 Thank you to Felix, Dr. Montes, and I just want to thank Linda Cantu. Linda, we are so grateful for your leadership in this program and inspired by it. And I just can't say enough good things about Linda. Thank you, Linda. I wanted to, yes, and it's my great pleasure to introduce Council Member Saldana. For the benefit of those of us who are here just this morning or might be joining us via an outcast. Our friends from that outcast are here. Just to mention that the Colobite Youth Program is a research-based, internationally claimed drop-up prevention model. It started by idea right here in San Antonio, and we had a wonderful visit of kindred elementary at South Sound this week, where we want to thank our partners at South Sound by Steve for their leadership and organizing that visit for us. And put a vision in implementing this program, the benefit of the students that they have for so many years. The program, as you know, keeps 98% of its participants in school, and it has benefited over 650,000 children, educators, and family members. I also, for the Councilman's benefit, want to recognize the folks that are in this room today, because it is you all, in addition to South Sound ISD, every leaders from districts around the country, who are here with us. So if you all might, just one person from each group, just raise your hand and say where you're from, what district and what city you're from. Let's start with the back table over here, the follow-up table. We'll start it? Yeah. I'm Donna Thorpe, and I'm from Detroit. And I work at Carson McCann in the quiet side of the park. Good morning and welcome. Detroit Public Schools is here with us. I'm very joy and we're from Hatcher County ISD, that's the high school. Hatcher County, welcome. Thank you. Good morning. I'm from Hatcher County. Welcome. Thank you. Bridget Brown, John Stokey, school side of the local park. Thank you for being your sophomore of California this year. And I'm from California, and I really appreciate it. I like L.A. side too. Where's L.A.? Charles Smith, New Oakland World Academy, Los Angeles, New Pikes, New Yorkshire. Los Angeles. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Steve Dahlsson, Proposal Art. Thank you so much for being here. It's a welcome one from New York. Mildred Walton, and Tommy Bradford, Chicago. Chicago Public Schools. Thank you for being here. Good morning. I'm from Los Angeles and I represent the Hoya ISD. We implemented the Coca-Cola Vanity Program and made up our middle schools. And with me I have a team of colleagues. They are our teacher coordinators, our counselors who just have different roles implementing this program. Thank you for hosting us. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here from the ISD. I'm from Los Angeles, Sacramento, New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Eppler County, La Hoya, and South San. There are many other programs around the country. And I just want to thank everyone, everyone in this room. It's really, it's your work. It's bringing the benefit of this program to students. Thank you for that. Laurie, I just want to mention that the representative from South San ISD is also here. South San ISD. Thank you so much. And thank you again for hosting us. It was a wonderful visit. We had to keep an eye on the ministry. You know, probably there were two of our tutors there. We met our tutors and we had to see them in the duties. As Linda mentioned, as Dr. Coulton mentioned, the Idyric Public Life Youth Program has recently named a national Hispanic education bright spot. And it's one of a number of recognition and awards that the program has received, but of course, the most important impact of the program is for the students themselves. I want to welcome Council Member Saldana, who has a special relationship with this program. He has a longstanding commitment to educational opportunity for students in District 4 and across the city. He's brought tremendous leadership, a number of issues, and I especially want to recognize his leadership around curriculum quality and access. He's a lifelong resident of the City Council of District 4, a proud graduate of South San High School. And after graduating from high school, Council Member Saldana received a great millennium full academic scholarship to attend Stanford University because of his view here from California. At Stanford, Council Member Saldana worked with the John W. Gardner Center at Stanford Institute for Research on Educational Policy and Programs to promote educational advancement through collaborative research. As I mentioned, he has close and unique ties to this program and I'm so delighted to welcome Council Member Saldana. Well, good morning, everyone. Good morning. This is one of my responsibilities as a City Council member, as an elected official in San Antonio, to do an official welcome to San Antonio. So welcome and bienvenidos a San Antonio to those who are visiting us from other states, other cities in the city of Texas. This is an exciting opportunity for me. I want to just take you back. So I've been in office now since 2011. I would have been 24 when I was first elected to the City Council. I was the youngest Council Member ever elected. Now I'm an old man. It's been four years. And I want to take you back even further than 2011. I want to take you back to 1992. And in 1992, I remember serving correctly, Bill Clinton was in office, gas was under a dollar, a number of things were happening then. But back in the South St. School District, I was in the second grade and I was first introduced to the program. And I didn't know much about what the program's name or goal or intentions were at that time. All I knew at that time was that they were sending over what for me was these amazingly tall goddesses from the middle school. And they would come and talk to us and who would share their wisdom, who would help us when we were going through our math and our science and our tutoring. A lot of them asking questions of us as second graders that had never been asked of us. Things like what we plan to do beyond school, whether we plan to go to college. I remember having that question asked to me by one of the, I believe at that time was a seventh or eighth grader who was at the neighboring middle school to my elementary. And realizing that that was the first time I started thinking about what a career was like. At that time, I thought I wanted to be a physicist. And I actually, now that I've been in office for four years, I probably should have stuck to that route. Unfortunately, I was introduced to multivariable calculus at my first year in college. And I figured I was going to get this. But it has been exciting for me to watch the growth of this program, the impact it's had rippling through communities like Chicago or LA or Odessa that make this feel really amazing in the way that it's rippling through our community. And I just want to fast forward back to 2012, 2013, the last few years that I've been in office. One of the most important, one of the most fulfilling moments of my term in office is when I get the opportunity to talk to students. And I talk to students every chance I get. And oftentimes we are sitting in a gymnasium in South San or another one of my schools and districts that I represent. And there are two or three hundred students who are all anxious and excited to be there. And you really have to be on your A game and you go and talk to these elementary students. If you don't have energy and you're not jumping and yelling you're not going to really grab your attention. But I enjoy talking to them about what's possible and what it is that is on their horizon. Here's a moment that I get struck with. Oftentimes on the end I say, well how many of you all are going to go to graduate from high school and they all raise their hands? And how many of you all are going to go off to college and every one of them is raising their hand even further? And how many of you all are going to be doctors or lawyers or engineers and each one of them is slow outpacing the next person who tries to raise their hand even further? And I recall that there were times in which I was sitting two or 93 out in those gymnasiums saying the same thing. That I would graduate from high school and I would go to college and I would find a career. But at that time I was doing it just to raise my hand. I didn't have a real sense of what it would take to graduate from high school. I didn't have a real sense of what it would be like to go to college. I represent an area that is very blue collar, hard working blue, working class families where if I would have asked someone tell me about the experience of going to college I would have had a better chance of running into somebody who could tell me about the experience of going to prison and being in jail and being in carsuit. Those are the real facts that I think some of our students are facing every single day. They don't know doctors or lawyers or engineers. They know more humble occupations and that's why they need hearing adults, older peers. The challenge is to think about what's out there, what's beyond their own reach or their own mental grasp of what's possible for them. And that's what the idea I would say I heard program that has done for students like me and thousands of other students, believe me, I thought this was just a South Sand playground when I was growing up. I thought about how far the reach extended. And I'll end with saying why exactly it's important by telling you just another story about my current office. Oftentimes they allow me, as a city council, to do a lot of fun stuff. You can ride along with our care officer, you can ride along with our parks department. If you wanted to, you could ride along in the back of a solid waste truck to pick up garbage all day. But one of the ride-alongs that I remember of the last few years that I recall as a really compelling moment was when I was right along with our police officers. And at the end of the night, we end up booking somebody who we take to, I think the phrase for most folks, is you're going to get taken downtown. And you get taken downtown, your professional facility that is always sub-zero degrees, it's freezing cold, and you get held up in an area where you've done something that night to warrant the fact that you've been locked up or detained. And you walk into a room where there's about six or seven different rooms, all with clear walls, and there's probably about eight or nine men in each one of them, there's even a section where they have women. And I recall walking through one of them and not wanting to look in because if each one of these folks is 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., these folks are not having a great day. And some of them are probably still upset and banging on the doors and windows, so you walk by pretty quickly. But at one of the windows, I turned in and because somebody was yelling at me, they said, friend, Ray Shaldanya, Ray, Ray Shaldanya. And I look over and it was one of my friends from middle school and high school. And that wasn't, you know, he was actually a person who put a smile on my face because he said, you're my counselor, you're my counselor. But it was somebody who was behind him that didn't show his face, but I could see who he was. He just sort of huddled in the back and he was one of my best friends. And that's who he is from the third grade. And I've known him all my life. And you think about where it is, our paths will be as if we don't go into some colleague of his who's carrying the adults who can show us a path that is possible. And it's very clear to me that now I represent a community and I've seen things every single day and you realize that there is so much that we need to be doing to unlock potential. And it's amazing to see adults who are in the business of unlocking that potential through their work and through the work of the program you can help operate with. So I wanted to be here to share a few stories and hopefully a few laughs about how great it can be because there's a positive rate of sunlight at the end of it for folks who get to have the opportunity to see things that they wouldn't have otherwise. And now I get to stand before you as an old veteran on the council. I just turned 29 last week. It's funny, I'll end with this quick story. When I first ran, it's crazy what happened because when I unlocked the potential of some of these young people and they wanted to do crazy things but I was 23 and I wanted to run for office and I started knocking on doors. The first door I ever knocked on, a woman comes to the door and I say, Hello Sherman, my name is Ray Southline. I'm running for city council. I want to represent you. I graduated from South San. I know these neighborhoods. I want to represent you. City council will make your community go to place and she stops and looks at me and she asks me. She said, now if you say you're running for the San Antonio, you're saying council, you said you're running for the student council. It's been a wonderful journey for me. I had 3,000 more doors to knock on but it's been a wonderful journey for me here in San Antonio and I hope you'll unblock a lot of these leaders who exist in your communities back where you're working. So with that, thank you so much for being here and for the work you're doing. I'll turn this back over to Dr. Torres.