 children in this country that are getting their education financed through vouchers. And we have vouchers now in about, well, 15 states, five of them that have wound up in courts with challenges. And what is important here is that you all remember that academically, like I said earlier, we want children to do well anywhere. We want children to perform well and be happy and have a good life. That's why we send our children to schools for a better life. But the concept of our presentation today is that we want to keep the money that is public and that stays in public schools. Because we have a very difficult job with everything that we have to support, with all the learning that has to happen. So there are a lot of studies. When these ladies come here and tell them that the students are not doing well, you can move on to the other. They are not doing well. There are studies that are part of universities, institutions of very good reputation. They are not studies that have only been done and someone will give their opinion. They are struggling, a little bad, the students who are going to voucher schools, right? That has happened in states like Wisconsin, which is one of the states that has had vouchers much longer. The great leader that we have now at the national level, Mrs. Davos, who appointed President Trump, she ran a program of vouchers in Wisconsin. And there, 41% of schools over the last 12, 15 years that have had vouchers have been closed due to bad management, due to resources that were very low, et cetera, et cetera. So it's easier said than done when we have our leaders in Austin, some of them, not our leaders, thank God. Our leaders in our area have been real good and have stayed together to work against vouchers. But when other leaders go up there, the bottom line is this, the public schools, ladies and gentlemen, are now populated primarily by minority children that are now becoming the majority. And there are some legislators and leaders and owners of very large companies that for any reason are not supporting public schools. They want children to go to other schools. And I'm going to leave you with this thought. When the first voucher schools were instituted here in the United States, it was during the movement of the Civil Rights Movement, que las Cortes dijeron que era mejor que todos los niños nos hicieramos integrate, verdad? Que los niños fueran juntos. Pobres con ricos, blancos con negros, verdad? Y fue entonces cuando este movimiento de charter schools agarró vuelo, como quien dice, porque algunos padres y líderes no querían que hubiera esa mezcla de todos los niños juntos. Entonces con eso, eso es con lo que los encontramos ahorita, that we have to fight for our public schools. We have to fight for our limited money and that they not lose sight that we have a constitution in the state of Texas. And that constitution says public money should go to public schools. You all are great. Thank you for traveling from afar. Please do not forget that we're gonna take the signing sheet and every single one of you that's in here makes a big difference. These bills come up every two years in Austin. This time around, again, it was defeated but it was a very, very big fight and we need people to please come up. No tienes que ver a sido de educadora y que credencial y que estoy que el otro. Ah, ah, lo que importa es cuál es su punto de vista tocante este uso de dinero público para escuelas privadas. Okay, muchas gracias. Yo los bendiga y buena suerte. Okay, question and answer we're gonna take. Jesusita will take the first question and then Diana and then myself. And then hay una evaluación que les encargamos mucho por favor. Okay, first question. Anybody? Anyone? O comentario o algo que quieren que aclaremos. Yes ma'am. Le puedes. Hi there, what is the difference between a charter school and a private school and how many of those have to have the students tested before they actually come into the either charter or private? Between a charter and a private you said, if it's a private religious school, they will test them before they go in and then they will send you a letter if they qualify or not. Now if it's a charter school, they usually test or interview also. It depends on the charter because charters have more flexibility. Okay, una de las cosas que tienen los charters es que tienen más flexibilidad para poder examinar, ¿Dale su examen a los niños? O entrevistarlos. Las escuelas religiosas siempre si dan por la mayoría dan los exámenes antes de que entre. Did they answer your question? She's over here. Private schools take care of their own funding and also that the academies like Brooke and all the other academies they take care of their own funding. So why are they dipping into the San Antonio public schools when they're supposed to take care of their own funding and they have already stated that they do that. Your private schools have always been like that. Por ejemplo, in Edgewood we have St. John Birchman, St. John Bosco and it's always been self-contained ellos se han cuidado de todo, pero we've never put any of our monies. But we have state legislators and U.S. legislators at this moment who want a nationwide voucher program. When that happens then any child, any parent can get voucher money which would be taken out of the public schools and then it would be given. Now, I don't know if Idra will appreciate my political views but little by little I have seen because of the monies that have been taken from the public schools and because the mandates nos ponen los mandatos más y más y los exámenes más difícil, más difícil. Nuestros niños entre más y más, they're failing. So I can, this is Diana, teacher for 38 years, okay? Speaking. I can see where they're trying so hard for my public schools to fail. Why? Because then they will start taking money and giving it to the private schools. Okay, also when the lottery started, you know, the lottery cash fine, they said some of that money was gonna go to the public schools, are they doing it? And why doesn't somebody go and complain in Austin of representatives? Because the decision makers are in Austin. They make the decisions. That can some people go and protest against that? Yes, if you know how many times we've been, I, only Jesus, only Velma, with more desire. Here's Mr. David. Oh my goodness, we already have, I already have, oh my God, 20 years. For 20 years we were in Austin fighting the cause. I would go before the legislators and it's not funny, not funny. And I would say, good afternoon, I'm Diana. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, we know, go ahead, go ahead. And who do we talk here to our district or our senators? It would be our congressman, let the representatives of senators. Okay. Okay, well, thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think that is a magnet school that works with a public school. Okay, sometimes there are magnet schools and that is led with the public school, it's in coordination. Es en coordinación con la escuela pública. Lo más que esas escuelas son magnet, pero pertenecen al distrito, el distrito los cuida y especializan en algo. Por ejemplo, los de doble sendero, the dual language schools, you know, some of the science schools, but they are in that district and they are with a public school. So there is a vast difference between public religious and charter public schools. Okay, so that in itself is confusing. Es confundi, a mucha gente se confunde con ellos. Tenemos un minuto más. We wanna know how can we help? The legislators, you know, just even a couple of weeks ago, just a couple of weeks ago, I sent an email out and I sent through Facebook, contact your legislators, please call them and that's really, and vote and we got to vote, we must vote. They're cutting us, people already moving around, so thank you so very much. Yes, we need the evaluations, please. Those are very, very important to IDRHC. Por favor, las pueden llenar y muchas gracias. Y si nos pueden ayudar, vamos a agarrar la lista de todos ustedes que estamos aquí para planear y organizarnos y para que nos ayuden. Okay, we'll help each other out. Todas voluntarias, pero ahí vamos, okay? Thank you. Thank you, Carlos, for keeping time. Testing, testing, testing, one, two, three, yes. Pizza for us to come over and say a few words. You should be in the middle. What are you doing? Sponsoring. Being interviewed. With a camera very high, I feel very short. I know, right? And this too, like, I don't know, are we singing? No, at least not me. Check, check, check, check. One. I'm going to be asking you some questions, and I'm not on the mic. So you have to repeat the questions, because the mic is in your live, but I'm not. Okay. How's that? Um, and you can see the picture. So, let's start with, we'll tell me your names and we'll go like that. Sorry, my name is Denise Garces. Terry Flores Lopez. And my name is Rita Palmore. Where are you from? San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio, Texas. We're from San Antonio, Texas. We're here, because we presented on how to talk with the principal, going to the principal's office. We presented on the topic of going to the principal's office, how to connect with principals, how to relate to them, how to get issues solved when you have something on campus. Right. Parents are our audience. I think oftentimes people are reluctant to approach the principal because they feel like she's too busy and doesn't have time. But the fact of the matter is that our whole purpose is to connect with our community and to connect with our parents and our students and our teachers and to make sure that they feel safe and they know that we are there to work on their behalf. Right. And I was here as a behalf of a parent, letting parents know that it is to feel safe, not afraid to just ask for an appointment or go into the office. It always seems to help. And I'm an agency who works with principals and parents. And so our goal is to make sure that the parents are equipped with the skills they need to talk with principals and also bridge the gaps of miscommunication, perhaps. Did you give them some examples of some things where people like them greatly? Yes, some examples for me. One of them was exactly what steps to take if a parent feels that the office or the principal is in responding to them, both by campus-wise and by district-wise. We talked about protocols to follow, but more importantly, we talked about just building that relationship early on and always starting every interaction with a positive. What do you mean by that? Well, it's really easy to, when you have a concern or a sense of urgency, to start your conversation with a lot of information that can be a little bit negative. So it's really important to always, just with any interaction that you have, is to make sure that you open it up and set a tone that's going to be respectful and that's going to be reasonable. Right, and help you get through that. Right, right. And to help you kind of find a win-win situation. Well, don't just think of OG was at one of those in the principal, and that's when something's happened, right? Absolutely, usually something has happened that's created that sense of urgency. But what I suggested and was a practice of mine is if you have a relationship that you've already built from the beginning, you don't wait until you have a concern. Have that relationship ongoing so that when a concern does arise, then it's another conversation. And you are able to resolve it in a reasonable manner. Right, so basically. Right, right. Principles are human, so they like to be respected as well. So just talking with them in the hallway, talking with them when you drop off your child, asking how their weekend was, wishing them happy holidays. I mean, all that goes back and forth. It's not just when you have an issue, when you have a concern, because a lot of times you'll get a better reaction from principles. If you already have that built-in relationship that when a concern does come up, they're more prone to respond to you a little bit quicker. They say it has some previous relationships. Right, right, they do. They draw on that previous relationship. And it is May too late? It's never too late. No, it's never too late. It's never too late. Especially when your children are repeating the, are going to the same school, different grade. It's never too late. It's never too late. The door should always be open. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Oh, by the way, did some of this come from personal experience? Absolutely. It all came from personal experience. We're all parents. I was a parent long before I was a principal. Well, I'm retired, yeah, yeah. When you were a parent? I was not intimidated. However, I made sure to contact, you know, who I needed to contact when the principal didn't respond. And I was a parent that at first was intimidated by the office, the principal, and learned with a great relationship. It always helps. And that was kind of our summary for having the session, making sure other parents know that even though it's natural and normal to be intimidated by school staff, teachers, it doesn't have to be that way. And so that's part of our goal with the agency of the partnership is to make sure that we equip parents with the skills to where they're able to approach the principal and it becomes a natural conversation. It becomes a natural conversation. When you became a principal, how did that affect the way that you saw the parents? I think I kind of drew on the experiences I had had, which as a parent, which, right. And unfortunately, some of those experiences were not positive. And so I learned from that. I learned that accessibility is key when you're in charge of a school. You have to make time. You have to be willing to listen. Even if it's not convenient, you need to be accessible. And so that was a huge piece of my way of relating to my community is I'm here. I was one of the first to arrive and one of the last to leave. So thank you. Thank you for having us. And thank you for watching. That's cute. And the school I go to is Robert C. Zamora. Good morning. I'm Anita McBride, represent Zamora Middle School. I'm Ariel Serna. I tutor in third grade. And I go to Salson High School. Good morning. My name's Ruth Morales. And I'm Ariel's mom. So I'm going to be giving you information today. My name's Guadalupe Torres-Saldana. This is my second year as the Coca-Cola Valley Youth Coordinator for Robert C. Zamora Middle School. Throughout when I got the program, I was kind of just assigned it. I was falling told to do it, as they like to tell us. And I was very scared to take over. I really was. It's a program where a lot of these students, they come in, they don't know exactly what they're getting themselves into. And by the end of the year last year, I was so proud of what they had accomplished. Seeing these 10 kids, because most of us had, the middle schools have 10 students. And the high school has 15 students that go through the Coca-Cola Valley Youth Program. Seeing these kids and their growth, not just academically, but personally, is very rewarding. And it's very, just to see it little by little throughout the year. You're going to get some of the video of some of the middle school students that their views on the Coca-Cola Valley Youth Program and how it's impacted them. We're also going to have our students here and their parents give us some input on what they've experienced in the program and how it's benefited them in some way. So we're going to start off with what is the Coca-Cola Valley Youth Program. OK, so what is the Coca-Cola Valley Youth Program? The Coca-Cola Valley Youth Program was created by the Intercultural Development Research Association in 1984. So it's been around for quite a while. The program has kept thousands upon thousands of students in school, young people who have previously considered at-risk students and is internationally recognized cross-age tutoring program with an unusual twist. When they say at-risk, it's just maybe they have the way I put it to my students is you are on a path. You can go the path where you make an impact and change somebody's life. Or you can go the easy route, not the easy route, but the normal route where you kind of just go with the flow. Which one do you want to be? Do you want to be that important person that makes an impact in somebody's life? Usually they're all like, oh, no, I'm not good with that. I'm too dumb to be doing things like that. And that's where we start working on their self-confidence in this program. It's a program that helps our students continue with their education and be a positive model for the students who go to primary schools to help them with their work. A lot of the students want to have an opportunity to be somebody, to somebody. Does that make sense? They want to have that opportunity to be important. Yes, their parents tell them how important they are and they have that background, but they want somebody else to make them feel that special and that's where this program comes in. They want to make an impact. They just need to have that push to do it. They need to feel important. The Coca-Cola Youth Program gives them that sense. If we can go to the next slide, please. So the way the Coca-Cola Value Youth Program works. Identifying middle school and high school students in at-risk situations and enlisting them as tutors for elementary school youngsters who are also struggling in school. So you heard that Daniela tutors, what grade? First grade, and then what grade? Third, so you have those little kids that as soon as you come in, they can be ramp bunches and they come in and that's their tutor for that hour that they are there. They enlist them as tutors for elementary school youngsters who are also struggling in school. Given this role of personal and academic responsibility, the valued youth tutors learn self-discipline and develop self-esteem. Schools shift to the philosophy and practices of valuing students considered at-risk. One of the first assignments that the Coca-Cola Value Youth Program makes us do is they have to list positive things about themselves and negative things about themselves. Guess what list is the list that they fill up first? The negative, right away. I'm all like, okay guys, 10 positive things, 10 negative things. It's always the 10 negative things that they fill out first. It's never been the other way around and that's very sad to me thinking, they're all like, well, what's good about me, Miss? I mean, I'm a bad student or, well, I'm okay as a student, it's never something positive. So this program actually helps them start believing in themselves more. What this program is, is them going and tutoring these little children. And these little children, once they see them come into that room, yeah, you see their faces. Look at their faces. As soon as they walk into that room, those little kids brighten up. They jump up, they wanna go hug their tutor and they're all, Miss, what do I do? What do you mean? Well, when I walk in, they wanna hug me. Okay, and that's bad. And then they're all like, well, am I supposed to hug them back? I mean, what am I supposed to do? And so they ask those questions, which is very, on some students, it's very funny because they're those tough students that walk around like nothing bothers them and they turn into real softies when they're at the elementary school and it's very heartwarming to see. So with this, with the positive impact we can go into the video. This video, I believe, was about 15 years ago that Idra did it for the Coca-Cola Valid Youth Program, but I wanted you to see what they wanted to accomplish through this program. When you ask a student, what does Valid Youth do? And it's gonna take a few minutes to buffer. For you has to do with a sense of respect in terms of the student going to a classroom and tutoring. So a lot of what she's saying is pretty much them going in and having that value. It doesn't sense a respect. And they've learned to respect themselves, not only them and their students. Their students are the ones that start respecting them in a different way. They see them as the adults. They see them as their teacher. Requires something of. So it requires a lot from them to go ahead and go into that classroom and put themselves out there when usually they're not used to putting themselves out there. We can move on from this one. They respect me because no longer am I a junior or Johnny. Okay, we can move on from that one. So in this video, it pretty much explained pretty much what it was at the time, which was 15 years ago. And it's still to this day, still the same reasoning behind it. So the Coca-Cola Valid Youth Program is based on the creed that all students are valuable. None is expendable. Dr. Maria Cucarobeda Montesel, President and CEO of Idra said this. The thing about this is a lot of these students think that just because it's just school, it's not a big deal. They're not that important. By actually showing them this, we're telling them you are important. You're not just gonna slide by. It's not just gonna be like no big deal. You know, just, it's just school. They start really focusing on what the important things are, what they need to work on. So a positive impact. The tutors in the program increase in their academic performance, improve school attendance, and advance to higher education. If we can move on to this video. Hopefully this one does work. This is one of the, some of our middle school students who are speaking about their role in the Coca-Cola Valid Youth Program. So these are some of the students. There's 10 I have in my classroom, 10 students, because that's the max. And these students start giving information on how the elementary school students, how it is for them to go into those classrooms. Some of the videos, this is one of our students, Isaiah. He explains how he was a bad student. Six seventh grade, he was always getting in trouble, disrespecting his teachers. He had no real respect for anything. And because he says his mother wasn't really around, there was no real, I guess, discipline in the household. Seeing his students every day, they go four days out of the week. Seeing his students at the elementary school every day gives them a sense of self-worth. He sees them and they get so excited and he knows he has to be somebody else when he gets to the elementary school. That was one of the things Ms. Daniela mentioned. Once you're there, you could have been having a bad day, a bad morning, maybe something went wrong, you got a bad grade on your test. It's happened to some of our students before, but we walk from our middle school to the elementary school. When we walk over there, they know they have to get rid of all that negativity because they're about to go and make a difference into the students' lives. So Ms. Daniela, would you like to come tell us about? Some of the changes that I've seen in my students on the way over there, I'll be walking and I'll be having a bad day and I just have to forget about everything because when I get in there, I'm afraid that if I still have the bad attitude, they're gonna pick up after me, they're gonna be doing the same thing that I'm doing and I don't wanna have them get in trouble with their teachers, so I'm just trying to go in there and help them and improve with their education and help them have a brighter future ahead of them. The students that I've seen, they've grown a lot of improvements since the first couple of weeks that I've been in there. One of the girls was afraid to be herself when she's in the group, but when she's with me, when I took her alone, she's always outgoing, she can do it, she has no fear, but when she gets into that group, she gets all shy and when she gets an answer wrong, she shuts herself down. And when I've been working for her for the past couple of weeks by herself, she has built the confidence enough to when I work with her at the group, she's confident enough that when she gets the wrong answer, she don't get sad, she thrives on it, she builds off of it, and she's more there to improve and she's been doing that since the first couple of weeks that I've been able to tutor. And the students have been improving and I see the improvement every day that they go in there. There's one of the boys, he couldn't write his name right, and I had him take something home from homework as he writes his name and he writes his S's and all his letters the right way and I've been so proud that he has accomplished that much since I had first started tutoring. And I love these kids, they make my day. I could be having a bad day and as soon as I walk into that classroom, my whole entire week is all bright because I get to see them four days out of the week and it's really exciting to see their faces when I walk into the classroom and just knowing that you're helping them and improving their education, it makes you feel good, feel good about you, feel good about their improvements and it makes you feel so good that they're gonna become something and they're gonna accomplish their dreams one day. Well, tutoring's really fun to go to and when I walk into the room, it's overwhelming. They come to me with a whole bunch of love. It's just, it's an amazing feeling too. See them and then there's this one little girl named Evie. She has little issues getting herself together for work. So I have to go in, I have to go in her and in the back of tutor. So I had went to writing with her because her handwriting was, it would look like some robot and I had sat her down and went and I traced the letters of the alphabet and I let her trace them so she can have her writing better. The one thing I'm really proud of with that little girl is that she's actually been able to come up and talk to me about what's been going on and what's been happening with her in school if she's been getting better grades or not. It's been a really good, a really good life changing thing for her. So she's there and there's this, how do I say it? Like when I get into the room, it's where I'm having a bad day, say if school's not going well, friends are just not there. I go into the room and I see them and not even just them that they light up, I light up too because those kids have changed me in so many ways that I can't really even explain. I was a bad kid. I was excited because I wanted to be in all through sixth and seventh grade. Not only for the fact that I gave money but the fact that it makes me a better person. I'm actually doing something with myself, helping little kids and not just coming around, it's like, you know, it's just cool. It gives me something to look forward to every day. So I mean, I guess I could say the... You notice this isn't just making an impact on our students, it's making an impact on their 2Ds and it also makes an impact on anybody who is involved in the program because they see the growth, they see what's going on. It does increase their academics. I mean, it may not seem like it but once they start trying to help out these students, they start seeing, oh man, I remember hearing stories. Man, miss, this kid, I don't know what to do. He doesn't stay still, he doesn't listen to me. It's like, I have to tell him three times to sit down because he's not listening to me, what do I do? And I'm all like, does that sound familiar? And they're all like, I see what you're doing, miss. I see it and I'm all like, okay, so what do your teachers do with you? They're all like, okay, so they take a step back. And they start thinking, okay, well my teacher does this, my teacher does this. And there's been a few students that actually go back to their teachers and they apologize to them. They're all like, miss, sir, I'm sorry. And they look at them like, what are you sorry about, my behavior? When I was in sixth grade, 30, eighth graders or they're older, when I was in sixth grade, I was such a pain in the butt, I'm so sorry. Now I understand what it's like. And they do, they see the difference. They're all like, they are the teacher. They consider themselves the teacher because now they have invested so much time and effort into these little kids that they want them to succeed. They're so into those little kids that they start seeing, I need to improve myself to help my little tutors. I cannot just be telling them to do something and not do it myself. So it really motivates these students to start doing more than what they were doing beforehand. Let's move on to the next one, please. Now, if you look and there's gonna be a handout, I believe that is around and it is the Coca-Cola Valley Youth Program handout. Is it already on the tables? No, not yet. Okay, there is a handout and it actually goes over the core and support components. It's not just about them going into the classroom. There are several, they are classes for the tutors. They have several weeks in the beginning that they have to get into that mind frame. They have to understand what not to say in front of their tutors, what is expected of them. That's usually the hardest part, trying to get them to understand they're all like, but we're just gonna go over there and we're just gonna help and we're gonna get paid. That's the great thing. We're getting paid to be in school. And I'm all like, yes, that's exactly the best thing. I go along with it. I'm all like, yeah, you'll see that's the best thing because by the end they make up their own minds that that's not the best thing. I do have one student who is not actually getting paid for going over there. There's been some issues with the payments and some other little issues. So he was all like, Miss, I'm gonna have to get out of the program. I go, why are you getting out of the program? So I will, I can't really get paid yet because there's some issues going on and I'm all like, who said you can't be in the program? I go, you can totally be in the program. So I can go without getting paid. I mean, it's not gonna count against me and I go, no, it's not. If you decide that you do not want to do this, he's all like, no, I'm gonna do this. I'm staying in the program. It doesn't matter if I get paid or not. I already have my 2Ds. He goes, and they're gonna be really disappointed if I don't show up. Because if they don't show up for one day, those 2Ds, they ask their teachers, where is my tutor? Why isn't so-and-so here? And the next day they'll tell the students, hey, they were asking about you yesterday. So how does that motivate our students? They don't want to miss, because they get those questions. So of course, their attendance gets so much better because they're all like, no, no, no, I have to go to school. You know, I'm gonna teach so-and-so this or I'm gonna teach so-and-so that. So it motivates them to show up to school. They're growing personally and academically. It's just all in one big. They become role models. They get the student recognition, not so much from the adults, but they're getting it from their 2Ds and that's what matters to them because they put so much effort into them. So we do have like those tutoring sessions. They have field trips. It's just leadership field trips to help them become better leaders. And then they have guest speakers who come in to motivate them so that they can motivate their 2Ds. Let's move on to the next one, please. So the mentoring program at SouthSan is one effective approach in chipping away the problem. SouthSan has about 52 high school and middle school students that mentor about 156 elementary students across the district. So it's a lot of students and that's just because each one of them has about three 2Ds. It's a lot of students that they're getting there towards. I know Mr. Ray Saldana once spoke at one of our conventions and he said that when he was in elementary, he remembers his tutors coming in to help him. So it's very important that you never know who you're gonna touch as a tutor. It might not be that big of a deal at the time, but in the future, they do accomplish something. If we can move on to the video, please. She's told me that I can't act the way that the year is good and whenever I'm over there, it's like, it's different over there. I'm like the role model of them. So, I can't just play around and so on, how I do it. The teacher coordinator, Ms. Saldana, and the program has had an impact on me because I know that like when I come into it, like even when the bell rings for the third period, I have to completely change everything and just forget everything happened and just put my mind to the kids and everything. Ms. Saldana and the group have action. They've benefited me a lot. Ms. Saldana makes me believe in myself. I have no limit. I can do a lot of things even though I'm just a student. The program has benefited me as well by giving me the opportunity to feel responsible. I know what it's like to be responsible, to actually grow up, to not be immature and bring me Ms. Saldana. She's told me that even though I'm not getting paid, that either way, that for me to still be in the, that she was a part of me because I said, I'm gonna stay in the program and volunteer my hours because if I leave now, then the rest of the year, the kids, they're gonna be like, oh, what happened to Eric? What happened to Eric? Why does he come no more than I know this? And I said, well, the heck with the end of the month. Stayed in the program, no matter what, even if I don't get paid, I'm still wanting to volunteer my hours. They benefited me and Ms. Saldana, she's told me that even though I'm not getting paid, that either way, that for me to still be in the, So are students, no matter what their circumstances are, are valuable to their duties. And that's something that really they're gonna take away. They're giving that extra help. Little do they know they're receiving that extra help also by motivating them. They're nurturing, which is something some of these students didn't know they had in them. They are very nurturing towards their first grade, second grade, third grade students. Their guidance, they guide them. It might not be the way they expected it because they have a closer relationship with them because they are students. They've been in elementary school. Us as adults, we forget what it's like to be in elementary school and middle school and high school. They're still around that area where they're still in school so they can relate to these 2Ds a lot more. They encourage them. There are some of the 2D tutors that actually go by stickers or little things to give to their 2Ds. They're, Ms, can I take this to them? Can I take this to them? I'm all like, make sure you ask the teacher before you do anything and they're very excited. They use their own money that they get paid to buy their elementary school kids, all these little things just to get them riled up. They're very compassionate towards them, very compassionate. If one of their 2Ds is having a bad day, I have pictures of, I see the tutor walking down the hallway with their 2D kind of talking to them and I should have added that picture on here and it looks so cute. And I tell them, this is so cute, guys. And they're all, Ms, no, no, just don't put that anywhere, please, that's gonna hurt my reputation. So they're walking down the hallway and you see this big old guy walking with this little first grader talking to him and you could just see they're having this conversation, this in-depth conversation and it's just amazing to see. Each tutor is assigned three students, as I spoke to you before, that they mentor for about one hour a day through the school year in order to build a relationship. The tutors at South Sun ISD get paid $7.75 an hour. They're super excited about that. Four days out of the week and earn class credit for their time so that they can do it during the school day. So it is a motivator to stay in school and to make sure and be there every day. Students are nominated by their teachers and the students must fill out their first job application because they are held responsible for their time cards as they are an actual employee of South Sun ISD. So they have to fill out the whole paperwork. So they're all like, what's a social security card? All this information that you would need when you're filling out an application, they're doing it as middle school students and at high school students. So for some of them, this is the first job application that they do and they're so concentrated because they're all like, wait, where am I? There's too many questions. Where am I supposed to sign? And you have to really go and tell them, look, is this what you have to do? Make sure you do. And they're all like, okay. And they're so serious. They're signing their life away. It's very interesting to see. Let's move on to the next slide, please. And then as previously stated, by students when they walk into the classroom, they become someone different. Here we will see a sneak peek at their tutoring experience. So we can go into the video. We will see Ms. Daniela a little bit of her day. What's her name? Ms. Daniela. What do you like about Ms. Daniela helping you? And as a treat? Yeah. For what? For doing your best. And what does she help you with? Show me what she helps you with. What is she doing right now? Words. Yeah. Like it when she comes in and helps you out? Yeah. Why? Daniela's mom come up and speak of what she just see. Cause this is the first time she's seen her daughter in action. Hi, I'm sorry if I get very emotional. We'll try this one more time. Seeing my daughter going through what she's doing to help these kids get a better education and us as parents, we need to support that because they are our future. One day they will be president of the United States. We need to support them. Both these students here, we need to support them. And it just made me cry. I'm sorry. But I love her and I wish she would continue it. Hopefully one day she will be a teacher cause that is what she wants to do now. I encourage her. I stand beside her. There may be sometimes I don't agree with the things she does. But I tell her, I'm there for you. And I love her. And I hope she will be a, excuse my language, a damn good teacher. We need more students like them. Like them. Thank you. I want you to come in and explain what it's like as soon as you walk into that classroom. When you see those kids come up to you, what exactly goes through your mind? When I first walk into the classroom, it's usually quiet. And as soon as I get there, they're screaming, Miss Ariel, Miss Ariel, Miss Ariel's here. They start telling the teacher. Kind of sucks when I walk out because they're there like, don't go, don't go. We want you here to stay here. And it makes me feel overwhelmed with joy. I'm actually there teaching someone that needs my help. So, oh yes, yes, yes. I decided to actually join in next year in the educators program. So I'm, that's what I wanna do when I get ordered to be a teacher. So does the Coca-Cola value-juice program accomplish what it sets to do? The students have experienced the aspects the program was intended to instill. In appreciation for education, they see it from a different point of view, which is great. Love for their community because they're helping all these elementary school kids. The elementary's usually have little festivals. And when the middle school and high school students go and visit, go to those festivals with their parents, I had one parent that said, the teacher came up to me. And I go, what teacher? She goes, the one that helps my son and when he's tutoring. And I go, oh, what did she say? She said that he was so wonderful, that he was such a great student, that he was such a great tutor. I asked her, are you sure you're talking about my son? And it's just wonderful to see, I'm all like, actually he does a really great job with them. She's all like, I just can't believe it. There's no way, because he's very rambunctious at the middle school. And I'm all like, now this shows you that it can be accomplished. They can change. They have a willingness to share. They share their own experiences with the elementary school kids. Responsibility, they have to do their time cards every week or if not, they don't get paid. So they're responsible for their own actions. And most importantly, self-respect and confidence. I can tell you now, and this is one assignment that I love doing at the end of the year after their whole tutoring experience, they're gonna have to do that positive and negative list all over again. They will. And I can guarantee you that those lists are gonna be so much longer than they were in the beginning because they've actually improved. They've seen a change in what they've been doing. We do have, if we can go to the next one, please. This is one, the first parent meeting. We have parent meetings when they receive their checks and we make a big old deal about them because we're totally proud about what they've accomplished. So this is them being silly, showing like, hey, I got paid. I got paid for something. You look at their faces and everybody's totally smiling and they're very proud of themselves. Now, this pretty much concludes it. Is there any questions? Anything you would like to ask the parents, the students? There are several areas that have it. I know in San Antonio, it's only South San ISD and then there's some, would you like to come up and talk about them? So there are in different states, but right now it's only here. So I can kind of contest the program because I used to be with South San for quite a while and at the elementary level and we actually had shepherd, middle school kids come over and like she was saying earlier, the middle school kids, they're at a different level at that time but when they come to the elementary level, they totally change. They see the kids and they just, it's like they're on a different level. I mean, they come down to their level. They, their behavior is a little bit different at the middle school. But again, like I said, when they come to that elementary level, they are, their behavior has changed 100%. It's like a total turnaround. So again, I can contest to the program. I think it's very good. It's community involved and I mean, it's just in appearance, like I said, I mean, the parents are involved with it as well. So I definitely would recommend the program to anybody that's interested in it. And I'm at another district now and I'm actually gonna bring it to, to the attention of the middle school that we feed off right now. So it's something that I think someone should look into as well. How do we go about getting information to sign our schools up or? So right now she's handing this out and this has information. So you just need to go ahead and contact your school district and they'll give you more information on how y'all can try and bring the program into your school district. Cause it is, it's a very wonderful program. If you talk to the Title I director or to an administrator, cause the teacher can't do much about it because the administrator has to be the one that wants to request the program. They wants to do it. Any other questions for our students, our parents, anything? Director of People Services. Oh, Director of People Services, yeah. Ms. Bella Ibarra. Yeah, I just wanted to say you all do a great job. Congratulations, ma'am. Great things always happening at Southside. And I just wanted to say that at Harlandale, we had this program about 30 years ago. Our radio will remember, we chose our kids that had the highest discipline referrals, the lowest grades and the kids with the, it was grades, worst attendance. There were kids that were struggling and to this day it impacted their life. Go to your board members and tell them you want it in your district or to your superintendent but someone needs to sit down and write for the grant. IDRA will help, but someone there in the district needs to find a place to go for grant money. But congratulations, you all do a great job. Do either of the parents want to say anything else? Do you want to add anything about from what you've thought and heard? Well, my daughter was struggling at home. She was in a very bad place. She was also, she had suicidal thoughts about a year ago. She was admitted into a rehab and stayed there for a few days. Since ARIO has been with this program, it has changed her dramatically. She is always wanting to go to school. She knows that she makes a difference in the kids' lives. She wants to become a teacher. She has done a total uterine and I'm grateful for this program for introducing it to her and allowing her to help all the other children out. Thank you. I'm not one of the presenters, but I've been with this program for as it started and with anybody, a child, an adult, when you value them and see their intelligence and possibility, many things can happen. When you stop looking them as something broken to be fixed, but as potential tutors, because that's what we know, is they can tutor the little ones. And teachers, when you see them in a positive way, when you see the parents, the parents struggling, having to work, but when you value them and you look at their assets, you can do a lot. I just wanna say, like I said earlier, I mean, us as parents, we need to encourage the students to go to school. And it's done a lot for my daughter. She has her days at school and she'll come home and she'll tell me, Mom, I had a rough day today, but I saw my kids that I tutored and they brightened up her day. And she has gone through a lot. She was abused sexually by my brother. And when we found out that this happened, she wanted to also end her life. But with this program, she has done amazing. And she has survived through this. And as parents also, we have to listen to their needs. And maybe it will cut back on a lot of this bullying that's going around in the schools. Cause I mean, I sit there and I cry when I hear a child has committed suicide or because the parents are too busy doing other things and we don't take our time with our children. So she has gone through a lot. And like I said, we just have to be there for our kids. And this program, it's done amazing for the children. So thank you. It's getting close to closing time. Can you wrap it up please? Thank you for participating. The next round, there's a mistake in the program. So thank you. Make sure you take those pamphlets with you. There's a slight error in the program. It says the next session starts at 12.30 p.m. No, it starts at 11.30 a.m. And so you have one more round of workshops. There's five going on at the same time. Thank you for your participation. Fill out the evaluation form, please. Thank you. Gracias, gracias. This is the live. They should be on while we do this part too. Can show one or the other, but not both. Let me see how you need to know is all right, y'all. So can they, so they can't talk? Yeah, they can. Yeah, I think you don't know if they need to be, you know what, if we can show them right at the beginning. So now I'm gonna introduce them. Okay. Can you do that? Yeah. We'll go a little higher than this is what we're talking about. And we have people in the real game valley. And we can talk. I don't mind. Okay. Does that make sense? And then we'll go back. Then we'll be on the slides. And. Do they have the slides too? Yes. They're looking at this too. So what we did is, yes, because it's complicated. Well, because they have the ability to share the slides on their end too, but I don't know what it is. I think it might make it easier if we go from here. Okay. But here's what I did with them. So I'm doing these first six, a rise takes seven through 11, a hope. No, I take up 11. So I could do this real quick for you, if that matter. We should probably practice right. Well, I'm just gonna do like I did in the last session and kind of stand back there. Yeah. And that way I can switch back and forth. So I think most of we just need to see them at the beginning. Okay. And then if there's questions at the end for, I don't know. So we can use, yeah, the slides can just be there. And then maybe what would be great when we get to slide seven. Hey, I can maybe say that, could we look at them? Yeah. Let's take a peek at the guys down there or the women, our great leaders. And then we'll go back to the slides. I just need to do a little quick test. Yeah, no, that's great. Thank you. I actually wanted them to... Willie, that's the orange one. It's the orange one that's coming into this. Okay. Test, test, one, two, three. Test, test, one, two, three. Test, test, one, two, three. Yes, yes, two here. Okay. You want house audio down? This is how. And... Yeah. They're the ones that talk about vouchers in the opening. Oh, yes. Oh man, you guys. You guys, I already told them they used to hang the sun, moon and stars. Come on. Right here. The Supremes. The three of us together. Okay, Supremes, let's go. And this is the camera. Okay. And this is the microphone. And this microphone stand is not going to be nice to me. I'm just not that strong. Okay, that's good. Scoot in. Oops. It means the microphone did not fall out. Scoot in so far. Okay. Scoot in. Let's get this in the middle of you. Hello, my name is Diana, San Antonio. Test, test. Perfect. Okay. Diana Herrera from San Antonio, Texas. Jesusita Rios from San Antonio, Texas. Belmai Barra San Antonio. Well, first and foremost in Texas, our Constitution does indicate that our publicly collected taxpayers money should go to public schools and that is how we wanted to remain at a time that we have so very many needs. Correct. And that I took from NEA, the National Education Association and they showed a public school upside down with money coming out of it. And we can see that for years now, for decades now where that has happened, either it's idea money for our special ed students or it's just state funding or it's federal funding now. So we can see where the cuts have been occurring for the past few decades already. Correct. Yeah. Money is not being added. It is being withdrawn. It is being cut. And of course it's being divided between the charter schools, which are the public charters and the public schools, which it was allocated for, which are taxpayers' money. And that's the taxes that we pay for the value of our houses. So depending on where you live, of course, that's the value that you're gonna get in Texas. And of course that is what the federal government or the state government supplements for you. And even if that money doesn't come out, it's very valuable. Correct. And if somebody else was paid, I wouldn't be a defendant still. You would be right, right? Tell me, I couldn't go out on a makeover. Anna? It's yours. Well, I guess it's that our both graduates of the Edgewood Independent School District and both of us taught in Edgewood, retired from Edgewood. So we're speaking as two people who were educated in the system and taught in that school district until we retired. Yeah, I got to see it. As a matter of fact, what I got to see, because I am, my certification is in gifted education. So when the letters from the CEO, from Dr. James Arlinger's program, started to come into our neighborhoods, because the letters were addressed to our children, to their homes. And it said to the parent of Juan, to the parent of Jessica, to the parent of Joe Jessica, to the parent of. But in many of our families, they had a child who was special ed, or perhaps the child was a Spanish dominant, a Spanish speaker, Spanish dominant child. Then those parents, that address, did not receive a letter, did not receive a letter. So once again, as we kept explaining to our parents back then in 1998, when the vouchers came into Edgewood, we kept explaining, just pay attention to who's getting the letters. They are hand picking, selecting who they select for their program. And as, can I say, the outcomes, yes. As a teacher, I can go into the TEA with, anybody can really go into the TEA website. But an article by Thomas Ratliff in 2015 came in, and one of the things that it did was compare the charter schools with the public schools. What it found was in all areas, a lot of it was surpassing, the public schools were surpassing charter schools, except for when Star came along, they were reading and writing was right at the same length, but that the other ones, the public school, surpassed by the math, by the science, by the social studies. Yes, by dropout, it was 1.5, which was our public schools, whereas at the charter, although they advocate college readiness, they were having a 5.5 dropout rate, 5.2. So that was one of the things that was on there and that was made very evident. Now one of the things also was, they, when charters came about, they said that they could get better results with less money. Now we're away over here in 2016 and they're finding out because they do have a lot more administrative costs, okay? That they need more money, but they have a lot more flexibility in their curriculum and some of the teachers are not certified, you know? Because I, as a field supervisor, I do that also, we're for college, I go in there and we have to have mentors that are completed the program and that are certified to mentor a new teacher that's coming in and we have found that in some instances, we don't have that. So the principal will go along and do the mentoring for them at that time. I think what we saw in writing on their response sheets was that they do wanna get involved and that they now have a greater understanding or better understanding on what this issue is about and we continue to have some legislators and others who continue to look at our public money for use not only for private schools but for other private ventures here in the state of Texas and we are more choice, we are preferential choice to a Paraná to have a right to send their child. Our key fight here is that for public money the choice should be to keep it in our schools. So we excuse. Thank you. Thank you, you are most welcome, thank you. Yeah, yes. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. How are you? There might be people moving in there. There might be people moving in there. There might be people moving in there. There might be people moving in there. Morning, buenos dias. Ya es la sesión antes de la comida entonces que se despiertan por favor. Un ratillo más. I'm Mike Seaford from the Real Grand Valley Equal Voice Network and this morning we're going to share with you some of the work we've done in terms of collective impact estamos con, es un equipo de presentación solo que estoy yo aquí y tengo dos compañeras que están en el valle. Mark, can you put them up on the screen for us? A ver si funciona mejor que ahí están. Se quieren presentar? Let's see, we're missing audio, you're muted. Ah, we can't hear them Mark. She said something funny. Otra vez. La escuchas, escuchan? Sí, pero nosotros no. Estamos bien Mike, nos dices cuando veremos. Si, si te oímos. Si, si quieren presentarse? Si, claro que si. Mi nombre es Virginia Santana y estoy coordinadora del comité y bueno, del final de educación aquí en the rice. Can you do it in English as well Vicky? Vande. Can you repeat it in English? Yeah, my name, good morning. My name is Virginia Santana and I work in our rice, South Tower and I'm the coordinator of the dealer of education here in the rice. My name is Eva Carranza, soy presidenta de our rice, South Tower, comunitario PTA. And that's Eva Carranza. She's the president of the Ori South Tower PTA. And I'm Mike Seaford. I am the coordinator of the River and Valley Equal Voice Network. Can we go back to the slides, Mark? No, sir. Sir, can you just very quickly, because I understand there's people watching us from around the country. They may not know where we are. We are located in the tip of Texas, the very bottom. And we work in a two county area, Dougal County and Cameron County. Eight years ago, during the Obama campaign, when there was lots of energy in the country and all kinds of excitement, we felt the Margaret Casey Foundation actually came to us and said, you know what? You folks aren't being, the families aren't being represented. There's lots and lots of energy, but the needs, the aspirations, the dreams, their families are not being represented. We need to do something differently. Entonces hace ocho años cuando arrancó lo del Obama es tanta buye y la gente bien emocionada y sin embargo, ninguno de los dos partidos mayores estaban en nuestra opinión representando las preocupaciones, los deseos, las necesidades de nuestras comunidades, sobre todo aquí en el valle, donde vivimos nosotros, que es la región más pobre del país. Entonces, aquel entonces, la fundación Casey nos vino, nos dijo, ustedes tienen que hacer algo diferente. Vamos a hacer que un encuentro nacional de comunidades y familias, cuáles son las preocupaciones. So in 2008, the Margaret Casey Foundation showed up and said, we're gonna try and do something different this time. And in 14 different areas of the country, they asked their grantees to have convenings, regional convenings, and you sit down with regular people and say, if a politician was sitting in front of you, what would you tell him or her that you need? And so I've been doing this work for 30 years, I thought, oh, another meeting where we asked people, well, what do you think? Except that the method actually worked and they came out with a platform that was produced after some national meetings, they came back, our representatives came back to the valley and they said to us, to our eight groups, we want you to work in seven areas to help us with things. Entonces, la red de Las Voces Unidas es compuesta de ocho organizaciones, tenemos abogados, tenemos gente que trabaja en la salud, tenemos organizaciones comunitarias, tenemos gente que se preocupen por la participación cívica. Y la gente nos dice que, sabes que queremos que ustedes trabajen en estas siete áreas, la inmigración, participación cívica, la educación, la salud, el trabajo, vivienda y LGBTQ. So, we do our work, we've got these eight organizations, community-based organizations, funded by the Casey Foundation and we work through seven working groups. We represent collectively 100,000 constituents and because we've been doing this now for eight years and because these focus areas are so important and touch people's hearts, we've managed to pull in 60 other local organizations in 20 state, national and international networks. Entonces, mediante trabajo, enfocando por ejemplo la educación, se vienen otras personas que no reciben dineros ni nada pero vienen por interés. En la vivienda que es una cosa tan problemática en el valle, empezamos a hablar de la falta de renaje que cuando vienen huracanes, gente se quedan hasta seis meses con agua todavía en sus casas, se reúnen. Entonces, es un trabajo colectivo bien, bien, bastante bien, bien bonita. Y entre ellos está este grupo de lo cual van a hablar nuestras compañeras del valle. So one of the working groups is the Equal Voice Education Working Group that Comité de Educación de Vosas Unidas. And so I'm gonna let them speak just a little bit about how that works. And so since we're gonna pass that on now to, there they go. So. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Just a question. Te oye un poquito difícil para escuchar? No escucha, es un poco, es no escuchamos muy bien. Okay. Okay. Bueno, pues este, como compartí verdad, good morning, mi nombre es Virginia Santana y como coordinadora de Panaquina Rise, Rise es una organización olucrativa en el valle de Texas. Tenemos cinco centros acá en el valle de Texas. Nuestra misión es en nuestra comunidad para abogar por las necesidades que tenemos en diferentes áreas de necesidad que tenemos aquí en el valle, pero no solamente en el valle, sino en el estado de Texas. Los como a Rise colaboramos en el, o somos parte de Equal Voice Network y como en este comité que nos fortalece mucho en nuestra misión, en nuestra misión y visión de a Rise, en lo que es educación, justamente educación formal de ir a colegio, de animar a los jóvenes de ir a colegio, a los niños de ir a colegio y de abogar por una educación equitativa y hablamos de la educación en otros rangos de importancia, como es inmigración, participación cílica, en educando en esas áreas también. Para nosotros es muy importante la colaboración con la Red porque fortalece mucho, pues se hace aún más cuando estamos unidas, cuando estamos unidas las organizaciones, fortalece mucho más nuestras voces. No quiere decir que la voz es mucho gritar o hablar, sino en una forma educada, participación con Equal Voice nos ha desarrollado como líderes dentro de la organización, pero también como líderes de la comunidad. Y la fortaleza la hacemos todos juntos. Es por eso que es importante estar unidos para tener una voz mucho más fuerte, pero bien informadas y bien entrenadas para hacer cambios en el sistema ya se educativo de inmigración en todos los temas que nosotros cubrimos en la red. Me gustaría es la educación, como ya compartimos que la educación es parte de todos los comités de nosotros en Equal Voice, pero también en nosotros en Arise, que vamos en conjunto y vamos colaborando la misión de Arise encaja muy bien en lo que es en la red. Entonces, eso es una fortaleza bien grande tanto para los miembros de la comunidad como para nosotros que trabajamos en las organizaciones. Estamos bien educadas, bien informadas sobre los temas que nosotros vemos la necesidad en la comunidad. Y también pues como necesidad que sale de los papás con los cuales trabajamos. Muchas veces ellos tienen preocupaciones que nos comparten a nosotros en Arise y nosotros podemos informarnos e informar y de esa manera podemos hacer y abogar y hacer una encuesta o un entrenamiento para nosotros es bien importante trabajar juntos y unidos. Voy a pasar la palabra aquí a mi compañera Eva que es la presidenta del comunitario y que va a explicaros cómo enlazamos esta entrenamiento que nosotros recibimos como comunidad y como está a desarrollarlo aún mucho más. Entonces, voy a pasar la palabra aquí mi compañera Eva. Buenos días, una vez más. Como es el hijo Arise, una organización que ha estado ya 30 años en la comunidad acá en el Valle este es el enfoque principal en la educación en los diferentes necesidades de las comunidades. En el 2009 se vio la necesidad de ir más allá en cuestión de educación que teníamos que tener más involucramiento en el sistema educativo. A raíz de ahí en el 2009 se creó este un modelo único en nuestra comunidad que es los comunitarios donde está basado la base principal es la organización Arise pero va dirigido y va conducido totalmente por la comunidad. La comunidad decide a sus oficiales decide la agenda que se va a llevar durante todo el año los temas que a ellos les interesa. Ok, vamos a parar ahí para que nos pueda traducir un poquito, Mike. One of the reasons we're having to do this is they can't travel from the valley to San Antonio because some folks don't have the documentation to be able to pass so this is what we're trying out and it's where they're located because they're with the communities in places it's very difficult to have really good internet access but it's working. So essentially I'm just going to do a bullet point of what the both of them set up until now and you can correct me someone else who heard this and understood it in very simple terms they have found that the collaboration means that they can take the voices of their families and lift them up they're not screaming voices Vicki repeated this three or four times these are educated and formed so that when they speak they have many ways of saying it and they have something to say and since they've been engaged in this process now for many years the administrators and the electives understand that these are people we need to be listening to because they come into the room and they don't sit down and I mean they would like to pull their hair out I think and they would like to scream and shout at them but they sit down and say look this is not working for us and here's what we think would work so I think if Vicki... Eva was saying that in 2009 we got together saying we need to organize ourselves on about our schools and education issues so they organized Arise has been involved in this for a long time but they decided to do a formal organization they called it a PTA Comunitario that nine years ago and it was based in the principles of Arise and Eva was the first president elected nine years ago and right now she was currently re-elected to her PTA as president but it was families that gathered and talked with each other saying come together and do something to influence the education of our schools and that's what she started saying a lot of while ago Adelaide please in the first part the community of the people decides the same community, the same members and Arise is the first community that was created here in the neighborhood and from there and so the Arise was the first to perform this new model as an alternative parent-teacher association that's not set in a school but in an area that pulls it together the thing that brings the parents together is not the particular school but they're concerned for their children W. The groups are once a month where they bring the issues related to education and they have achieved the link with the districts mainly PSJA and Dona which are the strongest districts that we have here where we serve the communities so they meet once a month every month once a month and they've had very good success with the two largest school districts in the region which is Farsan Juan Alamo and the Dona school district and so over time they've reached out to five other community-based organizations and they these organizations in turn have formed their own PTA comunitarios so I think there's six total that are working in effective in the region Okay. So there are five existing comunitarios working in different regions in the area. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And so the part of the program is is helping parents understand and preparing them to understand how you speak, where do you go whom you speak, what do you say and especially how to bring to these conversations their particular concerns. It's also been a great method for helping the school administration to understand in a profound way that the parents are actually interested in what happens with their children. And so this is what we've been up to for the past eight years in these PTA comunitarios. The next slide. Just to add a little bit that we have two visitors right now here from the community. And so this is what we've been up to for the past eight years in these PTA comunitarios. The next slide. Just to add a little bit that we have a member of the PTA comunitarios. We also have another person who's from San Diego Salas who's also a member of the PTA. And as we can see right now they're people from the community who have been from the PTA from the very beginning and they've been from the beginning as members and as officials as well as our community as our children. As you can see they have been working with members of PTA and also learning about the needs and also advocating for the needs of the community. As the members and also as a family as a mother, as a young lady about the needs that we have with education here in the valley and also in the state. One of the things that has community working group, education working group it was because of the HVC which is the requirements to graduate when we knew about that we were very well informed we were not well informed about this and since with the working community network, the eco voice we did all the organizations including the RISE we did a survey which we surveyed most of the people in our community to know how much they knew about the information so as I was going to share a little more they did around 1,600 surveys we did around 1,600 surveys survey of the parents and they didn't know we didn't know about the new requirements for graduation so that need it was there that we were not well informed from the school districts so the eco voice network together we had this survey and Mike is going to talk a little bit more about this so we did all this work and said well okay that's nice and there are some nice people there that meet and they're informed and the principal pays attention a little bit when they come in but really at the end of the day what changes because we have these works these stuff going on in the grassroots what happens after 6 years of meeting over and over and over again does it really matter se importa todo esto so one thing that happened is when the 2013 high school foundation bill passed we call it still HB5 the world got flipped and no one seemed to know about it cuando pasó esta ley de la nueva de las carreras que tienes que escoger como niño en el grado ocho pensamos que nadie sabía de esto and so the parents were like what's going on I heard somewhere that my eighth grader has to decide what she's going to do with the rest of her life but how do we just don't know and so that was alarming um nos estamos bastante bien preocupados a saber que mucha gente ni sabía que onda ahora con esta nueva ley so we said and as a group we said what's a good way to get people paying attention I said well let's do a survey and I remember asking why would we do a survey they said because if you go up to somebody and say do you have an eighth grader they're going to stop and look at you and say why do you want to know that and now you have their attention to the conversation so the idea was to do a survey and why a survey because it's a way to make people aware because they ask if you have a son or a daughter in the eighth grade what do you want to know and then they start a conversation so these groups because they're working together managed to survey 1600 parents who signed this two page survey if you've ever done a survey you know that that is a lot it's a huge sample size and it was a collective effort because we had the help of IDRA to design the questions and later to do the analysis but at the end of the day it was these these parents who were in the PTA comunitarios were going out into the neighborhood and knocking on the door and speaking to their neighbors and asking that question los resultados fueron fatales 85% de las personas sabían muy poquito 85% of the people surveyed did knew very little about this and each year this thing passes that's another child who at least in our area will finish will graduate from high school but will not be able to get into any Texas university without first going to community college where they begin to spend down their student loan and spend down the time God has given them to finish their education a tremendous threat to the vibrancy of our entire region simply because our children are finished in high school but they can't go on with a better career in your packet there's a yeah, you can read this here that would be good entonces la problema es que nadie sabía de eso ok so step one vamos a informarlos mediante una encuesta pero luego que you know what do we do after when we find out there's so many people who don't know about this so what are we going to do about it well again the community said that let's sit down with everybody that this affects from the top down and so we had a mesa comunitaria community meeting in August 2014 so it's the worst time to get school districts and school people together but they came together hicimos una mesa comunitaria con los administradores con superintendentes con staff y con la comunidad y nos dividimos en grupos pequeños y empezamos a hablar de esta experiencia so lo que salió de esto I remember el superintendent de McAllen school district le dije que te pareció como te paso este mañana dice bien porque yo tengo dos hijos uno es 7 y otro en 8 y yo no sabía que también tengo que firmar sus decisiones sobre que van a ser con sus vidas what came out of this was the superintendents themselves were astonished at their own ignorance around this they knew a lot but not so much either and that their willingness to work with the community to figure out what are going to be the next steps entonces si salió, something good came out of this the other piece that's important though is that these experiences is community based groups but connected with with elected leaders and people who are appointed to positions began to help people understand that your voice can make a difference in the way things work out entonces se ha informado también y nos ha llamado bastante en la participación civica o sea no solo ya van a la escuela para practicar con el principal o con quien sea sino también a los electos the folks that are engaged in these community groups are really empowered to go to more than just just problems with the schools I have to say though in the many many years that I've been working in community engagement I have never seen so much energy is in these PTA comunitarios it's extraordinary well of course it is what do people care about more than their kids and what makes them crazier than people doing things that affect their kids future which is what and they don't know where to go with it so you get 7 or 8 and in our case all women at this point they come together they sit around the table and say how's it going with the school and there's extraordinary energy es una manera de veras de fomentar prácticas fortisísimas sobre las otras realidades que hay en la comunidad and so kind of coming to an end of this one of the things that we've discovered again it makes complete sense that for us anyway in the valley the issues around education form the center for so many other issues that we can talk about be it immigration access to healthcare housing jobs LGBTQ bullying all these things really do you can sit with a group of parents who've got an 8th grade kid a student going through high school and have an informed conversation that leads to change it's actually a tremendous threat to the existing order because people are becoming educated there's a channel for their anger and their concern and it couldn't be a more timely moment than this you can see Ramona who's one of the members of a rise standing in front of the border wall saying no wall but yes to education entonces we've done a lot of good to encourage us and inform our work as responsible people people who really understand what politics are and how it affects them and the responsibility that we have to get involved in the issues of the community I think that the rise group just let them conclude let me get them back on yes you have to listen to you on Rhode Island so you have to use a microphone now you can be really loud my name is Olivia Benford and I am an administrator with the Farstown One Alamo School District so Project Arise is one of our main partners we have so many partners and I can attest you saw one of the pictures is our superintendent Dr. Daniel King who is a nationally recognized um superintendent and he thinks very, very highly of these ladies you talk about some hard working individuals oh my gosh what I do at the beginning of every year I have all our parent liaisons all of them have to go through a training of how to conduct appropriate home visits and these ladies we go to their center and these ladies do the training for us because they are experts in communicating with the families and get them to open the door and for them to trust and you know some of these families are very difficult to trust anybody especially a school district and a lot of our families are immigrants so these ladies in the field and so I take all of them and I insist that they do the training for liaisons and we have been very successful um with our parental engagement program we've been recognized by the White House I was invited by the former administration to visit we did a webinar across the country and they taught us a lot of the community engagement and right now presently we open some centers in the communities and in their area Dr. King opened two centers for them to bring in their parents for literacy classes so we have a total of about close to 5,000 parents that are engaged in our literacy programs we've been able in the four years we've been able to serve about over 20,000 parents a lot of it has to do with the way they taught us how to do the recruitment and they are truly grassroots organizations so they are a big part of our program and very important thank you I want to ask Vicky and Eva what is the benefit of being connected in other organizations in Brownsville and Fresno what are the benefits of being connected to the other organizations can you hear a lot of the benefits as we shared a while ago when we are united we make the a stronger voice or more clear what is the needs of the community since all the organizations where we are in the equal voice network we work directly with the community we are there in the community and we know the need that they have why? because we are with them daily and they don't share their concerns so when we are united we have a strength and a voice as I shared a while ago it's not screaming, it's not it's a union a force to make changes in the system and in education we are all in collaboration and in coordination more trained and better informed and just to share a little that also in this case, as in the HV-5 when we started with that there was a lot of need and we didn't have the Hydra information it was one of the agencies that shared us that this law was to pass, right? and it was one of the ones that informed us about what was happening while we were here we didn't have that need so yes, one of the things or a lot of things that we it helped us to be together is that when we get together all the organizations have a powerful voice and it's not what I said is managed is not to scream or to be too loud but it's to be informed and trained and well educated about the issues that we have to confront or to change the system so we have organizations we need to help us to be together and what I'm saying the law HP5 was in process we didn't know about that change and Hydra being part of the network helped us to understand and brought us that information so we can work well informed as a parent we didn't know about these changes so when we learn about it and we start asking the parents they didn't know about it either so that's why it's very important for us to be together to have a bigger or louder but equal informed voice is trained, well educated and that help us to make changes in the system education system immigration system anything that we have to advocate for our community and ourselves too so being together is more collective power so we can make a bigger or faster change also if you do it alone it's going to take longer it's going to be harder for us to get together I mean alone alone to fight for the changes that we want together it's easier, faster and it is difficult but together, united we can do it to start with is to slow down or to speak slower but one of the main things was that sometimes you go to school and you go with fear because you don't know about your rights as a parent as a family in school sometimes when you go to the school district or the school you don't understand or you don't know your responsibilities as a parent and the commentaries is what they taught me but also that I have obligations with the school and with my community through the PTAs I have learned about what is my rights but also my responsibilities as a parent and that the knowledge that I have written gives me responsibility to share it with my neighbors and in my communities in a way I can learn and also share with my neighbors in the community so that way our children take advantage of all the benefits in the services that the school district provides Gracias Any other questions as we come close to the end? Yes, I think I have to do the microphone again sorry Is there a curriculum that you follow or is that just the expertise of those that are facilitating? Yes In the last meeting of the school year in our general group of the PTAs we have the PTAs and the PTAs that are the planning for the next school year and there the membership puts goals and purposes for that year and what topics do you want to develop and what would you like to see next year? We have the process of PTAs the state and one of the things that we do is the last meeting of the year we make goals for the following year and also we we vote for the president or the officials for the following year So it's a self-generating process but it's been informed my idea has really helped inform that In every session Can you hear? In every session we have monthly meeting we have a theme a speaker that comes and informs the parents and also we have comedies to visit the schools parents visit to the schools like for example when it was the HV5 for example for example when parents visit the schools we make comedies and when it was the HV5 some parents we went to the school district and asked for more information about it and sometimes they didn't know they didn't know about this law and some counselors they will very struggle to share the information with us so parents are also visiting the schools as part of the participation in PTA's the questions so thank you very much for your attention and there's contact information in that article if you want to reach out and you want some more details on that waiting here gracias absolutely I can't straighten out my jewelry that's what you would say one, two, three stop stop okay make sure we're both in the shot and go ahead and turn a little bit toward me is that good who? me? her? oh I did I thought we'd been collected but we were now grouped okay we're good okay obviously seven, eight, nine, ten okay one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight so lunch is happening behind us but what's happening right here is I'm talking to a woman who came all the way from Georgia to this workshop in conference today so tell me who you are and why you came here my name is Marlin Tillman I'm with the Gwinnett parent coalition to dismantle the school to prison pipeline or Gwinnett stop for short and Gwinnett is right near Atlanta? yes it is a suburb of Atlanta it is a suburb of Atlanta and say it again it is the Gwinnett parent coalition to dismantle the school to prison pipeline Gwinnett stop for short okay so keep facing that way with your throw your voice toward the microphone okay and you have started a group of parents in that area I am the co-founder of the organization and it was started because of two volunteer advocates in the community started noticing things within the education system and more and more we were getting questions and requests for help with discipline issues so it's kind of fast forward and we brought the community together parents, teachers social workers to talk about this and to see if we wanted something bigger to happen and so Gwinnett stop was born out of that and it's been meeting on a monthly basis? we meet on a quarterly basis and then we have a monthly table a statewide table that we convene and within that statewide table we have our department of Ed who participates our school system used to participate but has since stopped and we have parents and other community organizations who are interested in this issue and so we look at policy we analyze data and we try to look at where there's room for some changes and some shifts that help create a more positive atmosphere at school as well as improving student discipline and making it a more positive thing hang in there for a second good background at least why did the schools stop participating? the schools stop participate well I don't know a full answer to that I believe that they stop participating because there was an administration change within the office of student discipline and the new people don't see the value in it but the members of the group the members of the core group are parents? absolutely our core members are parents we have a couple of just community members but our core group is parents and are there other teachers involved as well? yes our teachers are not part of our core group but they are the constituents that will talk to us and tell us give us some thoughts on how to move forward how school is changing because they're there day to day just like our students are and so we've also started a youth leadership institute to bring in more student voice as well so we're trying to connect all the various stakeholders so that we're having a holistic process and holistic solutions so what prompted you to come here? so anything to do with parents piques my interest and so this parent conference just fits into what we do how we do if we can connect with more parents it's just me but we are always looking for those opportunities to connect with parents share information, share ideas and just have that come broader and you're learning? I am definitely learning it's so interesting some of the issues are always the same regardless of where you go but I think what changes is the energy and how people approach how people how people approach darkness how people approach the solutions and so it's always a learning experience well it's a treat to talk to you I'm really glad that you came and I look forward to hearing more about what you guys are doing down the road love sharing and thank you for hosting me thank you thank you now you can get in line to go get your food yes I love them are you ready for the second week? okay go ahead and dump your computer thank you are we in the shot right? the microphone is here right? so talking to the camera? yeah so we're back again and I'm here with Mike Seepert and Mike you just finished doing a really really interesting panel just a conversation earlier with some people from the valley talk a little bit about how important it was to bring them in digitally because they couldn't come here in person but to bring their voices in tell me and for those of us who people who were not watching what was important about that session I think one thing the way we start off always is understand the Rio Grande Valley is really far away and isolated in many ways and so it's difficult for some of the really interesting and good work that's going on down there to get out if you're a person who is here legally but you're in process for instance immigration stuff you no longer can go past the second checkpoint that they have there because they'll stop you put yourself at risk and for us it's not worth the time and the effort and San Antonio is still far so the folks that are doing some of the most interesting and creative work in the valley mothers and fathers they have jobs and they can't just get their car to come so to be able to connect this way digitally offers them a chance to explain to a larger group what they're doing that's always good but also for the group to listen to them right so let's recoup so these are folks who are working with their kids and working with school administration and teachers and trying to be much more a part of the process with their kids in schools so for years the challenge both on the school administration side but also the community side is how do we engage parental involvement how do we do it, they've tried all kinds of things and some years ago IDRA came down and came up with this model of a community parent teacher association so it's not school based or specific school based but to parents with kids who share the same problems whatever school they're in and they gather and they say okay let's see what you want to share about what you know and your experience as a parent of a child and with the school so it created a really vibrant smaller parent teacher because then eventually you bring in the teachers and more importantly the administrators so they've been doing that over the years but a huge help to it was the passage in 2013 of House Bill 5 House Bill 5 and in 2013 House Bill 5 was there were three ways to graduate from a high school in Texas they reduced it to one and then they put these endorsement programs it was essentially a really complicated bill which after a year of studying the bill and again with the help of IDRA the communities realize that whoa wait something's going on here my child will graduate from high school but may or may not have enough credits to be accepted into a university in Texas and the way we found that is if that career path you chose did not offer for instance Algebra 2 so a very low bar then you could be pretty sure that your child would graduate from school but then would need to go for remedial work in a community college which is a tremendous concern because it starts to spin down their student loan funds as well as the time it takes it's sort of a restriction of their freedoms so huge oh it's yes we look at it much more seriously we think it's a theft from the community of the possibility to educate our future because you start losing cohorts of kids they're perfectly capable of going through but they didn't understand in the eighth grade which path to pick so then that galvanizes communities which the little pete community is because they were talking about issues probably more like well there's a lot of bullying in the school or we can't we need to talk about such and such because suddenly this is a global issue and they became involved and engaged in it through this survey that we developed to see how it's going so one example and so this way it's also trying to help parents address that issue even though their eighth grader may or may not be able to really totally grasp it I mean it's trying to help parents grasp what the implications are of making those choices at the eighth grade level and then it takes a conversation to another level too because the only way things are going to change is going to be in our participation in the whole political process to say okay you gave us this unfunded mandate because it assumes that there's going to be enough school counselors to inform this choice that there's going to be if all the kids decide to take Algebra 2 that there's going to be enough Algebra 2 teachers which means you need more funding and so on so the parents go from a concern about their child to like oh my boy Roy this is everybody across the board so do that first step you have to vote but then you also have to have a conversation with your school board members and so on so it's a whole chain of things a big engagement effort to try to ultimately change the policy yes absolutely it's a good group so it's good to hear their voices up here today I think one of the gratifying things is that Alamo Heights people who were participating came up and said you know what we want to come down and meet face to face so to me that means that was a successful encounter they saw them over the internet and the screen said oh we should go there which has not happened before so that's good thank you so much we're talking about all three of you okay so in that case I'm going to go back here take a step back take a step back now relax how long is this 1, 2, 3 1, 2, 3 test 1, 2, 3 test who's next my name is Roxana Montes Basil Dua my name is Roxana Montes Basil Dua my name is Ruth Buhandamore and my name is Claudia Hernandez Alamo Heights ISD came today to share about our district's journey to help engage our parents through authentic parent engagement we hosted listening tours to all our five campuses in our district we also did that in terms of being able to make sure that we have a strength-based perspective rather than a deficit model so we really want to make sure that the parents know that their voice is important that we want to hear them we want to utilize their talents and skills rather than coming from it that we need to have this information and we don't have these skills already so as the parent liaison for the district and the district bilingual parent liaison so it's more about being able to have them understand that they already have strengths within them not only their language that they speak Spanish and English or even if they just speak Spanish that's fine too but that we're not coming at you with these are the things you need to know you have these deficits that you don't already know we know that you know a lot of this and you'll ask us if you don't know it but you have skills and training that you can enrich our schools with and enrich the students and I'm here as a parent to learn more how I can get involved in my child's bilingual education to stress the importance to the parents as bilingual why we have to be here why we have to learn the fundamentals to get more parents involved so our community can be joined in one force for the bilingual community it makes a huge difference not only is it about being able to help your kids be more enriched in their classrooms it really does also have the parent become that leader and be able to voice their concerns be able to be able to become those participants that we need on all levels not just about a certain group of parents but all parents be able to come together for the enrichment not just of their child but for all the children that are at stake and I would like to say when parents are engaged automatically children are engaged as well and so it has a ripple effect along with the community and so when the children are engaged because their parents are engaged what happens to them? a huge impact, good outcomes better learning, engaged learning and it's not just about the A or whether you have an A or B or C but about having that engaged learner that really understands and appreciates what it is that's in education not just in the four walls of the classroom but outside of that as well right what do you say to the parents? I as a parent tell other parents maybe we don't know each other but that's the time to get to know each other and say hey join me in this meeting we're going to learn what they're doing, what they need what the school has for them calling them up hey come over I know I have some flyers and the parents that I do know I'll see you there at 7 I'll see you there at 6 make that obligation to show up to those meetings which is very important for us as a bilingual parent I'd like to share that I'm very proud of our parents who took the leadership positions and shared their experience because that was very brave of them and so that was the most empowering thing for me I agree definitely that they stepped up you got this we can do this together and you're a vital part it's not just a small voice it's a big one more tools and how as a parent I'm important to the school as a bilingual parent not to stay behind but give my voice my opinion on everything thank you thank you so I'm here with John Gonzalez and John tell me what brought you here today I was invited to speak on a white paper we recently released on the impact of education on economic development and business okay who is we we're an organization called Educate First except first is spelled with the dollar sign instead of the S because we wanted to emphasize the economic importance of education I remember interviewing a former governor of Texas once and asking her what the most important business thing she could do was and she said education was the most important thing for business because without education you don't have a well educated workforce and you don't have a good economy it's very true and unfortunately we're not making the right decisions in Austin and it doesn't look really very good for education this year and there should be a lot of concern with parents of children who are in school and also people like myself who no longer have kids in school but you know have business interests and are concerned about the economy because like you said our future workforce doesn't look very good well and I guess part of what I'm intrigued with your white paper is that instead of looking at where can we cut so that we don't go into the rainy day fund you're talking about where we need to invest invest is the appropriate word and it needs to be education needs to be a vital component in economic development but unfortunately our legislators for whatever reason don't seem inclined to go in that direction and the decisions that we're making right now do not cast Texas in the favorable light in terms of the future and in terms of the jobs of the future and how we're going to be able to fill those jobs if our young people aren't afforded the quality education so let's talk ROI what is the return on investment on educating a child it goes through the roof the earlier you get you get to the children in their preschool and you start working with them you can start talking workforce to children as young as three or four years in very simple ways and you can start preparing them for the workforce but half of our children in Texas aren't even going to pre-k that's unacceptable so they're not going to pre-k then they're not necessarily kinder ready then there needs to be stuff spent catching them up well you're absolutely right and it's a cycle from pre-k to the workforce and what happens is that because so few of our children are going to pre-k by the time that a child who hasn't been in pre-k starts first grade that child is already a year and a half developmentally behind a child that had gone to pre-k at the end of the cycle when they graduate and are ready for the workforce business has to pay for the remediation services that are going to get them up to where they should have been so business is paying for our lack of educating our children at the level that we should be so why aren't we hearing more from businesses about investing in the workforce that's the big question why are we not getting more cohesiveness from our business community you know we have more Fortune 1000 companies in Texas than any other state so you would think that they would have enough reason to get more involved yet there doesn't seem to be that synergy that you're referring to there is interest but it's scattered it's not a working together from the business community and that's what our white paper is trying to do is trying to publicize that the business community has more to lose than anybody if we don't do a better job of educating our children not to go too far back into last century as I was just doing with the former governor but I seem to remember a former businessman in Texas Ross Perot took a huge huge role in trying to say education first last century I mean what hey you just stole our name or did we steal it from him no I know what you're talking about actually Mr. Perot has some very good ideas and at that time Texas was much better than our arts education than we are now we have actually in the past 20 years been falling behind gradually in terms of our investment in education but more significantly in the product that comes out of our classrooms every time we graduate a child from high school put very very simply children that are graduating from Texas high schools in many occasions not all but in many occasions are not ready for either college, technical school or the workforce and you can show that your paper shows that well that was the intent of our white paper we were unfunded we did it all on a volunteer basis we believe we made a very good strong argument why Texas needs to prioritize education why it should be the number one issue in our state now and forever whether or not we have people that pay attention to the findings of our white paper remains to be seen but I think it's very powerful how do you frame that to push it forward I mean do you frame it to say we must do this because our future is at stake do you frame it to say we must we must think about how to fund this as opposed to how much we need to cut so that we don't increase taxes or something well the way that I phrased it is that this is a priority for the business community I'll let the business community decide how they wish to frame it it's not my job to frame it for them they're the ones that are at risk in terms of their future revenues and profits they can choose to stay on the sidelines and not be engaged in what's going on in the classrooms right now or they can become involved it's their choice but at the end of the day maybe not tomorrow but 20 years from now if they've made the wrong decisions their revenue and their profits are going to go down so who are you going out trying to say to business community and trying to sign them up? I am talking about this as often as I can I am sharing the information with as many publications as I can I am doing as much speaking as I can I am a very strong advocate for education but I am doing it from the perspective of business interest why it's important to the business community don't get me wrong I have nine grandkids I love children but I am looking at this as a businessman I am looking at it strictly dollars and cents and if we don't invest more in education now our future in terms of business and the economy is a very big future where are you finding a receptive ear among business people have you found some receptive ears? you know it's a very interesting question it's hit and miss I think the the problem, the reason this is such a problem to get people to engage in this is because it's not a change that's going to happen overnight it's a gradual the sin into a situation that once you're down there because you're talking about a demographic bubble it's going to take a long time to get out of that demographic bubble but it's a little ways away people are saying well we're not going to be in trouble next year or the year after that and therefore they're not as focused on it so that's the biggest problem that I have who's listening more to look into the future and say hey it's not just about now it's about where my business is going to be 5 years from now, 10 years from now 20 years from now the people with vision get what's in the paper the people without vision they don't see it are you finding any more reception among large businesses than small businesses? I'm a small business person and I'm struggling everyday to keep up with my business as opposed to thinking 10 years down the road on my business is it easier for middle sized businesses bigger businesses? I think it just depends on the individual I have talked to some individuals that are very well to do and have very very large companies who get it I've also talked to some individuals that own very small businesses that get it at this session I just finished talking to a room full of primarily women parents of children who happen to be women and most of them got it it's not something that they deal with on an everyday basis but they understood the principles when you're talking about helping to educate your children here's another button you can push tell me for people watching this online where can they go to find your white paper? we are basically a band of people that gather together there really is no website to give to you we've been doing this primarily through word of mouth I remember we weren't funded we do not have a formal organization we don't have allegiance to anybody we're completely non-partisan call us a group of people who just got together because they believe that education is important and the paper needed to be written I will make this pledge we'll put it up on Nowcast SA and put a link to it from here be happy to provide that information to you thank you you want to get my information? sure I cannot write it for you, I just sold my business so I am pleasantly retired thank you thank you for for yeah? speak five languages for yourself I don't know how poor my Spanish is I don't know how to say it briefly open the activity that we had mentioned in the morning we will have copies of this online so you can use them we will also have copies for this on the internet we will send them to the internet where the site will be but right now you can use it you can use this to write some notes so that's it the second thing on the first sheet the second box says Accountability Institutional Responsibility and the three bullets that we have there is that SA gives states the power to determine standards for themselves SA gives states the power to determine the standards for themselves states must set their own goals that must include tests like the star and other kinds of things like graduation rates and how well English language learners progress what I would like for you to think about I will give you a few minutes just so you can first discuss amongst yourselves the sort of things that you can do to get involved in setting these goals both in some of these things in your district so to open up these discussions with your district what do you plan to do once you go back to your district about these certain things do you even know what those goals are have the discussion started taking place so take a few minutes you've got one first thing amongst yourselves so you and then discuss it in your group I'll give you three minutes because we're in a rush don't look at me, look at yourselves I see you so Ramini is a professor at U of H downtown a potential partner with Education Café he's doing interesting things with community groups in Houston so he wears several hats as a teacher trainer at the U of H downtown but more importantly connecting with some community efforts going in the north side of Houston great okay okay okay so Ron Beebe you came here from University of Houston downtown sounds like you've got some really interesting things going on in terms of community building right we've I've been working with a community organization called the Northside Education Coalition for almost three years now and our big focus has been working on third grade literacy rates drop back just a little bit third grade literacy rates to people who are not looking at this closely is a pretty important thing because if a kid is reading at grade level at third grade they are if they're not reading at grade level they're 58% more likely to drop out so it's kind of a negative statistic so it's a really really important thing that is you can deal with before third grade right and there's there's ways to approach that and so one of the things that we've been trying to do is through the community organization try and figure out ways to do that well it's taking a little while as most things do but we've finally been able to get the feeder pattern for the high school teachers in the neighborhood all the principals from that feeder pattern together in the same room at the same time and I said how do we combine our resources you have limited resources because of funding we have limited resources of funding how can we put what we have together to improve what's going on in these students lives and so we're going to be working with them in terms of our students going and reading to their students our students will be student teaching in their schools with one of the schools that we've worked with for almost 10 years that schools always consistently perform better than the rest of the elementary schools so I don't know what's going right and I don't know if it's just us but there's got to be a connection there somewhere right so we're going to explore that by putting more of our students in those schools and I had an opportunity to meet with some folks from Idra and I shared what we were doing and they said well we got these education cafes and I said that'd be awesome I said that's the missing piece to really put the community agencies the parents and the schools together it's like the third leg of the chair and so I've been meeting with the RELIO to try to get that group organized and hopefully we'll get that started next month you know in health they call elementary school a positive deviant it deviates from the norm in a positive way correct and the key is trying to figure out what it is that went right exactly so that that can be replicated elsewhere right and I think there's several factors I think it has to do with the school leadership in terms of how it supports teachers I also think it has the fact that you've got extra hands in the classroom that school has more resources right because our students are there and they have to pay for right so that's your students are helping that one succeed and if you can sprinkle more students throughout the rest of that that's our plan that's our plan are there other things that the principals from those feeder schools are telling you it was interesting it wasn't just the fact that they needed people to come in and read to their kids but also to work with families in terms of family literacy a lot of times with Latino families parents don't necessarily read English and so they don't read to their children in English they may not read to their children in Spanish just depending so whatever we could do to kind of encourage that literacy at home to support that foundation is part of it but interestingly enough the principals are saying and here's what we can do for your students we can let your students understand the special education process we can invite them to some more professional development so it became a real reciprocal kind of relationship we're going to here's what we'll do for you I didn't get into that in the beginning I was in University of Houston but I didn't say from which college University of downtown I'm in the College of Public Service where the Department of Urban Education is housed and we're a teacher preparation program I should have gotten into that in the beginning but we'll do a little remedial here I'm kind of like the de facto dean of the College of Education that's a fascinating lineup hierarchy there that's very interesting Department of Criminal Justice and Social Work and I've already talked to some of our social work faculty about maybe how they could help I said once we get this started I think there's some great opportunities for social work students to come and do some work in those areas as well and absolutely focusing back on to the kids prior to third grade leading into third grade or then post third grade to make sure that they catch up really kind of looking at the whole spectrum K through 12 but the coalitions the North side has a quality of life agreement and as part of that one of the primary goals in the education area is to focus on third grade literacy but we're broader than that right but that's where your outcomes measurement is not for them but we can cast a broader net because it is a bigger picture exactly that may be where they're at but the picture of what needs to be addressed is much bigger it's really kind of an exciting opportunity and I think if we can get working with students and their parents and then also getting parents to become better advocates for their children that's going to have a big impact on the schools in the area so maybe 10, 15 years it takes a while but hopefully not that long hopefully we can make some very specific gains in a very short time that's absolutely terrific and also be an example for some other folks to say here's how we could tackle it in our city exactly that's really terrific and tell me you came here today to present to learn Aurelio said so we got this big thing it might be a really good idea if you came and it's been very interesting it's been fascinating I've realized how pathetic my Spanish has deteriorated because in some of the sessions it was a little more Spanish than English and I'm kind of yeah I think I got part of that but it's been a good experience definitely we were just talking if we can get this organized and on the on the ball and get going with it we're looking to have our group from Northside to come here next year to be a presenter I'm looking forward to that I'm very fortunate this is our third year of webcasting this event so I'm looking forward to seeing you next year and listening to your report great, good, thank you the people that are still left here if I could have your attention even the ones over there look over there there is still time for families and communities to make comments to the Texas Education Agency right now we've been talking about actions that you can take going back to the school district and asking to create indicators for your school district but we still can make comments up by Monday to the Texas Education Agency you see right up there where it says Essa at tea.texas.gov take down that email address and that's where you can send your comments it's Essa E-S-S-A at tea.texas.gov if each one of you makes your comments known on there you still have time to have some sort of input into the process the comments officially close on Monday officially close on Monday but send your comments there so think about the things that we just said because as it stands yes, testing still is the way that schools will grade themselves the state will make some recommendations like I said the districts will also have a voice in their own indicators that are get set but imagine if the state suddenly to say we're going to make college access and success be the other part of this indicators it would change the way that we look at the schools actually work because then they wouldn't be working towards just a test but towards getting kids in college so look at this particular email address Essa at tea.texas.gov that's where you make send your emails to send your emails to now obviously this is the official timeline by Monday that does not mean that our voices will remain hushed after that we can still provide input at our districts locally to make changes as to what the indicators can be yes, to tea if you can she said will IDRA be transcribing these recommendations that some of you are writing down hand them over to Aurelio and I we'll talk to you about what we can do Aurelio and I okay we're going to record some more people and we'd like to see if you have any recommendations or anything that you'd like to discuss concerning the things you've learned about today if you would follow Aurelio about Essa if you would follow Aurelio and they're going to be recording them right over there yes man she asked whether the comments were sent in Spanish would that be a problem no that won't be a problem sending the comments in Spanish would be fine okay is everybody going into a carbohydrate coma that's right okay, alright Aurelio do you want to wrap it up? go ahead I will now hand it over to Aurelio who will go ahead and start wrapping things up okay la clausura the 19th semana del niño how was the experience for you do we have enough information about you so we can invite you to the one next year we plan to have it not on fiesta week and on a friday because on a friday we have classrooms available that we couldn't use today because the seminar was teaching classes today does anybody want to say anything about the conference to the group no you're tired thank you very much for attending make sure that your voice goes to Austin to the Texas Commissioner if you're in another state make sure you let your state agency know what your wishes are and what you expect from schools for your children thank you for attending and go in peace oh hold on the mic isn't working so you have to tell me oh and we're going to have I forget about the pictures we're going to have group pictures in the garden before you leave hi muy buenas tardes good afternoon my name is Ana Alicia Romero I wanted to come in IDRA for another very well done session trying to inform us about everything so let's give them a very big hand of a big hand and for trying to get this information to us in Spanish tratando de traducir esta información en un idioma y una manera donde como podamos entender donde podamos entender todo esto thank you for raising the alarm IDRA also I'm here representing two places one is the Texas Association for Bilingual Education how many of you work with parents or are parents of children in bilingual programs I want to connect with you please because I'm collaborating Dabe is collaborating with IDRA for the annual Texas Association for Bilingual Education Parent Institute here will be in McAllen in October so if you're interested vamos a platicar I'm also here representing Senator Jose Menendez and thank you he represents some of you so if you have any questions or if you have any input about state education issues we're here at your disposal I know that grandparents helping grandparents of health have come to the senator about very specific issues and so we want to make our education better thank you for IDRA for being a partner thank you everybody there's something else I need to do and I totally ignored this event couldn't happen if a lot of people didn't do a lot of hard work I want to acknowledge each of my IDRA colleagues starting with Paula Johnson would you please stand Sophia Baena Paula Johnson Jocelyn Rivera Héctor Bojorquez Marc Barnett Christy David Inajosa who else is here from IDRA I didn't acknowledge ok orasi goodbye there might be a couple of those what's the background not you it's not you I can't get rid of this cough I coughed my way through testimony on the top 10% on vouchers on charter schools and ok audio is good ok so they just wrapped up this session and after all sorts of terrific panels today and a record breaking attendance at this right I mean David this is David Inajosa of IDRA and David this is an amazing crowd yeah it's a fabulous opportunity to be able to have 300 parents participate in this on top of everything else this is Fiesta Week here in San Antonio but to have schools to have the city to have the community and parents really committed to trying to explore different options that are out there to be stronger advocates for their children in schools is always a welcomed experience as part of especially special because of the numbers and on top of what else is going on that's impacting many of these families both the national and state level right right but when you have that many people here that also means that that many people can also turn around until their legislators and what's important to them right? yeah absolutely there's certain sessions that were involved you know for classrooms school based but there's also some policy related issues that bleed over and you know all it takes is one person to start a movement and I think it's really necessary right now yeah absolutely and the idea being that instead of playing defense and saying don't cut this don't cut this that at some point people will be able to say we need to invest in education yeah there absolutely has to be an offensive plan to get the state to invest in public schools we always say the best way to improve public schools is by improving public schools not diverting money you know to private charter school operators or you know vouchers or you know really undermine public schooling we need to support the educators we especially need to support the parents and the students and you know this definitely provides avenues of that support absolutely absolutely well take the energy and fly with it absolutely thanks so much yes of course of course of course come closer okay so I'm here with Bristol and Delia sorry and both of you are with grandparents raising children so it's something a little bit different than most people assume the audience is here many of the people in the audience are moms or parents right but you're grandparents raising children which is a pretty big constituency abuelitas well what's happening is that everywhere we go we go to school functions family encounters and stuff like that and they're always addressing the parents not and leaving out the grandparents that are our raising grandchildren which now we are parents so we're making awareness and we're making people aware that there's grandparents out there that are raising grandchildren is to redirect their attention that it's not just parents raising them absolutely and you're part of a large group of people we are now we have been creating support groups and advocating for grandparents that don't have rights whether it's legal financial assistance or emotional support and so we're we've now started our third support group in a year and so changing policies and legislation and we're going into the schools also because that's where all the grandparents and the children end up so we're going into schools and trying to start support groups there so that the grandparents once they're in school they get all the information they need at the school because they can't be driving around and going from place to place to find what they need so we're trying to get everything together and one like a one stop shopping center where they call in this is what they need they call in they get connected to these things because it's very hard for them and also working on legal problems we're working on three on the financial and the help to help them with those things it takes there's a lot a lot to be done but I think when all these different organizations and nonprofits can come together and it's like they say it's a bigger voice and you can be heard and and it matters you know they come together absolutely to learn a lot today a lot I would really learn that it takes the village to raise the child and a lot you know the school is a very important aspect of our children for their education and their well-being in the future and community is an important part of school yes so we need to be involved in all these things that have to do and that's grandparents you know we thought we went through with that but now we're back in school and trying to get involved in all these things that have to do with the school and the children and all that so a lot of these things that are there you know or either we need to change them make new laws or start new laws or maybe add amendments to them to also help the grandparents because like she said Ms. Leather said it's just the parents and they think of the parents and when they think of seniors and grandparents they think of the ones that are going to the bingos and going you know to do ceramics and all that we're the different kind of taking care of our kids and stuff so there's a lot of health and a lot of things that need to be done and the name of your organization again San Antonio grandparents raising thank you thank you