 This is one of the most significant and far-reaching educational partnerships in the history of the City of Portland. And not only does this put us in a leadership role for the state, but it catapults us to a leadership position nationally in school partnerships, educational partnerships, and community partnerships. And let me tell you why this is important. Last week, the New York Times ran a front-page article and said that a college degree now is a new high school diploma. That across the country, employers are hiring people with college degrees for entry-level positions. And if you simply have a high school diploma, your opportunity to compete even for entry-level positions has been compromised. A couple weeks ago, Dana Connors wrote an op-ed piece in the Portland Press Herald, and he pointed out the importance of early childhood education. And in that op-ed piece, he cited, he said, that 60%, 60% of young people between three and five years old don't have the basic skills to enter kindergarten. And you know what one of those basic skills are? They can't count from one to ten. They can't recognize letters and the alphabet. And lastly, just yesterday in the main Sunday telegram, Chuck Lawton, who is a noted economist and has written regularly in the main Sunday telegram, talked about the future of Portland in terms of our business and economic development. And he said that Portland had a number of good things that were happening. But he said in order to sustain what is happening in Portland that is moving in the right direction, we need to have more partnerships with the business community and with the education community. And that's why we're here today. And we're here today because we want to make sure that every person, young person in Portland has a pathway to higher education. We want to make sure that every young person who enters kindergarten has the skills to be successful in school. And we want to forge those partnerships with the business community, the education community, to make sure that we have jobs and a robust economy to meet the demands of the future. When I was in the legislature for eight years, I served on the education committee and I chaired the education committee. And every year, every year, the people from early childhood development community would come in and say, invest in us because we're the most important part of somebody's education. That would be followed by all the superintendents who would come in and say, invest in us because we're the most important part of education. They'd then be followed by the presidents of the community college and the university saying, invest in us because we're the most important part of the education community. And what ended up happening was that one year we'd invest in one and not in the other. Or we'd do something that would work on one side but not on the other side. What we're here to do today in Portland is to say it is all important. From cradle to career is important. And Portland Connect Ed is going to make sure that we have early childhood development, that everybody by the time they're in third grade is reading grade level every student, that every student as much as possible will graduate from high school and that they'll have a pathway to higher education. So again, I'm very excited about this partnership and one of the things I want to point out and make very clear is that because of a generous grant from the Gorman Foundation, we're going to be able to do this without any additional cost to Portland taxpayers or to the public at this particular point. I'm not going to be held to that promise forever but at this particular point we're going to be able to forge this partnership. We're going to be able to move forward with this partnership and we're going to do it within existing resources and with the support from the Gorman Foundation. So again, I'm very pleased to be here. I think this is an important day for Portland and I think this is an important day for students and for parents and the citizens of Portland because it really defines where we need to go, where we want to go as a community over the next five to ten years. And so it's my great pleasure at this point to introduce Suzanne McCormack, the Executive Director of United Way, who's going to talk a little bit more about early childhood education. So thank you, Suzanne. Where's Pathan? Good morning. The United Way of Greater Portland is so pleased to be part of Portland ConnectEd. A very significant part of our vision for the community involves having all kids succeed in school and as Mayor Brennan said, we know success in school starts very, very, very early even before kids are born and their pathway to success depends on what those first steps down that path look like. We know that kids, 85% of brain development happens in children before they get to kindergarten and so if we only start thinking about what they're going to do in kindergarten when they get to kindergarten, we have failed them. At United Way of Greater Portland, we have been investing in early childhood education for the past many, many decades but what's different and important about Portland ConnectEd is this is about connecting what we've been doing with what so many other people are doing. We've had some really strong success over the last couple years in bringing other funders together. The SAML Cohen Foundation which is here, JTG which is here and other funders who also care about early childhood development and education. We've been meeting and we've been working together and planning and connecting that now to Portland ConnectEd is, I think, going to really help move our work forward faster and that's what's most important for kids. We also know that parents are the first teachers of kids and so part of what we'll be focusing on is not only how do we improve the quality of pre-K for kids, but also how do we help empower parents in our communities to be the best teachers they can be for kids. They start from the moment their children are born and we also need to focus on their ability to be the best teachers. We are really looking forward to getting started and so much has already begun. We are part of a group called Starting Strong which is a subcommittee of Portland ConnectEd. Later this month we'll be bringing in some colleagues from Rhode Island, Springfield Mass and Worcester Mass to help us learn about what they've done to connect early childhood and a really important part of that is not just getting kids ready for kindergarten but making sure that once they get to school that they're going to have success reading that grade three and here to talk a little bit more about that is our great partner and friend Tony Chippalone who is president of the JTG Foundation. Well, it really is an honor and a privilege to be here this morning and I'm pleased to say that we are here to pledge the support of the John T. Gorman Foundation in making Portland ConnectEd the success that we all believe it can be and it's a success that we know is only going to be achieved if we commit ourselves to ensuring that we work together to make sure that Portland's kids have the resources, the supports and the opportunities they need to meet critical milestones. Now, Suzanne just noted, we've got to do everything that we can to ensure that kids are born healthy, that they have access to quality, early childhood development experiences and that they arrive at school ready to learn and succeed. But arriving ready is not sufficient. In fact, it's only the beginning of the job. If kids are really going to succeed academically, it's also essential that we make sure that they learn to read proficiently, especially by the time they complete the third grade. Why is this such an important milestone? It's because third grade is a turning point for when kids transition from learning to read to reading to learn. And its importance is borne out in study after study. Nationally, we know that 74% of students who fail to read proficiently by the end of third grade falter in later grades and that these children are four times more likely to drop out of school than kids who have succeeded at that grade level. In Portland, we know that about two-thirds of our kids, 64%, do in fact reach proficiency by the end of third grade, which is slightly below the state average. But what may be even more telling and more important in my mind is the fact that this statistic marks some significant disparities when we consider that only 48% or less than half of our poorest students achieve this important milestone compared to 81% of our higher income students. So we've got work to do on this front. But to be successful, it requires that we all work together locally. It requires that we work with nonprofit partners and requires that we connect with national efforts such as the campaign for grade level reading so we can access the best type of technical assistance that we can. So for all of us here today, the message is pretty clear and the connections are obvious. If more young adults are going to succeed in college in the workforce, we've got to commit to improving our graduation rates. But doing so means that we've got to be equally committed to improving our third grade reading proficiency rates, which means that we've got to be as committed to ensuring that kids get the developmental experiences that they need from birth to five. So when some, it all connects and that is why we're here today and let me say that you have the commitment of the John T. Gorman Foundation to do all that we can to work with our partners to close the readiness gap, to support efforts to engage parents, promote innovative approaches for advancing literacy for our youngest learners, and address the factors that we know may inhibit or facilitate success. We are proud to stand here as part of what appears to be an unprecedented partnership that can help every child in Portland succeed no matter where they live, no matter where they came from, no matter what language they speak, that they can have the support and opportunities they need to dream, to succeed, and to thrive in the future. And there is nothing that I can think of that is more important to the future of the city of Portland. So with that, I'm pleased to introduce Dr. Emmanuel Koch, the superintendent of the Portland Public Schools. Good morning. This is really an exciting adventure initiative for Portland Public Schools to be a part of. With all of our partners here in Portland ConnectEd, we really understand that we're going to make a difference in the lives of young people. Let me first share with you one of my fundamental core beliefs. I believe that it takes an entire community to ensure the success of our public schools. But Portland ConnectEd, as a game changer, has done is taking that belief one step further. And that is to ensure the success of each and every student from cradle to college to career to citizenship. And so, what we want to do is to identify as one of our key goals is the graduation rate. And that is to ensure that we have a graduation rate of 90% or higher by 2016. And we can do this by creating and offering high school experiences for students that's designed to challenge as well as support our students at all levels. I'd like to take a moment to really identify our founding partners in this work. The City of Portland, Creative Portland, Samuel Cohen Foundation, John T. Gorman Foundation, Opportunity Alliance, Portland Public Library, Portland Regional Chamber, United Way of Greater Portland, and Portland Education Association, along with Southern Maine Community College, and the University of Southern Maine. As you can see, through this collaboration that is unique to our city, Portland ConnectEd will break through our classroom experiences for students by taking learning beyond the classroom walls and then bringing in national experts business acumen and community leadership together to augment and support Portland schools creating unparalleled educational experiences for our students. Now, unique and exceptional experiences for our students is becoming the norm in Portland. Most recently, our students who are represented today had an opportunity to attend the Camden Conference. And thanks to the help of Samuel Cohen Foundation, our students were able to Skype prior to this conference with our U.S. Senator, former Senator George Mitchell, who also served as a special envoy to the Middle East, and learned firsthand from international journalists, statesmen and women, diplomats, military intelligence officers, and renowned academicians. These opportunities, these expanded opportunities, that take for us to prepare our students not only for to participate in a local or national economy, but to participate globally. And so, we're looking to really prepare our students to do college level work in high school. And that's why we're going to expand our advanced placement courses. That's why we have our partnerships with dual enrollment to really ensure that our students are prepared for that next step. The mayor talked about it that in the past, high school diploma was the ticket. Was the finish line, if you will. We know today that that's no longer the case. That if we are to again ensure the success of each and every student, we need to prepare them to participate and be able to succeed in post-secondary. Some of that work has already begun in Portland Public Schools. In collaboration with Nellie May, it made a significant investment in our school district, along with our partners, Jobs Remain graduates, learning works, and community leadership engagement committee. We begin to remodel our high schools. As you know, Casco Bay is focused on equity standard learning model. Daring High School was the first high school in the state of Maine that partnered with the International Study Schools Network and one of 30 in New England. And Portland High School has also partnered with Johns Hopkins town development to create a ninth grade academy, but also to build upon that in terms of career academies. All in an effort again to ensure that our students graduate prepared for post-secondary endeavors. Along with that, it takes really a strong partnership from the business community. And here to share with you how the business community will support Portland Connect Ed, I'm going to invite our acting chairman, Chris Hall, to come forward. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. About six months ago, Manny Cog walked into a room full of business people. Not quite as many as are here today, but 15 or 20. And he asked a simple question. He said, whose kids are they? Are they yours? Well, the same silence greeted Manny as people tried to process that. I thought schools were something that brought us to workforce. In the business community, we sit back for schools to bring a workforce to us. Not anymore. Not if you want to survive the next 10 years of economic change. Increasingly, in the last two years, I would say, the region's business community has become more and more engaged in owning the outcomes of education. Not simply sitting back, criticizing, waiting for a result, but engaging personally with parents and most particularly students. Our role here today is to help to provide some of the resources that are necessary to answer the question, whose students are these? That may require some non-traditional funding. That may require some solutions that typically you wouldn't think the business community might be involved in. Helping with day care. Helping with transportation. Educational outcomes? No, not yet. But through this endowment that we're discussing here today, we intend to provide the resources whatever they may be to help the folks in this region succeed in their academic efforts so that they can be a part of our economic community. This ties together well with the city's existing economic development and vision plan. It ties together well with efforts to grow the economy and certainly with the mayor's own growing Portland initiative. None of those things can succeed unless we get this right. And to get this right, these kids have to be ours, the business communities, not just the education communities. That's why we're here today. That's why we're proud to be supporters of this initiative and I'm going to hand it back to Mayor Brennan, and what I'd like to do is just briefly do introductions starting over here with President Cantor. Ron Cantor, President, Southern Main Community College. Michael Stevenson, Provost, USM. Steve Bugoni, Director, Portland Public Library. Jennifer Hutchins, Executive Director of Creative Portland. Tony Chippellong, President of the John T. Gorman Foundation. Hello, I'm Louise Marsden and I'm representing the Opportunity Alliance today. Suzanne McCormick, President of Portland. Resolve Portland Regional Chamber. Nandy Cox, Superintendent of Portland Public Schools. Nancy Brennan, Senior at Portland Foundation. Leifard Lee, Senior at Portland High School. Amanda Williams, Senior at Portland High School. Lillian Mohamed, Jr. at Portland High School. Elias Nasser, Senior at Portland High School. Chip Weber, Senior at Portland High School. Joe McDonnell, Dean at USM. Kathleen Seuss, President of the Portland Education Association. Thank you. Is anybody else wants to introduce themselves? Mike Dixon? Mike Dixon, Executive Director of Portland Connected from cradle to career and happy to be on board. Nandy, who were you on board with? David. David Gallant, Chief Academic Officer of Portland Public Schools. I've never known David before. Aaron Odom, I'm providing staff to start a strong subcommittee of Portland Connected. Anybody else? Carter? Carter Front of the United Way of Greater Portland we're closely with the starting strong subcommittee. I'm Chanda Turner, I'm the coordinator of Family and Community Engagement for Portland Public Schools. If I could, I'd just note in the back row we have Eric Moynihan from Jobs for May Grads and Portland High School. Kathy Marquette Gerard, Assistant Principal here at Portland High and Glenn Nureback, Director of the Mentoring Alliance here at Portland High. I'm very happy to have all of you here. Well, thank you very much and again, we're more than happy to answer any questions that we're able to at this point. Randy. I'm just wondering if you might be able to give us some practical examples of how this partnership might actually work rather than sort of the tech stuff. Obviously the childhood, the importance of childhood education is important. And I can go into great detail about that but I won't at this particular point. But broadly speaking the intent at this point is to benchmark those skills that we think students need to have to enter kindergarten. So we hopefully by 2015, 2020 be able to say X percentage of students entering the Portland School System will be able to do X, Y and Z. We haven't done that benchmarking yet but that's the work that Erin will be doing with her group. The second thing obviously that's already been mentioned is that we want 100% of students in the Portland School System by the time that they've completed third grade to be able to read at third grade level. That's the second benchmark. The third benchmark is that we want according to state law we have to have 90% of our students graduate from Portland School System by 2016. So we don't want to meet and exceed that benchmark. And lastly the other benchmark will be that we don't want any student that graduates from the Portland School System to believe that they cannot go on to higher education because there are financial barriers to them. So our benchmark will be that any student that graduates from the Portland School System that would like to go to the community college like to go to the University of Southern Maine that they'll have the financial resources to be able to do that. So I guess in summary we're looking to have every student enter kindergarten be able to meet the tasks that they're presented in kindergarten. We want every student to graduate from the Portland School System and we want every student to have post-secondary educational opportunities. Is there a roadmap to get there? How do you actually do that or is that the work together? Well, that's why we have this partnership that has all the different pieces that we're going to be putting together. And again I think one of the key aspects to this is that we will be establishing community benchmarks that we would be looking to to see whether or not we're successful with this venture. And that's the purpose of this partnership is to create that roadmap. Yeah, well the first benchmark, how do you reach out to kids before they get to kindergarten if they're not already in the school system? Right, well one of the things that we're very fortunate in Portland we have one of the widest arrays of early childhood educational opportunities of any city any place in the state of Maine. So part of it is first developing a network of all those resources so that there's coordination between the various early childhood education initiatives. Then secondly it's working and reaching out to parents. We now have through the Portland school department a parent community outreach coordinator who will really be working to identify parents and to identify children that we want to be part of this early childhood initiative. But I think it's important to say and Chris Hall mentioned this we're talking about every student we're talking about every parent we want to reach out and make sure that every child, every parent in the city of Portland believes and is touched by our early childhood education system. So one of the very first things we need to do is turn it a little bit more into a system and we need to make sure that we're reaching out and touching all those families and all those students and that they have the opportunities to develop those skills to be successful when they enter kindergarten. You mentioned the financial help that's available to students who want to go to universities and colleges. Can you say a little bit more about how what the means testing is like for that or what kind of criteria? Well given the fact that we haven't raised the first dollar yet we're a little bit away from that. Don't you have the money for that from the department? No, no, money we have from Gorham just allows us to keep and establish this partnership. We still need to go out and probably raise somewhere between two and five million dollars for the endowment. And in that process of raising that money we will have a committee and we'll be sitting down with the chamber to put together those requirements and to put together the benchmarks that we'll want, that we'll apply to the endowment. So we haven't decided yet exactly the parameters in terms of who qualifies or how extensive the support might be. Do you have a date by which you would have to have that money? Certainly by the end of the year we hope to be able to do that. Again it's kind of an evolutionary process of us putting together the fundraising plan and then at the same time we'll be looking at how we can best use that money because obviously we're not going to wait until we raise five million dollars in order to start dispense money but at the same time we have to have a critical mass of money before we can start making funds available. Elliot. My name is Elliot Burden. What part of the media are you I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I didn't hear it. I was a teacher so I'm a thought effort. These organizations it makes me wary. I'd like there to be an emphasis on a simple idea which ain't easy which is stimulating kids minds. Three words. Stimulating kids minds. Any level. Pre-school. Whatever we're talking about that should be the goal. And not just ultimately it makes me nervous when I hear about organizational things because business people and so on who are organizational that's their job, that's what they do to get the real goal which is Johnny and Mary and stimulating their minds and that's easy to remember and I'd like to see that as the philosophical goal everything that's grouped up. I appreciate that and we will certainly you're standing right next to the person no the other way Elliot. Any other questions thank you very much I appreciate it and we look forward to updating you and to continue to engage everybody in this process. So thank you very much.