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>> -- district, that are within our district boundaries
that we serve but then there's another 861 who don't live
within our district boundaries or come from outside
of the district boundaries that we serve
so that's the net 2,414.
Most are sharing housing with another family.
So you think about your circumstances if you were
to lose your job of employment where would you go?
What would you do?
Well, they're doing that every day.
Our children when they wake
up they're sharing a home with another family.
Many of them.
However, 254 of our children live in hotels every day.
We have 125 of our children who live in shelters every day.
We have 174 that live in un-sheltered circumstances,
that's a car, a camper, or couch hopping.
Those are challenging statistics when you're asking a child
who is coming into a classroom, hey, I need you --
why don't you have your homework done?
You know, you think about sports programs, you're thinking
about other activities and participating
in the student body and advanced types of experiences
for these children, it's very difficult to provide those.
Yet, we're working hard to provide those
and we do provide those additional opportunities
for our children because of the ways that we've been funded
and we want to sustain some levels of funding
to continue these kinds of work.
71 percent of our students don't meet fitness standards
and we've had to cut every sport program
at the middle school level over the last several years
because of the cuts that we've made
to our education in our city.
And it is a city that sits in bankruptcy.
Access to quality parks and programs hugely limited.
In some of our cities our only place of refuge
for our children is their local school site.
So we're seeking to emulate models
as you've heard Dr. Morales' mention from Long Beach.
I've visited Oakland Unified School District
and they've done some things where there's health clinics
on the campuses and they've worked with their cities
to have co-crafted efforts in their parks and access
to regional type activities and programs.
But we have, you know, students who have a tremendous number --
over 90 percent, are living in poverty.
91 percent of our students are
of African American or Latino decent.
These are traditionally marginalized backgrounds.
One-third of our students are English language learners.
And I would challenge you if you go to any other country yourself
as an only English speaker and you go to learn
that language you know the barriers you face
to learning are multiplied by ten or twenty.
Yet, one-third of our students are there.
Our violate crime rate in our city is twice
that of the rest of the California.
As a matter of fact your chances of being a victim
of crime is one in ninety seven.
And on a statewide index of 1 to 100 our city scores an 8
in terms of its safety on the crime safety index.
And we're called to educate all children.
Who are literally surviving every day to a place
where they can thrive.
So it's no wonder that we have about a third of them dropping
out of high school, which is unacceptable.
And that has to change.
And that will change.
And that underscores the urgency for our collaborative efforts
for our collaborative partnerships.
So we cannot do this work alone.
We've gone through extensive planning that I know all
of you have been a part
of in setting our community engagement plan and strategy
so that we literally do this work together.
It cannot be done by any single institution.
That's already been said before.
Additionally I want to comment
that though there's been some success in Riverside and I want
to learn from that success
and we're building our own successes.
I'm also on capturing federal and state grants.
The realities are this region receives about $3.00 per capita
in philanthropic support compared
to the statewide average of $119.00 per capita.
Just get your head around that for a minute.
And then we receive about $1,018.00 per capita compared
to a statewide average of $2,117.00
in federal grant opportunities that's been gathered
for San Bernardino city alone that's a lost opportunity
of $243,000,000 a year because we haven't had a long standing
effort of working collaboratively.
And we now need do that at a very high level.
So the urgency is great.
I say we cannot wait.
And we need this to go forward.
And I support assembly member Morales
and member Browns comment.
We've talked at length on preparing our workforce.
Literally we're in the middle of this work now.
We're literally expanding our adult school program
when everybody around us is saying why are you doing that?
You need to stop.
We have to.
We have to grow the work force readiness of this region
and we have much work to do.
84 percent of our students are not UC or USC eligible.
84 percent.
There's a lack of college readiness as you heard
in Dr. Morales report.
You know, college grads are earning $20,000 a year more
on average.
Education is the primary factor
in our economic development and growth.
We need that academic readiness.
Our students not only need to be reading by the end
of third grade to be successful we recognize in earlier metric
for success in colleges also believe it or not,
the fifth grade if you master your multiplication facts you
can master algebra and you can go on
and complete those college courses that are required.
We need to intervene early.
And we need to intervene often.
We have examples where some partnerships
and collaborative efforts are already underway today.
If you visit Reilly Elementary School three
or four days a week we have 16 Cal State students not just
from the education department but from all departments coming
into the classrooms and serving as mentors and partners
with students and teaching
and helping co-teach them as examples.
And these students are performing much greater.
And we provide that through some internal funding right now
but as our funding sources dry those things dry.
But if we can increase our collaborative partnerships
and increase the funding that comes
through local control funding formula we can advance some
of these efforts now.
And so those are key pieces in Dr. Tomas's [phonetic] report.
He also speaks of strong teacher preparation
which this university is the best at completing
and it is absolutely critical.
Teacher quality is the most decisive classroom factor
in student achievement, and that is an effort
that we're committed to working with solidly.
So I wanted to echo those comments and lastly I just want
to say that we're in the middle of this work now.
We have a collaboratives with Loma Linda Medical University,
Cal State University,
San Bernardino Valley college, all locally designed.
We will be building opportunities
for our students beginning this fall that they will be able
to come out of a health career pathway with a certificate
with the Loma Linda brand on it after a partnership with all
of our key interagencies.
So the work is going forward and we need your support.
We need the governors proposal to go forward and I just want
to complement your support and efforts to that end.
So thank you and those are my comments.
[ Applause ]
>> Very, very good.
You guys we have learned some good things today, haven't we?
Hey a couple of things too I just want to acknowledge folks
from Congressman Millers office is here
and Senator Bill Emerson.
And I've been in personal contact with their offices.
They weren't able to make it today
but I will tell you they're on the same page as us
and I think the next meeting they're going to try
and be here especially Congressman Miller.
It's hard for him to get here from DC sometimes.
But Mr. Emerson will certainly be here.
So we want to thank them too.
It's my job to keep the trains running on time.
But we actually have a few minutes probably about 12,
13 minutes for some questions.
So if you have a question from the audience,
I know other panel will have some questions.
I ask that you make them brief
and if the answers could be brief so we can get
through as many questions as possible.
So open it up to the floor.
Ellawese.
[ Inaudible Audience Question ]
>> Yes. King Alexander when he arrived at Long Beach
as the president, you know, and he's actually leaving
to assume the presidency of the LSU system, sat down
and almost immediately with the superintendant
of the Long Beach Unified City Schools and then
with the Long Beach Community College District and began
to really talk about college readiness to talk
about a promise, literally, that if students did XY
and Z they would be guaranteed admission to Long Beach
or to a program at the local community college.
So it's creating that pipeline
and this afternoon actually we're meeting with a group
that -- a group of nonforprofits who are interested --
Dale's going to be there.
We're going to listen and the Santa Ana promise is very
similar with the Fullerton city schools the Fullerton community
college and Cal State Fullerton.
So there's some models that we --
we believe that we should replicate here
in the inland empire.
>> You know, one thing I'd like is maybe an outline of those --
>> Yeah.
>> -- for us.
>> Yeah.
>> Do our distinguished assembly members have any questions
or any statements that you'd like to make to our panelist?
>> You know, I'd like to just kind of talk a little bit
about what some of you have said.
Someone said that we haven't been invited to the table.
Well, I found in Sacramento that you don't wait to be invited
to the table, or else you won't eat.
You will be hungry.
So what we did
as the legislative black caucus is we invited ourselves
to the table.
And we sat down with the governor.
Just yesterday -- day before yesterday,
we sat down with him last week.
And we said these are our concerns
with you sending a block grant to our communities.
Because we know about politics
and we know how politics will get involved
in dispersing that money.
And we really want it to go to those who need it the most
so that we can clear up some of the problems once and for all.
If we can get it on a trajectory
that way then we will be so much better.
The other thing is that when we look
at the local control funding formula,
I think San Bernardino is going to look and do very very well.
But I have many people don't know that part
of Etiwanda School District is in the 47th assembly district.
They won't fair as well.
But their students are doing well.
So they're not complaining.
That's another thing we need to look at.
Is how we can make it so that there's not so much difference.
And then if we get that local control funding
in the schools don't do it like we did title one.
When I talked to the governor I said, you know,
we've had title one we made sure that the school --
somebody made sure that the schools
who had title one always were title one schools
so that they could get the extra funding.
So we need to work a plan
with that local control funding that's going to work you
out of getting that extra money
because those students are being successful.
And then one other thing that I would like to mention is maybe
in Riverside one of the things I spoke about to some
of your board members is the possibility of separating --
separating the schools.
Those schools that are higher --
cost more to administer why not have a school of nursing.
And in that school of nursing or school of allied health sciences
and in that maybe you can look at a different funding model
that would -- that would work.
Just like those same students going to some of the local --
those local schools where they, you know, get degrees
but they have to spend a lot of money for them.
So that's one of the things that I have thought
about in this whole conversation and I'll give up the time
so someone else can speak.
>> Okay. Good bolo points though.
Thank you.
>> You know, it's been very valuable for me
to sit here as a new legislator.
Before I sat with Dr. Gray as a community college trustee,
and as a classroom teacher for 34 years.
And now looking at education
from a different vantage point it's certainly --
I'm seeing the bigger challenges.
And I say that in all seriousness
and as we have three legislators here we may have, you know,
three differing opinions and you multiply that times 80 or 120
when you take in the senators and the assembly people
and we see part of the challenge for education.
But I think we've done a good job here this morning of laying
out what those challenges are.
But I think we are capable of meeting those challenges and,
you know, I'm very pleased with the educational leadership
that we've had here in our area.
And with that maybe I'll recognize Chancellors Gray and,
you know, the work that he's done
at Riverside Community College as he departs
for bigger challenges in Connecticut.
And as we look forward to a new chancellor at UC Riverside.
And Dr. Tomas Morales here.
I think that we have the leadership and will continue
to have the leadership
that working together we can meet some
of these big challenges.
So I'm thankful for the opportunity --