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Where we're at over the next 24, 48, 72 hours is going to shape education in America for
years to come. This is a staggering opportunity. We're at a time of economic crisis, everybody
here knows that, I would argue we're at a time of education crisis. I want to thank
Congressman Moran and his colleagues for extraordinary leadership on this issue. I want to thank
our national leaders who are here today, for their courage and commitment. And if we do
the right thing not just for our economy but for our children, we have a chance to do something
absolutely extraordinary. I would call this a historic opportunity, once in a lifetime.
And the stimulus package talks about a couple of different things. It talks about saving
and creating jobs. And there's a study that came out literally yesterday from the University
of Washington that talked about as many as 600,000 education jobs being lost because
states are just struggling. The states are struggling now. And imagine a class size goes
from 28 to 40 and imagine the folks can't go to college because those college professors
have been laid-off and there's just no one there to teach. That would be absolutely devastating
short term and absolutely devastating long term to our country and so there's a huge
opportunity to save and preserve and create jobs. And I'm just convinced we have to educate
our way to a better economy. That's the only way long term to get there. Secondly, we've
talked a lot about the capital needs and as we talked about--thanks to Congressman Moran
and his team, his colleagues, the $20 billion for capital, for school construction not just
K to 12, but higher grade as well. And their bill right now, there is zero dollars in the
senate bill. That to me is staggering. It makes no sense to me that we don't see the
huge stimulative impact of putting people to work now. We have tremendous unmet need
well beyond that $20 billion and there's nothing more important we can do than create facilities
that our students need to learn and reach their full potential. And so as this discussion
goes into conference, what comes out of that conference is just of staggering importance.
And it's so important that all of our leadership here understands that, that all of our students
and their parents and their community leaders understand what's really at stake here. Third,
there's a fund that we're calling a "Race to the Top" fund which is really trying to
encourage states and school districts to think about how we compete, not just for students
down the block but how we better compete with children in India and China because we are
really in a global economy today. And so how can we come off with college ready, career
ready, international benchmark standards, how do we come up with a data systems behind
that to really track student progress, how do we come up with better assessments, and
how do we better recruit and train and retain great, great teachers like we see here in
Wakefield? And so those three buckets of work saving and preserving hundreds of thousands
of jobs trying to put people back to work for desperately needed capital programs like
here at Wakefield. And it's interesting talking to the school board members here. This is
a community that's been very, very supportive of school construction, very generous. They
understand. They value education here. They simply cannot go back to their taxpayers for
another bond issue today because things are too tough and it's not a lack of will, it's
not a lack of commitment. It's just they can't do it. And we have again an extraordinary
opportunity to step up. And if we can do that, and if we can push this "Race to the Top"
fund, we have a chance to transform education in the country. And as a country, we used
to be number one in the world. And unfortunately, that's not true today. And you wonder why
economy is struggling in part, is because I think we lost our way at some point on education.
It's not so much that we're dropping. It's that we're stagnating. We've been flat and
other countries are just passing us by. And so with the president's leadership, with the
bipartisan congress that's really committed to education, with support of great, great
students and teachers and parents and principals around the country, we have a once in a lifetime
historic opportunity to make things better for our children, to stimulate the economy
short term and long term to better educate our way to a stronger economy, which is the
only way we can do it. So, I thank you for having me today. It's really, really--this
is the--the part of my job I love the most is visiting schools. And I hope to do a lot
more of it going forward. I was in schools almost every day in Chicago. And again, just
appreciate the example of commitment, the example of excellence, the commitment to continue
to improve that we see here. And if every school is doing that, we're going to be in
great, great shape going forward.