 I get to introduce Elaine Mendoza first. Elaine is representing Mayor Castro who's out of town. I wonder what he's doing out of town. To give us an update on the Pre-K for SA campaign and where it's going. And I don't think there's a better person here to represent the mayor than Elaine Mendoza. Ever since she became a part of our community and part of our business community, she's been an involved member of our business community in all sorts of nonprofits and all sorts of efforts, especially efforts engaging in education and especially in early childhood. She's a member of the Mayor's Brain Power Task Force. She's president and CEO of her own business conceptual mind works. And she's a member of the A&M Board of Regents. So she takes it and ties it through the business community, through early childhood, into higher education. There's no one better qualified to do that in our community and I'm so glad that she's a part of our community, Elaine Mendoza. How are we doing? So far so good. Wonderful. George, thank you for that very kind introduction. I really appreciate that. And I want to say that those lanyards are really cool things. And y'all can stop that right now because I have to question, why in the heck are they orange? Do we have to do orange? Whatever. Whatever. And just because they're orange, I'm going to start off this morning by saying howdy! As good Aggies always do. Anyway, good morning everyone. What a wonderful opportunity to be with you this morning. I really appreciate the invitation and we have to hand it to voices for children because without them where would we be? Thank you all for hosting this Congress on Children in all the years that you have committed to this. So to voices with children. All right. Well, in order to go forward, sometimes we have to go backwards. And in order to talk with you about pre-K for SA, let's go back just maybe a year, a year and a half ago, two years, I don't know, time flies when you're having fun. The mayor put together SA 2020, a bold strategy to bring the community together and to find out what we, as Sanitonians, want our city, our community to be like in the year 2020. That was quite the challenge, wasn't it? How many of you all participated in that series of meetings? A lot of us. Very good, very good. We had areas of focus, education, the arts, infrastructure, all that stuff. People came together around these topics to give our best thinking about what we want our community to be. The number one issue out of SA 2020 was education. Education. That's why it's real important that the pre-K for SA topic of discussion is not necessarily about children. It's about economic development and workforce development. To keep that in mind, I think we'll have a broader audience than those of us who really care about children. Anyway, number one issue in the SA 2020 deal, education. Well, you know how big and broad education is? We are talking about, well, if you listen to Dr. Cigarroa, it's from in the womb on a, it is everything, college readiness, dropouts, transition from the eighth to ninth grade, persistence from the ninth grade to tenth grade, being prepared in math and science in the third, fourth, and fifth grade. All of that. Education is huge. And we're not even talking about persistence in community colleges, persistence in four-year institutions, or all the way through medical school. That's education. So the mayor and his wisdom had his strategy to put together yet another group that would take this topic that the community said was the most important topic to get us to the 2020 mark and study this and challenge this group to come with a recommendation of where we want to place our bet in this whole continuum of education. Fortunately, he asked Charles Butt and General Robles to co-chair this group. What committed gentlemen? These guys pushed for excellence, for being bold, for being different, for keeping on target. We were having debates, discussions about, yeah, dropouts, about the transition from the ninth grade to the tenth grade, about movement across school districts by our families, about college persistence, about making sure we don't have college dropouts. We were all over the map. But when you took a look at the whole continuum and you identified where are the greatest gaps, where are the funds not going, is the least of the concerns of people speaking about the challenges in education, there was only one clear answer. Pre-K. The funds for Pre-K were cut severely this last session. Everybody knows that. And it's almost like one of those moments that you go, duh, let's focus there. The research is very, very clear. I know I'm preaching to the choir here. And George already gave the sales pitch, so I don't have to do very much, really. The research is very, very clear. The return on investment in Pre-K education is tremendous, is tremendous. So after all the debate and the arm wrestling and the oh, let's look at this, let's look at that, it only took us about three meetings to come together and say Pre-K. Then we had the debate. Is it three-year-olds? Is it five-year-olds? What is Pre-K? Here again, come our experts and research and Mr. Butt sending us books to read. I mean, by the dozen it seemed. I think he read every one of them and then we had a little quiz, but it was like, oh my gosh, we had to make a choice. We had to make a decision. Because we wanted to leverage these funds on the eighth of a cent sales tax as best as we could and make a recommendation that we knew could be measurable so that we could have ultimate accountability. So after all, that research was poured through and dialogue, debate, arm wrestling yet again, we dampened down to four-year-olds. Four-year-olds. Wow. It was tremendous. Once we had that charge, we went all over the place and I mean it. We saw some centers of excellence here in San Antonio. Walking around these classrooms where these little ones were very involved in literacy and numeracy, in dual language, in excitement, in teaching. They were sponges. We went to Seattle. We went to New Jersey. We went to Houston where we saw best practices and measured results from a great robust curriculum, great robust teaching, and these little ones were excelling. Fortunately, we were not tested in those rooms when we walked in because they had geometric shapes up there that we all were scratching our heads going, yeah, we know what that is. Yeah, mm-hmm. No, we have a clue. No clue. Or they would come up and speak a different language to us and I was like, you got that? I don't know, okay. Because they were teaching different kinds of languages. Oh my God, our future is bright with these young ones coming up. So we took those best practices and everything we saw and pulled them in. Fortunately, somebody was at the tip of the spear. Somebody here in our community, in Houston, in New Jersey, and in Seattle were at the tip of the spear. They're probably on the bleeding edge of doing something great. Well, we get to learn from that. And as George said, once we get this going, we're going to continue improving it. Learning more, discussing more, tweaking more. It's going to be exciting. Mr. Butt and Mr. Robla, or General Robless, always insisted that we focus on accountability. We can't just say we're doing a good job. We can't just hope we're going to do a good job. We have to measure that we're doing a good job. So as we visited all these places, that was a main line of questioning. How do you know you're excelling? How do you know you have excellence? We brought that back with us, too. We want to be able to demonstrate to this community who hopefully will make this investment that we are excelling and that we are making progress and that we are, indeed, having a return on that investment. A lot of wrangling, a lot of hand and teeth gnashing, a lot of robust discussion, a lot of debate. And we came up with the framework for the pre-K for SA. Luckily, then, the city manager and her team came in to actually figure out the nuts and bolts of how this thing would happen. And we have to hand it to the city manager. She and her team came in and just hit it and worked diligently, vigorously, to make sure we had something to take to city council. And they did that. So here we go. Now it's called pre-K for SA. It's a campaign. It's going to be a very, very interesting campaign. Why November? Because it's the largest voter turnout that we have because it's a presidential cycle. We'll have a lot of voters out there pulling the lever, so to speak. Well, now I guess it's pressing a button. We don't pull levers anymore. We press. Technology. Anyway, we have to get above the noise of the presidential election. That's going to be a challenge. Not to mention it's way down on the ballot. Way down on the ballot. We need everybody working together to talk about the importance of this issue, to talk about making sure you get out to vote. We can't love this program and say we want to help this program, do this program, be this program, excel at this program if we don't pass it. It's down ballot. That's a challenge. We hope to mobilize forces, especially as it gets closer to November, to make sure that people are paying attention to this, to make sure that they know they're going to have to be patient in getting down ballot in order to vote for the pre-K for SA initiative. This is going to be fun stuff and we need everybody's help. Let's cut above the fray of all of this other stuff going on and let's make sure people focus on this most important issue. Well, I came at it from different ways. I was very honored to be a member of the Brain Power Task Force and the reason I'm so excited about this opportunity before us is not only because it's new and it's bold and it's different and no community has done this to this level but I wish we could have recorded and put it on a maroon lanyard. All the wonderful debate that went on, it was so inspiring to be part of deliberations. The attention to excellence that our co-chairs insisted on and doing something very different yet very impactful. That was astounding. It makes me excited about the pre-K for SA. As a business leader, you know, it's so a member of the community, I should say, it is, it never, ah, it bothers me to know when that we don't question why lumber companies plant trees. No one ever says, why are you investing in planting trees? Now you're a lumber company. Those trees are going to take 25 years to make, to live, to grow. You ain't got to water them. You got to prune them. You got to make sure those insects don't get on them. What are you thinking? Does anybody tell lumber companies that? No. Then why is it so weird for us to worry about the workforce that we're going to have in 25 years? Is it because we're not focused on the future? Is it because we don't really care? Is it because it's intangible? For our work, the work that we do in our company, we need great minds. We need minds that are innovative. We need minds so that we can be agile. We need minds so that we can keep production going. One of our teams up in Washington, D.C. is a group of folks that are multi-disciplined. They have MDs. They have PhDs. They're biochemists. All sorts of very, very technical skills. The average age in that workforce, our team up there in D.C., working for the Department of Health and Human Services, is 56. We have a gap between them and the next wave that are coming out. We heard the numbers just today released by the Coordinating Board that says 65% of our population will need a college degree, but we're at 32%. Okay, so we have a huge gap. You know what these people do in Washington, D.C.? They're called medical countermeasures specialists. What that means is the next wave of threat to our country is not necessarily the nuclear bomb anymore. It's not necessarily a plane that's going to come down and drop bombs on top of us. It's bio threats. It's diseases. One release of a flu virus, one release of these nasty germs, bugs, bad bugs, could wipe us out. Who is going to do that work? They're focused on identifying the next virus, the next threat, and then they work with the pharmaceutical companies to develop the drug, the vaccine, to prevent that. Who is going to do that in 15 years? We need great minds. So like those lumber companies that are plant trees and grow them, we need to pay attention to our young ones because they are going to solve these problems for us. As a member of a higher ed emphasis and focus, here we go. Higher ed needs to be very concerned about what's happening here. Not in a pointing the finger kind of way, but in a, this is the beginning of our supply chain kind of way. The number one cost effective strategy for reducing the cost of higher ed is a prepared student. The number one. So how can we not, as a higher ed institution, begin at the beginning of our supply chain and make sure that that continuum stays steady? Higher ed should be so engaged in this. They're planting trees too, are they not? And so from a higher ed perspective, we have to get this done and we have to be part of the solution. We need to be able to produce great teachers. We need to be able to produce great administrators through our masters and doctoral programs. We have to be part of the solution. Higher ed needs to care a whole bunch. All right, so seven is a great number. I like the number seven. Everybody like the number seven? Okay, so out of a gazillion reasons why this pre-K for essay is so great, I came up with seven. It was hard because there's a million. First and foremost, and these are not like dancing with the stars. These are in no particular order. George and I are going to tango after this. Anyway, but I do think this is number one. It has a clarity of purpose. We're not all over the place. And if you listen to our deliberations, we began that way and dampened down. This has a clarity of purpose. It's the biggest educational gap in focus, in funding, and it is the largest need. We have a huge gap in terms of the number of children being served. And it's growing. That is our fastest growing demographic population. We're not going to be able to keep up. There's so much work to be done, so many kids to be served, so many young minds to cultivate. This has clarity of purpose. And when you have clarity of purpose, you can really focus, align resources, and go from there. It has transparency with specific learning outcomes for our kids. Things that we learn from these other communities, from providers here in our own community that we can spread across. Transparency, because we're going to measure learning outcomes. Number three is different, because it is about systemic change. We are beginning at the very beginning. We're not patching. Juniors and seniors in high school, it's too late to prepare them for college or post-secondary education or the military. We're beginning at the beginning. This is systemic change. This is not a spike. It brings partnerships together with our school districts, with our private providers. It builds upon things that we've already done in this community. Cafe College, P-16 Council, Generation Texas, and so many others that we can leverage. That nowhere in the community has really put together. Number four, over time, it's going to be so cost-effective, because it is about prevention, not intervention. We all know intervention is much more costly than prevention. Sick care is more costly than well care, et cetera, et cetera. We're going to really get this going. Number five, it really addresses critical areas. It is based on data, national research and things that work in practice today and taking it forward. It increases full-day options, incorporates robust curriculum, and enables curricular alignment. We want to make sure that the alignment between our four-year-olds are getting will continue forward with kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade. We can do this. It's a challenge, but we can do this. Number six, it is broad, reaching, and holistic really built around its focus. The professional development component of this has a greater impact. Educators from private providers from all across the city can come to see, to learn, to be mentored to practice in these centers of excellence. One teacher influencing 22. Whatever the ratio turns out to be. That's spreading. That's increasing the reach. That's doing some cool things. Not to mention the budget for professional development has been cut severely. So this can complement that, definitely. And finally, it has the ultimate test of accountability. In that eight years from now we, the voters, get to decide if this was indeed worthy, as we thought it was going to be. We can vote to suck her down. That's the ultimate accountability, is it not? Back to the voters again. So this is bold. Somewhat scary. As George says, we don't have all the answers. It's not going to be perfect out of the box. Someone is going to get ahold of this eighth of a cent. Do we want things or do we want minds? Some of those things that we need infrastructure wise, a bridge here, road there, Alamo Dome, part two, can come with an educated, highly skilled, healthy workforce. Those problems will be solved. Someone is going to get ahold of this eighth of a cent sales tax. If it's not us, then who? If it's not now, then when? Questions are going to be abound. Why is the city doing this? Why, why, why, why, why? Are we going to get this done or not? Are we going to be bold? Are we going to be visionary? Are we going to make a statement about what our community means to us, about what we want it to be or not? Let's get this done now. Thank you all very much for listening.