 We've been so many people are trying to forget or turn their backs on kids in general, and particularly this population of students in our American schools. A member of the Office of Civil Rights is here, and Gerardo I specifically asked him to be here because I think it is important that we know that we're not talking about something fly by night or just coincidental or something that's unimportant that we might attend to when we get around to it. We are talking about how we prepare the citizens of this community, this state, this region, and this nation to take a confident, step into a confident role in a part of it. And if we aren't helping other people to have these conversations and then to know how to translate these conversations into action, we will be short changing our young men and women. I always say to folks as I talk to them around the country, who do you think you are that you can write kids off? I mean just who do you think you are to think this group of students is so unimportant that you shouldn't be spending every moment of your waking time and effort to ensure that they have every opportunity they can to be competent, to be ready to go on to college, to successfully move into their careers and build a good life for themselves as parts of communities. You have no right to do anything less than that. And we have to constantly remind people because they are, and I have found it, being a director of an equity assistance center, many people who might try to write off those quote unquote undesirables among them. Because they make them look bad or because they show them up for what they're not doing for them or because they just don't seem to fit into the right places in the right kinds of ways and we can't seem to fix them enough to be ready for whatever it is we want them to do in school. And I keep saying just turn around and look them in the face and see who they are and say do I have what it takes to really be of service to this year at Lerner and if I don't, let me get myself fixed up so I can do a better job with and for them. We have to do that kind of thing and remind people that they are not there by accident. They are part of the community. They are there. In fact, they're being there as a reason why we can even say that we're serving them at all. We have to serve them with their best interests at heart, not our best interests at heart. And that means that we have to do some fixing up of ourselves and the institutions around these kids that are supporting them well and the policies and the laws and the legislators and those people who are about everything else except doing right by kids. And when they do, we support them and when they don't, we want to get them out of the way. We want to fix them up if we can. But if we can't, for whatever reasons, we have to get them out of the way and that even means going back to some of the issues we talked about years and years ago. I mean, there are people's predilections and their biases and their racism about these kids and their classism about them, as you said, that they are just not good enough and they are undeserving. And so we shouldn't spend time with them and on them. We have to get past all of that and begin creating new kinds of conversations. I'm glad, happy that you were willing to take time today to begin those conversations and know the things that we need to be reminding people about where learners whose first language is not English or as they find themselves in our public schools or kids, similarly situated because as one of our earlier speakers were saying, it is about language and more than that. It's about class and race and who they're connected to and where they live and what their histories are, all of which is a part of what needs to be faced in order to make schools work better for all learners. And as we say at IDRA and our president and CEO says all the time to ashore, not just inshore, but ashore that every learner knows that he and she or she is going to be given the best opportunity they can. That should be guaranteed to them when they walk in the door. They shouldn't have to fight for that. They shouldn't have to crawl for that. They shouldn't have to beg for that. It should just be there because they are there. We ashore good education for every one of these learners. We ashore that good teachers are in front of them. We ashore that powerful leadership helps to structure the environment for teaching and for learning. We ashore that when they leave this place, they're not going to be worse often when they enter. They're going to be better off because we worked to make sure that those kinds of things have happened. So I'll be very interested to hear what your conversations have been around your tables and these powerful representatives who sat with you are going to be representing the best of what you had to say. And notice that some of you were writing down individual thoughts and so forth on your sheets. If there are any of those that you want to turn in, the whole proceeding will benefit from those comments you have to say as well. I do want to start with question number five. I was directed to start with question number one. I think I prefer to start with question number five. And since I'm in charge, I can do what I want. I meant that in a good way. Okay, listen. Why is this issue important to address right now? Not tomorrow. Or I heard somebody say, well, once we take care of all the systemic stuff, then we can deal with this stuff. I said, no, no, no, no, no, you can't. I mean, we took all of that time. Look how many more kids we will have written off. I mean, just think about it. So no, as we say at IDRA, we know, and others have said, we have to kind of fly this plane while we're building it. We have to do this stuff now. Why is this important right now? Becky, what did your table have to say? What do you have to say? Well, actually, we identified that we talked about Toyota, for example, having to import employees from other communities because we didn't have the numbers of prepared students who could get out of school, get a job there, and take one of those great positions, well-paying positions. In the end, Palo Alto Community College had to create a program with Toyota to create a new engineering robotics STEM training program quickly to prepare those new workers. So we felt that the risk was not only that we're losing students, but that they are not prepared to be the workforce of the future. And specifically, the minority students who are emerging as the majority in this country have to build the economy of the United States. And we're not going to be prepared as a nation to do that. Latino kids specifically will be one third of all children by 2025, of the children under 18. So I don't know how many of them are ELL learners, but a lot. So we're concerned about the condition of this nation and its future leaders if we don't take action now. It's possible. What would you add to that? I assume you're asking because I represent HB. Yes. Well, I think it's in line with what you said already. The fact of the matter is that the nation and the skill set that needs to move forward is predicated on education. At the end of the day, we acknowledge that without education and without educating, every single one of the prospective partners out there that might come work for us, we will be at a disadvantage. Not only as a company and our fellow companies. I talked to Toyota. I have partners Blue Cross Blue Shield and other people that have large corporations here, Tesoro Valero and my colleagues. We all acknowledge that it's not really seen as something to think about. And it should be seen as the same thing as when you're investing in a 401k and you're looking at investments for the future, education should be seen the same way. Because in many ways, that is exactly what you're doing. You are trying to ensure that the payoff at the end of the road when a child is career ready starts at the very beginning. And so education for all kids, regardless of language, but particularly for those that have the extra set of skill set, which is a second language. Because that's how we see it. We see it as you already come with a skill set. You have another language already under your belt. We have partners already my age trying to learn Spanish as an additional skill set because it's worth something now in the marketplace. So as far as we're concerned, this is an investment in kids that are already skilled. How do we ensure that they don't drop off? And a lot of it has to do with securing the future. We had a really interesting discussion, not only about meeting workforce demands, but also making sure that we prepare ELL students for college. So it was earlier discussed. It's not only about providing adequate funding for ELL students, but also making sure that they're getting that high quality curriculum. And Olga Kaufman, who's a longtime community advocate here in San Antonio, talked about the Levi plant closing. And so you might have had a lot of people graduating from high school that were ELL students and maybe weren't set on going to college when they started at Levi. But when that Levi plant shut down, they did not all have won the language skills, but also the high quality curriculum in their education to go out then and find other jobs that were comparable. And so that was a big part of our discussion, particularly around the new legislation from last session in House Bill 5, and making sure that there is that high quality curriculum, that expectation for all students, including ELL students. When I started this, good afternoon, and welcome to our beautiful campus. We had a challenge just to rein in all of the energy and the great ideas that we had at our table. So as we move forward, it was a great difficult challenge and what's it called a difficult pleasure to be able to synthesize all the information. One of the things in terms of this question is that we have a field that's maturing. There are a lot of people who are doing work, not enough still in the area of English language learning, in the area of educating heritage speakers of Spanish and heritage speakers from a lot of different areas. Some companies are coming up with the capacity to develop materials that are much higher in quality curriculum that is in Spanish, right? So I think the time is now that best practices are beginning to emerge. There's a collection and a group of people across a lot of different areas who are interested in languages other than English and across the professions that now's the time to seize that moment and to work with those resources that we do have. There's a comment from, yeah. And by the way, would you take a moment also before you make your table's comments to talk about some of the most current and most recent guidance around English language learners? I'm not sure. If everybody's aware that there is updated guidance with regards to ELL students in our public schools. And if you don't know this, you might want to go online at the Office for Civil Rights or the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and look up this guidance. But if you'll take a moment and talk about what it is, what it does. And in fact, if you'll go back even to the guidance around parents of English language learners, if you could just take a moment and do that there, all right? Sure, Dr. Scott. First of all, let me answer the question, which was number five, right? Hold your mic up. Why do it now? And I think the stuff tells into your question is basically from our perspective, it's the law. It's the law now. It's not something that is really a choice. Since 1964, Civil Rights Act Title VI has said you have to grant children meaningful access to an education. And at least since 1970, with the now memorandum, court agreed, the Supreme Court said yes, that's the case. And I think that it would be overstating if I said that everybody does that. We probably would not be here. So it's not being done across the board. So that's another reason why it should be done right now. And it should have been done many decades ago. And I think everybody here, I see a lot of people that I respect that have worked throughout, at least in Texas and elsewhere, that have strived to make it happen, but there's always new things that come up. And talking about the guidance, this guidance that came out is a joint guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. And this is, in fact, the first joint guidance that comes out from both departments. Previously, there were three memorandums that the OCR office worked with, which was a 71, or 74, and then basically an 85 memo and a 1991 memo. And that's what we're using for enforcement. And this clarifies substantially those also memorandums and just Title VI in general along with the Equal Education Opportunity Act, which is something that DOJ enforces. We don't enforce the EOA, but we do enforce Title VI. And I would urge you to go back and read it carefully. It's 40 pages long. The previous memo was about 10 pages long. And it goes back, I've been doing this for almost 20 years or so, and it goes back and I think it details very well the problem areas that have come across. And this is not just in Texas, this is across the nation. So you'll find a lot of examples that will highlight problem areas from staffing to children that are opted out, segregation, which also at some point included newcomer centers, talking about parental communication. Parental communication is a key component. I think that's something that we talked about at our table. And without just, it's pretty in depth as far as that the parents have to be able to participate not just by reading the report cards or being able to read the report cards, but also to be engaged in the other sort of social aspects of it too, the PTA aspects of it that are intertwined with the educational component of the school to be able to meet with the teachers, to be able to feel comfortable to go to the school and participate, not just when something bad happens, but also to be able to engage in a very positive manner at the schools. So, and another component within that is also when you have the special education or the gifted and talented or those components also, there are a lot of parents in not just in Texas, but in other places where they don't know about those programs. And if the parent doesn't know and there hasn't been a historical relationship with the school district, then those children kind of are left behind on their own many times just subject to a teacher who cares substantially. But just real briefly, let me tell you real quickly just what it includes this something that it obviously covers the overall obligations under Title VI and the EOA. It's a more detailed explanation of what's required in order to be in compliance with Title VI and EOA. It's a joint letter, which I think is special in itself. The examples of what is not having been found to have worked and also some examples about what has been found to have worked. So there's both sides of the coin there. It also mentions the interrelationship between also Title I's and Title III's and some of those requirements which I think puts sort of the whole federal aspect of it in perspective, which wasn't done before. Another big thing is that it mentions a lot the SEAs, the state offices, which in the past policy memorandums, it seemed like it was directed more at the local and that although they were directed towards everybody, this is not something new, it's just an expanded guidance, but it does mention the SEAs a lot more in the letter. And I think that's something to keep in mind as you're reading it. Thank you very much. I thought it important that that be in the room because the guidance also suggests that there will need to be different kinds of resources to make these things happen for learners whose first language is not English and that's a part of the conversation that we have been having ongoingly. I mean, if you want to put qualified teachers in front of students whose first language is not English as was suggested this morning already, that means you have to get them certified and get them ready to be in those classrooms. And if the loud decision of 1973 said curriculum should be in a language that is intelligible to the students, in this case it was Chinese speaking kids, but it applied to all kids whose first language was not English, well that means you have to get people ready to teach that curriculum in a comprehensible way. I mean, it just has implications for resource allocation and for people to try to be small in answering those kinds of questions is to do a disservice to what public education should be doing for all kids under Title VI not to deny a benefit to learners because of their language or their color or their national origin. So we have to be careful that people are having the right conversations about putting in front of learners the right kinds of inputs so that they can achieve what is expected of them on the outside. Rachel, I think you might wanna say something to the next question, so let me ask, we're gonna just move on to the next question so that we can keep things moving along. And that next question is number one, given all that we've looked at and heard about today, what are your group's recommendations for improving the quality of education for English language learners, particularly at the secondary level? Okay, hello, my name is Rekha Mihares. What my group has said is raise the expectations for teachers, I believe somebody had mentioned or commented earlier about having, that there's not that many, to maintain the certification, you only need three days of training. So when in reality we were talking about how the expectations, if we expect our students to be able to pass the test or to learn what they're supposed to learn, then we should expect the same things from the teachers. Me as a future teacher, I would like that expectation to be raised upon myself as well. I don't want, for my own students in my future classrooms that if they take the start test or if they take any standardized testing and they don't pass, it looks bad on me, but at the same time, if my principal isn't helping me or my district isn't helping me to meet those expectations, then what is this good for? It doesn't make any kind of higher education. It doesn't make me want to value more of what I'm learning, of what I'm doing. What you heard there. Sure, I could probably go through a laundry list. Our group was fantastic and very robust opinions on this and we came from a background of attorneys, of course, like myself and educators and administrators and researchers and professors. So some of the things that we mentioned were, of course, funding and marrying our funding policies to the educational resources that students actually need to succeed. So for example, there probably needs to be a more updated study of the Texas policy with respect to funding for English learner or as some call it now, emerging bilingual students. Also need a dashboard of more useful information on these emerging bilingual students within the classrooms. Limited more useful information so that the teachers know because given the variety of backgrounds and skills, et cetera, that students might have, teachers need to be able to access that information. The process for evaluating new immigrants, there needs to be some type of process so that you know what skills, what background, what classes, et cetera, that students have come in. So that's really important, especially given a lot of this was steered because of the incredible lack of success that was noted by Dr. Castellanos earlier throughout schools all across Texas. And so it was aimed at trying to improve at least some of the processes that you can. And it would also entail of course, teacher training programs, teacher retention incentives because then once if you are able to train the teachers, of course it doesn't just mean on the pedagogical side but inclusive of that would be some ideological training as well for those teachers. But also once you have those teachers certified through an appropriate process, of course, that really measures their skills in being able to teach emerging bilinguals but also to make sure that those teachers stay in the profession and don't just leave after two or three years. So those were some of the things that we talked about trying to build a pipeline. It might include grow your own programs so that students coming out of certain districts will have that incentive to stay because they know the community and they know the community needs. So there's were some of the items that we mentioned. Thank you, Dave. Martha, what would you add in terms of what your group talked about around these recommendations? My group talked about carefully looking at the research findings about schools and student performance and how we can implement any programs or anything like that based on the research findings of schools and the student performances and kind of looking at, again, better preparing teachers, providing them the support that they need in the classrooms in order for the students to be successful and then looking at under-identification of L's and what is the proper way to identify these kids and how to better service them. And Veronica, what would your group add? I'm trying to get as many of these recommendations into the tape record as possible. I will be collecting your handwriting, but I know that I do want to get as many of them into the taping as possible. Veronica? Thank you. We'd also talk about more money. We said and less restrictions because with certain funds, you're only supposed to buy based on so much or so much allocation and those types of things. So more money, but less restriction so that we're able to utilize them to where we need to utilize them. And to kind of add to that as well, better guidance as well. I know that there was a document some time ago for state funding and how we can use it. That's been gone out for a long time that hasn't been updated. So kind of some guidance on that as well. Also, we also talked about certification of teachers and maybe even considering as teachers come in, if it's in an ESL, we know it's going to be a secondary setting that they're required to have their ESL certification coming in and those that don't have it have like a two year or some time limit because once teachers are in to get them to get certified is that much more difficult. And so having a plan in place of what that looks like to do through our individual HR just something kind of given down. And then also we talked about the motivation of teachers. What are some other ways that we can compensate teachers to keep them so that they're able to maintain and stay? We talked about giving them an additional planning period, giving them just something what could we do so that we can motivate those teachers to stay and want to stay? And that goes someone else once we have those certified exemplary teachers there in place that we've trained and we've done all that work for them. Certainly we don't want to forget Dr. Jimenez, Cassiano's note that we do need more money sometimes incentivizing people by paying them more for the service that they provide. It shouldn't be overlooked, should not be overlooked. Eddie, would you add your group's recommendations, please? Hello, I'm Dr. Eddie Rodriguez. I'm the principal of the Harlandale Stammerly College High School. And at our table, we were talking about how do we improve this quality education for the ELL learner and we went back and we continued to harp on the certification process. As someone who's taught in certification courses and who is vigilant of the types of certifications that are being provided, many of them are generalist certifications. And when you get a generalist certification because I'm teaching a course right now at Texas A&M San Antonio, and the generalist, there's a lot of generalist certifications seeking students in my class, little are they aware that when they do graduate, they're gonna end up teaching mathematics because that's where the greatest need is. Because if you have a degree in mathematics, you're seldom gonna be teaching mathematics at a school. You're going to be actually out in the career field doing something else. So I have all these students in my classroom who are seeking generalist certification and what's gonna happen is they're not really going to know their content well enough to do justice. So they start out with a very weak content knowledge base and then we give them ESL certification and really what good does that do? Because not only are they harming the ESL kid, they're harming the regular kid, the GT kid, every other kid in the classroom as well. So we went back to that, looking at the generalist certification that I think the state needs to go back and maybe readdress that a little further. We also talked about perhaps an idea that surged in the room which was if special ed is receiving all of this money because they have or they put out this good plan back in the 60s. When the plan was to provide very tiered system of instruction, meaning you have a BD unit, you have this other type of a life skill unit and you continue on with the special ed platform. Maybe that's something that we really need to focus on as well. We need to do that for the English learner. We need to say we have the incoming student, we have the incoming student who's now in secondary who's very different because now this kid has hormones that are going crazy and all this kind of stuff. We need to focus perhaps in creating these tiers so that the funding is actually going to be listened to. Also we talked about if we're going to provide this funding, let the funding be on educational materials that are in fact research based that they're not just fly by night materials that we're constantly seeing come up and go and come up and go and people are just making money and nothing has changed because if we had been using research based materials from the very start we wouldn't have the dilemma that we have right now. So I think that would be critical. But at the same time, going back to what Veronica was saying, yes, let's look at research based materials but let's not be so strict on the spending that we can't purchase other items that are also important. So those are some of the things that we actually talked about at my table as to what are some of the ways of improving the quality of education for the English learners. Thank you very much. For the sake of a full disclosure in addition to Eddie's being a principal, he is also a board member at Edgewood Board of Education. So I just want everybody to know that as well. All right, we have about 12 minutes. So I want to deal with the second question and I do want everybody to have time for a comment. So we have three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 people, you have about a minute and a half to just speak to your group's concerns. But at any rate, we're very interested in hearing what some of your tables conversation was around your greatest concerns about how ELL programs are funded and the issue of funding equity with regards to English language learners or English language learners. So Martha, if I could start with you at your end of the table and what were your group's comments about that? And take a couple of minutes to give those. So one of the things we talked about is that we do get funding but kind of going on what everyone else is saying. They're very strict on the funding and on what you can and cannot spend. And a lot of the times of the people making the decisions as to where the funds are going or what they're being used, sometimes they don't have that background knowledge that they need to make those types of decisions for the district. So we said, how are the funds being used and then having knowledge on effectively spending that money? Thank you, Martha. Eddie, if you would, please. Our concern was, again, making sure that the funding that was provided was utilized on research-based material. That was our concern. And also that there be a very good accountability component to it, not necessarily with an assessment component but more of fiscal responsibility and making sure that the money's actually being implemented where it needs to be. In other words, we're trying to teach our students a language and let's not go out and spend it to put a green turf on a football field or anything of that nature. Because, oh, now all of a sudden we have all this money because we have a great number of English learners. Let's make sure that the fund is actually being implemented so that when the state comes in and checks, if possible, due to any method they can think of, that we're actually spending the money where it should be spent to address the need. Thank you. Yes, one of the things that we started off talking about was philosophically maybe stepping back and looking at the question of equity and funding equity for ELLs because there are funds that get sent in one direction versus another. And so it might be re-educating the community about equity and why equity sometimes means spending a lot more money on English language, learning, education. And so that was one of the components. Another one was looking at how the funding is distributed in primary versus secondary education. That was one of the things that was talked about this morning that we were doing pretty well or relatively better in primary education funding, but at the secondary level, there's a lot of disparity about how many courses someone might have access to in terms of English language learning support, the math and science, or what we call the STEM field education. It tends to drop off in where people spend a lot of time in terms of providing bilingual help is in the English area. But what about math? What about science? What about technology? And how do we look to fund that area as well? Thank you so much. Dave, I know this has been your life, so. Sure. Well, of course, we again talked about the huge disconnect between funding policy and the actual resources needed by individual students. We also mentioned the burdensome requirements for federal dollars and how they're spent while still acknowledging the need to ensure that dollars generated by students actually reach those students. But we also discussed something that was kind of interesting because there's been a lot of discussion today about, well, maybe a bilingual funding should follow the special education model funding. And one of the issues that was raised was, well, wait a second. If we start breaking it down to, you know, what kind of ELL student are you talking about? Yeah, it does resonate when you're talking about, well, what kind of needs do they have? But there's this historical link between the treatment of special education students and English learner students. And so how you communicate that is extremely important so we don't fall back on all the progress that we've made by trying to educate people, the difference between the needs of an emerging bilingual student versus a special education student. Thank you. Well, as was, we had a very intense conversation about this. The most intense, I think of all. But as was stated, one of the issues was that the majority of the money is spent in the early grades and then you have very little funding for the higher grades. And the second thing that causes a problem is that publishers print everything around core right now. And lower, higher. Lower. Lower. And that the problem with core is that it doesn't give you the resources that you need for an ELL program. So you end up using local dollars for purchasing those supplemental resources. And then you have to face finance office that has no understanding of the ELL needs. And that is very aggravating because there in they, if I could quote Moises, he said, well, they run that office like a for-profit. They wanna show a profit at the end of the year and it's wrong. The money needs to be spent. It needs to be out there with the kids instead of being held back so that they can get some award for saving money for the school year because of these two things we've just stated, that's where it becomes so complicated to get funds where you need them into the classroom. So that was the biggest issue about money. Thank you, Peg. One of the greatest concerns expressed in our group was that the money is not following the research. And so we had a professor from Texas Tech talk about, okay, we have older research that says it takes four to seven years to learn a language and some of the newer research may indicate even a longer period to learn the language. There was also research around paraprofessional pipelines that we discussed talking about, well, where is the state spending its money? Is it giving incentives right now to programs where teachers are less likely to have staying power in schools or should it be funding paraprofessional pipelines that we know their research shows will lead to teachers, development of teachers that are one culturally competent and also are more likely to stay in these schools and have less teacher turnover. So following the research. We also discussed the increase of the funding, increasing that, we talked about the first but not listening to David, I don't know, you have to re-look that. But we also talked about something that thought was a little interesting. We talked about a newcomer center but looking at either kind of working with collaborated districts and it would be more of a transition. So maybe like a six week period where they can come talk about immunizations but in all times working with district personnel that are building relationships yet it's kind of focused forward recent arrivals on the needs that they might have. And so we were trying to brainstorm what could we do that might be a little bit different still get some funding with that but yet still support students within six weeks and then kind of return them back to their home campus. We kind of discussed my concern was well as a recent arrival sometimes there's a lot of fear there as well. And so they may not want to go somewhere else because of other factors. And so we talked about that, how could we minimize that? So but it was, I thought it was a great idea at least something to start looking at how can we become more specific in supporting our recent arrivals especially for districts that maybe not have a lot of recent arrivals but just kind of thinking through what could we do with the supported effort from maybe a neighboring district. A lot of what was mentioned is something we had also discussed at our table. In addition to that we also discussed just the need to help. Everybody just look at this as not and us versus them issue because at the end of the day we talked about how important it was to kind of refocus the legislature in terms of seeing this more as a full-fledged program and not pilots as we've been doing it for many, many years. And so when you hear the word pilot then that means limited funds. That means for a limited amount of time that means prove yourself at every step of the way. And so we talked about how it really is time to make this a full-fledged program potentially stop all the acronyms and decide on one thing so that it can all go under one umbrella but more than that it's really also kind of repositioning it as and I think it was mentioned earlier the idea of looking at it as dual credit achievement versus remediation and how does that tie then to ultimately having the legislature understand the financial impact and the ties to the money and sizing the money at the end of the rainbow with this investment towards kids. And so that's how we looked at some of the funding in addition to the discussions of teachers et cetera and certifications. My group was actually discussing about that. We said instead of doing the 0.1 or 0.1 why don't go ahead and ask for more of the 1.5 because our students really need this and the disparity between EL and SPED I know they had mentioned earlier it's different but as long as like weighing your programs in where the money needs to go because some students do need EL and do need SPED or sometimes they get put into the wrong program without actually learning about the student in that aspect. So going where the money needs to be not just where you think it needs to be. At table number nine, the great people there. Now we all talked about the historic underfunding that has been consistently provided for ELLs and that that funding is based on perhaps past needs and not current accurate needs. And so that needs to be communicated to the legislature and sold in a perhaps of a different package and how it's been tried. I'm sorry. That was a concern they had. Yes. And also perhaps making the community more aware and more participant in the political process because that obviously translates into boats which ultimately ends up calling the attention of the legislature at any level and accountability of funds within the district so that basically you're getting to the supplement not to plant issue so that the funds that are aimed towards bilingual or ELL programs are used for that and not for other things. So I want to thank our panelists for reflecting your facilitators, table facilitators, reflecting the comments that your group discussed over the hour over lunch. Thank you for these ideas. This is the stuff we need to take with us and go back to our own various locus of control and be spreading this thinking, this talking. We need to get people concerned and talking about these populations of kids who have been disenfranchised, underserved, poorly served in our public schools. We are never going to be any better until we learn to do better. And we will never do better until we are committed to that until it is our intention to do better by students. In this case, our English language learners at the secondary level, they have as much right in order, I think, to a good education as any other population in our public schools. And if we're not serving them and serving others, we are not serving our own best interests as a nation. I've been telling people around the nation this really is a matter of national security. We could be spiting and cutting off our own face and spiting ourselves by not getting kids ready. I mean, really ready for the realities of this world that we are already and we are already halfway through the second decade of the 21st century, we can't talk about it like it's coming. It is here and we have to make real decisions about what we do for these young men and women who are about ready to step out and begin to face life outside of public schools, outside of mom and dad and any other protections they may have in terms of concerned family members, we must get them ready. So when I told you this morning, there was nothing better you could do than to be here today talking about these issues, helping us as an organization and Intercultural Development Research Association to look at these issues, people like Maldiff, David, and other concerned citizens in this community of practitioners and experts to think about what we need to be doing differently to create what Kuka says on one of these slides, a new narrative, a new narrative for a new century. We can't keep looking back, we really need to be leaning forward, looking forward, working forward where these populations of kids are concerned in our public schools and to do less than that is to have made up our minds already for failure, already to repeat and recreate what we have been doing, rather than what we need to do. And so we hope at IDRA, this is the beginning of a new conversation, we can't thank you enough for having been a part of it, for taking time out of your very busy days to be here with us and to think about these issues and thank Dr. Jimenez Castaneda-Yanis for what you have done to see this conversation in your work and the work of others. It is hugely important. I want to call our president and see, oh by the way, be sure to slide your group's conversation notes down to me now before you leave the table. I don't want to have to run after you. And those thoughts will be important. And if any of you have any written comments you want to share with us, be sure to turn them over either to me or to your table leaders so that we can have those as well. I want to invite up Dr. Maria Tupac Robledo-Wonticelle who is going to introduce our closing speaker and take care of tying up our day. Oh, we have a visitor with us as well. Oh, please, you can return to your seat. Give him a big hand please. What a wonderful day. Do you think? Yes, a great day. I have been impressed with the breath of the conversation, with the depth of the knowledge that you bring with the willingness that you have to share it. And I am deeply thankful to each of you for being here and there will be a symposium proceedings document that we will of course share with you. There is also the archived copy that now CAST SA created that you will have access to and you can use it as you wish. And then of course tomorrow, as I said early in the day today, we will continue with a policy meeting in Austin to take what we talked about today and take it to Austin for policy deliberations there. So it's been a great day and I thank you. You know, like me, you probably have been at many settings where people ask you, well, to what do you attribute your success? And inevitably, if there are Latinos and minority people in the audience, they will stand up and name someone in their family. Someone in their family who made all the difference with their love, with their care, with their guidance. And so today I want to reintroduce you to Raquel Mijares. You of course met Raquel as a panelist in this last panel, but I want to tell you a little bit about Raquel. She is a senior here at our Lady of the Lake University. She is president of the bilingual education student organization here. Her certification will be in early childhood to sixth grade with a concentration in bilingual education. So her intention, her plan and what she has prepared herself to do is precisely what we were talking about today. And that is to make sure that all children, including those who are learning English, have access to a great life as a result of the great education that they receive. Raquel graduates with a Bachelor of Arts in Bilingual Education. Bachelor of Science? A Bachelor of Science this December 2015 from our Lady of the Lake. Her goal, she tells us is to become a great bilingual teacher and to give back to her community what she has been given. Raquel is originally from San Antonio. Her father was born and raised in Mexico and her mother met her father there as a missionary from San Antonio. Raquel went to school in Edgewood and graduated from Northside. She attended pre-K to second grade bilingual classrooms. And Spanish was and is her first language. I guess once you have Spanish as a first language, it always is that. So that's what it is for me and I know for many of you here in the room and certainly it is so for Raquel. Raquel is glad to speak Spanish as she is able to have a closer relationship with her grandparents. And today as her special guest, she has her grandmother, La Señora Reina Rodriguez que nos acompaña esta tarde. Muy bienvenida, Señora Rodriguez. He's estado hablando un poquitito de tanta cosa bonita y buena que ha hecho su nieta. Y ahora hemos estado hablando todo este día de cómo mejorar las escuelas para las criaturas que hablan dos idiomas. Gloria Dios, si le vamos a pasar ahora a Raquel, ella va a tener la última palabra, ¿eh? Thank you everybody for coming here. My name is Raquel Michales as she had mentioned before. I am a senior here at the Lake University. I am majoring in bilingual education. I actually am very thankful for this opportunity and very nervous, but it's a great thing what this is doing to us. His research doctor, I'm sorry, Castellanos, his research really founded a lot of what my actual own educational career was. I was an Edward district. I was in the bilingual education and you do see the differences it is. My first language happened to be Spanish, but because I had the good foundation in Spanish, I was able to learn English. And so I did understand how his research, there's not a lot of opportunities for people to learn two languages. And he does, there's not more funding that needs to be done. There's a lot more clarification than it needs to be given out to the public. I was lucky enough to be in a bilingual classroom. My siblings, unfortunately, were not, but it's because the stereotypical stuff and because we're not informed as well as we should be. I came here to our Lake University and I could have gone to so many other universities here in San Antonio, but I chose early the Lake University because of the educational program that it provided. I did my research, the program here was amazing. I love the program. I love the one-on-one that I have with my professors. I didn't wanna go into a classroom with 200 other students. I wanted to have the small environment classroom coming into here three years ago. I never thought I would be in this position. I wanna thank my professor, Dr. Belinda Shadid Trevino, because she's the one that helped me and pushed me forward. She told me, you can do this, you can do that. Go for this. Leadership roles that I never would have thought I would have been able to do. I learned it here. Conferences, special interest groups that we have gone to. Because I'm part of the Bilingu Education Student Organization known as VESO, I have been part of THABEN, which is the Texas Association of Bilingu Education. And because of that, we have been able to go to the national conferences here for the past few years, which is the National Association of Bilingu Education, and we have been able to present there. We have a special interest group where me, and I call them my girls, because they are my girls, my friends, we go and present. I actually have one. I have my vice president right now, that it took us. Would you please stand up? That it has been my vice president and she has been a great support. So we are actually, this university grows you and empowers you to become a better leader. It grows you to become a better future teacher. And I think even if it's at the secondary level, as your research did, it still needs to be out there and supported as well. Because no matter who you are, as teachers, we don't wanna fail our students. As a future teacher, I do not wanna fail my students. And this is what it's all about. I came from this kind of background. I grew up, this is my neighborhood. My grandmother never went to college. She barely finished high school. My grandfather went up to the third grade here. Keith, they're both from Piedras Negras, which is a quarter town. My grandfather worked so hard for his family to push him forward and push him forward. My grandmother pushes me to the limit. My grandfather pushes me to the limit to keep going, to keep going. And she knows, she knows it. Even though she will not speak English with me, she understands me, my grandfather too. And I wanna thank them both because of that. And I wanna thank the Lord too, because if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here where I am today. I thank my parents because of that as well. They're unique, those people to push you, not just your own family, but as educators of the people, you set the example for me. You set the example for me to be the best that I can be. And if that means that I have to go out there and do the best that I can, I am gonna do it to the fullest of my extent. This is amazing. I love this opportunity. His research touched me because it's what I was. It's who I am. I was a person who was just a Spanish-speaking. Going into a monolingual classroom was the scariest aspect of my whole career. Even now as a college student, it's still scary trying to go academically because you're like, oh, I have my conversation, but academically, it's harder as it is. We do need that support. We do need that help. I see it with my own cousins because they're trying to struggle in their Spanish and English. And it's not the same. So I really thank you all for coming to our wonderful university, our L.A. Lake University. I thank you for giving me this opportunity. If you have any questions, and don't forget, our L.A. Lake is very great. Our education program is amazing. We were actually one of the pioneers to start at the degree in Biling Education back in the 1960s. So I'm very proud of this school. I carry it in my heart. I carry everything here that I have with me. I'm gonna stay in Spanish, but if you all don't mind, I'm gonna direct somewhere to my grandma. Sorry. Pero abuelita, gracias por estar aquí. Comen, Misa. Grandma, usted ha sido un apoyo por mí por tantos años. Usted sabe que en este momento me sigue apoyando, me sigue dirigiendo. Sin ustedes, pues no estaría aquí o junta. A la agradezco porque pues, siendo la madre de mi mamá, me ha ayudado tanto. Gracias a Dios porque ustedes han apoyado en todo lo que he hecho, todas las decisiones que he hecho. Usted sabe que no comencé como maestra. Comencé con... Quería dirigirme a negocios y usted me dijo no. Cuando le dije que quería ser maestra, usted fue la primera que me dijo, sí, mi hija. A eso, yo sé, yo su... Con permiso. Yo siempre sabía que ibas a ser maestra. Siempre lo sabía. Eres una... Me dijo, siempre ibas a ser maestra porque yo te veo con los niños y veo la pasión que tienes con estar con ellos. Entonces, yo siempre sabía que eres maestra, pero todo en su momento. Y la agradezco a su gran porque usted me enseñó, usted enseñó a mamá. Me apoyan en todo lo que hago y en todo lo que voy a estar. Y la agradezco a Dios porque ha estado en mi vida. Es mi abuela. Y pues también, yo les dije las palabras, no, no es mi abuela, pero mi abuelo también que no está aquí presente. Pero ellos han sido un soporte para mí inmenso. A mi familia, a mis padres y a mis hermanos siempre están ahí apoyándome. Y lo agradezco todo porque es por la gracia de Dios por todo esto. Gramo, te quiero mucho. Te agradezco y muchas gracias, Gramo, por estar aquí. Es un... Un gran privilegio a tenerle a usted aquí en mi casa. This woman right here has supported us, has supported her family here in the West Side. She pushed her family forward out there. She would go out and sit at County Apples. She pushed all her children to go out forward. She pushes her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren and her great-great-grandchildren as well. She is the living breath of my family and she helps me decide who I am. I also want to thank, I have my two, I have two of my younger siblings here. I'm going to embarrass them right now, but I love them both. I have my younger brother, Juan Josue Michales. Would you please stand up? And then I have my little sister, Ruth Basti Michales. Please stand up. Those are my siblings and that's who I strive for also. I see them and I want them to be the best that they can be. And being as an older sister, I want to set that example for them. Again, thank you for everything. Would you please come up? Thank you. Have a nice day and enjoy. I'm glad you visited our campus and feel free to come back again. I look forward to seeing you soon.