mcfarland welcome to conversations with l mcfarlane and you know it's all about the neighborhood this is a conversation about how we build our community our neighborhood house by house family by family we're focusing on business creation for today's life broadcast from the minneapolis urban league in north minneapolis we thank you for listening on k f a i and those will be watching this show we're taping it for presentation on public access television here in twin cities thanks for being here and thanks for listening this is a continuation of a series of public policy forum so we call robust conversations talking about important issues of the day today's issue is education and we start with the idea of there being a paradox facing inner city schools in general schools in north minneapolis in particular i had a conversation recently with jeff a son he's the former education chair of the african american leadership forum this task force studied the experience of black families in north minneapolis and in inner city schools and found that more often than not students and families reported that they were satisfied happy pleased with the schools they attended and the teachers that taught their children at the same time studies indicate those same schools have an experience rate of seventy eighty percent below grade experience for the students that is a paradox how is it that on the one hand our children our family say they love the schools they're in and they love the teachers that are teaching them and at the same time they are failing falling behind we want to raise that question and we ask jefferson to come to present that also in today's program responding to and providing solutions both from a practical experience and from the legislative policy area we have sondra samuel so she c e o of the northside achievement zone should talk about that set of answers and that plan to attack destroy eliminate the achievement gap that  is characterized education experience for our people and there's a legislative role here as well and we've invited state representative rena ran to talk about what's happening in today's legislature one that's calling itself an education legislature will see what that means first of all jefferson good morning morning give me the background set this up because this was an intriguing analysis that you presented and i'll say to our viewers and listeners that they'll be able to see  depicting some of the things you're talking about later on just for the broadcast audience by way of background i'm an attorney by profession and i happen to represent minneapolis public schools as one of their outside legal counsel and i also represent a number of charter schools namely harvest prep academy best academy and a new mastery school which is actually a collaboration between minneapolis public schools and the leaders of harvard's prep invest a cad to me three or four years ago a group of african american leaders came together to form what's now known as the african american leadership forum that form broke out into different work groups including education hail employment economic development and the group that i gravitated towards and in fact the  largest percentage of participants gravitated towards was education because all of us sitting at the table understood that the primary reason we were sitting at the table is because we had enjoyed the benefits of an education that had  fostered and moved us forward in our careers and the education work group said it's simple goal and i'm saying that somewhat facetiously but our goal is simply to close the achievement gap for african american children in minneapolis and st paul by the year two thousand and twenty and so we first set about researching to find out what the with the facts and circumstances are and so over the period of about three or four years  and this led up to my conversation with you is that we saw that there there's this big disconnect which we're now calling a paradox in which the schools serving african american children and if we focus on north minneapolis for example because that's where we have the largest concentration of african american children in minneapolis and st paul those schools serving our children are the schools that are failing the most so that at those schools we have proficiency levels at a top at a high of forty percent in reading and at a low of ten percent in math where is the statewide average is close to seventy percent in reading actually is higher than that it's seventy seven percent in reading and in math it's about fifty six percent and along with that now that would be a big problem except that we do have an example of some very high performing schools serving that same cohort of african american students in harvest prep best academy which are performing above the statewide average and are performing at eighty percent in reading and an astounding eighty two percent in math african american students ninety nine point nine percent at harvard's prep and best academy are exceeding the statewide average in math by sixteen percentage points which actually computes to variance of about thirty five percent ok same students that are being served in the public schools that are you know families that are same same families and if you knew the particulars you would know that this same families because they bring the same issues but you can go right across the street and one school is producing results of ten percent proficiency and harvest and best are producing eighty percent proficient c now one thing they do have in common is all the parents are happy with both of the schools we're concerned that our parents are happy with schools that are putting out ten percent proficiency which means that ninety  percent or seventy to ninety percent of the kids are failing that's just unacceptable we're fortunate to have school leadership in minneapolis public schools in the superintendent byrne idiot johnson who is just as concerned about this problem is working with us to try to address and resolve it thank you just let me look here remember when representative ryan thank you for being here this legislature is tackling the financial questions the lack of funding for education and has decided that it's priority is to robustly support education where do we stand right now with education funding for the state of minnesota well good morning al i am really really excited to be here and even more excited about the this that we are giving to our educational system you know i mean it's really a huge investment i can say clearly for once while putting money where our mouth is we know the importance of investing and ikea's and invest in early so we have invested from pre k to post secondary we have aligned the finding accordingly so we're putting over fifty million pre k education we are going to find a four day kindergarten and what is really important about that is that you know there is extremely out of our numerous amount of research this talks about the basis as talks about brain development then we know ninety percent of a child's brain has developed by the age of five and if we know that it is key that we began to invest you're only have kids in quality daycare centers so that they get into kindergarten reading prepared reading by third grade because they have indicators to say if i kids are reading by third grade they're more apt to be successful in school and in life so are really excited that we are investing early with that we have also increased funding for k twelve schools by three hundred fifteen million dollars a really huge investment and also increase in funding to higher ed to the university of minnesota miscue by one hundred fifty million dollars really huge investment but not only is the funding there is that we have also create is a really good policies policies that i believe many of us believe all the educational professionals believe that we log now in a position around aligned to nothing he had no purpose is excel for in mine mine in many other mines to create the disparities that we have right now to create failure that was really very punitive so we're going to remove and four percent blacks at fifty percent expand it's at fifty four percent in what you say eighty four percent and that is an injustice any time that we can celebrate and celebrate about the fantastic schools we have  us celebrate the status of white students i cannot celebrate the success of white students when we are leaving behind so many of like years of color to six kids but this just changing the test solve out if you if there's a student who decide to go to college there's a course in the past for their students if that's if another student only want to do maybe a technical school a two year program we're going to align their goals and aspirations in that and board of education teachers all of them are recommending this path this is a path that they have been working on for the last five years to say this will create that icons it is it is free k i want to start out by saying that you know what i truly believe in what we're seeing around the country is that the success of all of our children particularly african american children but all children rests on a four legged stool and it depends on parents and the strength of the parents in the family  depends on community the strength of the community and how cohesive we are it depends on schools you know and teachers and unions and districts you know and the policies that come out of there in the practices and then also depends on our  political structure and our policies that are at a state level you know as well and if one of those tools is broken one of those legs a child can still be successful if two are broken you know they might be i as we would say in my neighborhood and but when three and four are broken that child is totally imperiled and needs a lifeline like right away and what we're finding in the heart of north minneapolis is that for many of our children  one leg is broken or maybe all four you know of the stool to two or two or more and so you know as we have this dialogue what's become really clear to me is not doing the blame game but everybody accepting responsibility for their lane for what they're responsible for and you know what what we're seeing is that politically what's happening at the capitol is not enough to move our children forward hasn't been you know we've been we've been talking about that she may get for forty years in minnesota right twenty years ago started getting a little bit serious and yet today we have the second lowest four year graduation rate in the stay eight for african american students across the country scuse me right low a second the only other state that's lower and by the way not mississippi not illinois but the south side of chicago people like to talk about you know all these folks com south side not alabama but nevada the only other state that did worse and then for latino and american indians we are dead last and this is nationwide using the same measurement who entered graduate ninth grade and then graduated four years later so anyway so there's a lot of things that the state needs to do that they haven't been doing right and then there's a lot of things that parents need to be doing we can't for me i want to like just talk to my black brothers and sisters and say we got to step up right now people  say oh you blame the victim no there are ways that we as a community have always supported each other for those of us who have and those of us who don't and really coming together to form that bedrock of support and that's what we need to do right now because are the first teachers so they're not off the hook but then there's the schools and as soon as you start talking about schools and teachers unions and saying that they can do anything differently then you're bashing unions right and there's so many things that they should do differently and so many progressive things that unions have blocked and yes i've said the name that shouldn't be named and that's you know i mean we all we all hear talk about this stuff and in parking lots right and when we get in meetings we're scared to say it because of partisan politics and then in terms of community so i want to so i want to that's where the northside achievement zone comes in you know one present when then senator obama was running for president he heard about the harlem children zone which is the what we are replicating across the country there are now sixty one promised neighborhoods he said if i become president i want to see the same outcomes that are happening in central harlem i want to see the same comprehensive community development that's taking place because they are serious about kading all their children who are largely well just about all african and african american and he said if i become president i'm going to replicate so as he became president he you know partnered up with jeff canada angela glover blackwell from policy lincoln and jeff harlem children's zone and now we have sixty one promise neighborhoods we are one promise neighborhood is simply that the delts in the community gets serious and we say that we are going to play nice in the sandbox for once and and that that our kids will be promised great schools at the center surrounded by strong family and community support and to do that we received in two thousand and eleven twenty eight million dollars grant over a five year period to really build this machine of support for community and the first thing that we do is work with parents i mean that's the first so this is not about you know again i think we should be able to talk about schools and talk about politicians and talk about community and parents but share the love and share the responsibility and so for us it's family engagement is the education pipeline and it's whole family support family engagement we're we have found we have about two hundred  sixty families in our pipeline right now and they are out my inspiration most are extremely low income they are resource poor they're not integrity poor resiliency poor they're resource poor and they want some support to be able to successfully navigate i mean i'm middle class i have a master's degree my husband has a master's degree and we still sometimes scratch your head about how to really educate our kids so they want to partner and that's what we said we know we're going to partner and every door that we knocked on we originally went through the zone in north minneapolis which is from west broadway to thirty fifth and pinned to the highway two hundred fifty five blocks every door we went to when our nass connectors this is part of our family engagement is that we have people for in the community who are doing outreach to n reach the door knocking and partnering with the families so all of our nasa connectors are from north minneapolis been there done that right and so know where the families are coming from and and when they door knocked and they asked the families would you like your child to go to college because here's the thing and that's the only thing around would you know representative moran you know no offense at all but you know as we start saying we're going to match to the aspirations of children children's aspirations are based on what the adults aspired for them and so often by the time they get to middle school and high school they no longer maybe they never even had the aspiration but they know they're not on track because schools have been failing them as well as their parents by the way as well as their community so then they're not thinking about a four year college that seems like a whole distant thing i think our our policies our parents our schools it has to be about high expectations with high supports we expect to as a community and that's the history of the black community that i know about you know we expect you to graduate from a four year college and go on and be successful and give back to your community and we're going to give you the support for that to happen and if they choose this with those high expectations hold them up given the supports laying the pathway partnering with families not to go on to college but i want you know we've all one right because then they have options and opportunities because they they still have had a solid education so in a way family engagement the education pipeline where work in the early childhood and representative  i want to thank you for all of the funding that's come to early childhood that is so critical we've got to start early and stay late kids start cut kindergarten be hind they start behind and they nest before they've ever laid eyes on a teacher right and they never catch up yes you know it's on we talked about this idea of creating a public mind and so sondre you mentioned expectations and expectations have to do with what you described  representative moran attuning the pathway to fulfill to both create acknowledge and fulfill the expectations of individuals and families and therefore community in society and so right now i would say the situation is that in our community there are low expectations or no expectations and we have been acculturated into accepting that this is the way things are that failure is ok and lack of achievement is ok and our kids internalize that and they reject their intelligence and they work hard they work hard proving that they are dumb and they put a lot of intelligence  the proving what they don't know and so it's all twisted it's upside down so it seems to me jefferson that one of the challenges challenges is that we've got to change the mind of the community that means sondra changing individuals minds number one but as we succeed in doing that we create what i call a public mind and the public mind is this massive overarching expectation a description of ourselves a definition of ourselves as a culture and this culture produces the expectation that everybody must go to college must succeed must work must be productive must be successful in all the ways we decide for and success jeff how that happening so far at harvest prep where you have guided unwatched and you working with their load to document their path of creating a different mindset and hopefully that's going to be one of the models that will be exported and expanded by ness before i forget now i want to attribute this to sandra because she's the one there first brought it to to my attention for this idea of creating a mindset one of the simple things that parents can ask their teachers is is my child a grade level doesn't matter of to first grade second grade whatever that's something that everybody can remember it's an easy phrase easy idea is my child at grade level you love your teacher you love your school all that swelling good but here's my child a grade level and that's part of this public mind it may and that may end up being the the the the public mind model that we carry forward but in terms of in terms of harvest prep and best academy  whose school is it i serve as as legal counsel to just three or four years ago those schools were not achieving at the same level they are now they were at about fifty or sixty percent proficiency which by the way was still twice as good as any other public school district however eric mood and his wife element mood were not satisfied that they with that they didn't want to be the best of the worst they wanted to be the best of the best and so eric be an engineer by background and training went about solving the problem the same way that he would have solved the problem as as an engineer he went to all the highest performing schools around the country and sat at their feet and learn from them and within the space of three years those schools went from fifty percent to sixty percent to eighty percent proficiency now in response to the question of well is it necessary for everybody to go to college well the facts and research tell us that within the space of two years seventy percent of the jobs in this country are going to require at least two years of college or more so you can say well you know not everyone has the aspiration of going to college and that that's true but that thirty percent that does not have post secondary training the kind of jobs that they're going to be able to get our customer service jobs that don't pay salaries that are sufficient to support them and their family now there are some technical trades out but if you listen to m p r you can hear that they're having the same problems in the technical trade field they're not turning out the kind of students and this is rural minnesota they're not turning out the kind of students that that have the proficiency diva learn technical trades and so mood element mood at their schools except no excuses the standard is college and beyond ok and so they're turning out students who are eighty percent profession and math and reading and  ninety plus percent who are going on to college and post secondary options and so that's the world we live in now when i was a kid only forty percent of the jobs required a college education and so you know you could you could deal with forty percent proficiency but that's not the world we're living in today and so and so that's why we have to prepare a game engine when you're my flashback to growing up in kansas city and there were two tracks at least one for regular academics in which people would gradually can go either into the workforce or to college and there was a certain school that you that you were sent to that was a manual arts school and also that you can also learn if you're in prison right and so that was your your work future and costly is would tell black students you don't really have a future in high school or in college and why don't you go down to manual school school then there was a period where the vocations took on a different value and we who rejected vocational training were discovering that the vocational training was providing  real beneficial work opportunities for people so we got caught in between values there so were are we now and it seems that you're saying sondra that we need to create a process that educates to the highest and allows people to do what they choose to do anywhere on the spectrum of employment and the  fulfillment i mean that's i mean so jeff something that jeff and eric through the african american leadership forum that i'm a part of to talk about strongly is that the cima gap is made up of a number of gaps the preparation get which this would represent moran talked about so eloquently the time get we need more time on task longer school days longer school years haven't been able to get that from the state nor on the local level for a lot of mitigating forces and and so and the leadership gap teaching gap you know so on but the the most important thing in my mind is the belief gap and that's that's really what you're getting allen and you said it just perfectly and i love that public mind you hear me copying you like crazy but but it is it's about do we really believe that kids from five five four one one and one two can actually make it in college and i'm just going to tell you i have i've been i may be successful not just be and i love to your schools i went to a two y school that was my path i went to two years school then i'm a matriculated to a historically black college and university then went on to my m b a so love i'm right but when we start deciding and middle school that a kid is going to be tracked to a two year school that's that's just crazy i was at a meeting once and there was a minneapolis public school teacher and i love public school teachers right i'm working with some incredible schools we work with nine schools and they are wonderful the school leaders and they are working  hard but there are things that we need to do to change the system and the teacher said you know what she just got flipped flabbergasted and she said this is the bottom line you give me a kid born and bred in north me i'm sorry in minneapolis and i can educate him she said but you give me two kids from south side chicago i'm from indiana that move around all time and i can't write and now i was so upset that day because it was like you know the kids who go into her classroom are da before they sit down if they have even the alsa melanin in their skin you know and it is and so because what we know we know this as a people when we believe something it becomes so i mean this is about you don't have to run public school's principal partner day and one of the most disturbing things to me throughout there was this constant reference to kids being in poverty poverty poverty poverty and that becomes the mindset and what that means to those who are saying it and those who are listening is that it's ok if we don't educate these kids because they're in poverty now no one's  no one's going to come out and say that well hill probably everybody sitting at this table grew up in relative poverty i know i didn't have any money growing up but that didn't have a damn thing to do with how how i was educated or my ability to be educated and so when we get through with that thing i stood up i say you know we need to get this poverty and low income language out of our lexicon because the fact of the matter is seventy percent of the kids in minneapolis meet that demographic and so what's unusual about that that is the norm simple plain clear you addressed five year olds and three year olds and four year olds that scholars the womb ok we start in the womb so you know i when i talk to some young moms who are pregnant which i gets not excited because they're pregnant but excited because i'm talking to you right there we're in a relationship and i say do you want that scholar in your belly to go to college you know every one of them say they say yes and when you say could you use some support with housing so you know so here's the thing there's this deal to mindsets you can only fix education when you fix poverty that's what jeff is talking about so we just as a society have said there are some on edge a couple kids because they moved too much they're poor their dads incarcerated whatever so there are excuses the models of schools that jeff is talking about prep in the schools that eric visited and hiawatha kept cademy here is that there are no excuses so you look poverty right in the face and you say yes that's real and it is harder and you do have to do more that's what we're trying to do on his own is the purpose of the north such humans own is to in multi generational poverty using education as a lever and so so it is about housing it is about career financial pathways and it is about you know creating this cookoo for families because one thing that i know and i've seen it i've seen and i've seen it with our two hundred and sixty families who are resource poor who are partnering with us in a zone they might be on they are all on this the of dysfunction and health thing as they all are some are way over here somewhere in sion you know this way and so on but they all uniform at least have a desire for their children to do better than they've done and they are just asking for a partner who's gone state of course and help them with those things like housing that's why we have a robust housing action team it's not going to be easy and it doesn't matter when a kid moves around all the time it absolutely doesn't they don't know where they're going to sleep and if they're not eating and it doesn't matter if dad or mom has a job or if they're in the house or not or if they're being read to an early childhood and that's why when you start giving families the education about how me to say this and i'm going to be quiet when we tell our parents you know check it out and we have some call family academy and parents with children zero to three attend and and they come they come for twelve weeks they learn all about brain development positive discipline and so on and when we say to them you know what the difference many of our babies are not ready for kindergarten and then they do not go on to college many of them get right in the cradle to prison pipeline or the cradle to the grave pipeline right now and we just keep it real because they're not ready to start school they start off behind and did you know that simply by reading to your child middle class children have heard thirty million words by the time they're three low income children have heard like ten and we just like break it down with families and say you just got talked to more and we've in the families are allowing themselves to for the babies to where little boxes is called as lean a method of counting the number of words that are being spoken in the home because we can look at across income lines around what kids do better based on how many affirmative words by the way right that they there's a difference that they've heard and when you start telling them that out there like the in it organizer you use that pathway to your political path to becoming elected to the state legislature so i'm asking you to wear your community organizer head right no not the legislator hat and talk about how then must we organize use our talents our skill to mobilize moms and dads mobilize families mobilize children and ultimately mobilize business and institutional stakeholders because all of us have to win and there's no such thing as a failure that's going to be ok or acceptable and it's not how we do that and first let me just say i agree with all that i'm hearing and that i my conversation santa party is not an indicator for failure he is in poverty can't be successful they can't be successful and there's many things that we need to do we need those community partners you know schools need community partners we as a you know not graduating from high school or not not not in so a big part of we cannot do our work with key is without doing that work with parents or family whatever that family dynamic is and so we have to we have to get out we have to organize we have to become a community that is informed and vav and saying that we're not going to accept anything less dense assess because that is achievable it is and there's many things we don't know homeless this homelessness plays a part in ads been transit plays a part in that you know going to school home abuse neglect it all that plays a part in it but you have a network of support and it takes you know patience you know black families in our black communities wherever you are we can do that but it takes time it takes resources it takes patience takes understanding you know and it takes a network of support and so we have to organize aroun and you do that from door to door well her talk about this not going to endorse you have to knock on doors and gays people in a conversation we can be the solution of other people to be a part of a solution and that path so you can not do is you ask think but i want you to make reference to the recent awards earned by harvest prep significant national recognition what's going on with them yeah just this past weekend i got back from chicago where harvest actually was best academy because the organization is called the council of schools educating boys of color ok caus b the is the acronym and best academy and and they're all boys program by by the way has an all boys and an all girls program but the all boys program was identified and received a national award for the education of african american boys the eighty percent proficiency in math but and reading but the other thing is that there were five other schools from around the country that receive similar awards there's a third good marshall academy in washington d c and it's in the area called anacostia now washington d c is probably sixty s percent african american but anacostia is like one hundred percent right anacostia is like the north side of washington d c thurgood marshall academy hundred percent graduation from high school hundred percent college placement and demonstrating once again no excuses this can be done this is readily achievable maryville indiana which is about thirty five forty miles from chicago receive tool wards for for both their elementary school and their high school ninety percent either fifty percent african american forty percent hispanic  poverty that we like to talk about as as an excuse ninety percent low income ninety percent minority and ninety percent proficiency what am i talking about ninety  ninety ok and there's schools around the country that are doing this and as as sandra identified and with eric laid out in his five gaps analysis the most significant gap is this belief gap on the part of students parents teachers and school leaders and you know i have had so many interactions with public schools and and the school leaders and teacher s belief gap simply an accidental thing did it just happen did it just happen we just woke up and you know we just kind of didn't feel like we had ability or if somebody to establish a direction that allows us to do one hundred percent hundred percent that we believe we are and can be what do you think absolutely i mean yeah there is that a war of the minds going on but you know there used to be this saying when i was growing up that and pardon my language that the white man used to stay up at night figuring out how he could hold the black man back now he goes to bed early because we're holding our own selves  back right and that's a problem and that's what the african american leadership forum is about and that is nobody is going to do this except us and we have some of the most outstanding leaders who are part of our organization including sondra and other blame it on anyone else except ourselves that is fantastic but in two we hit it at the ground level as we move on grass what engagement in force meant some organizing has to come from the community we have t engage the community in a bigger and better way they can do it we have to deal with then them that they have all the power to resources inside and to create better outcomes they absolutely have it and we must engage them you know i  right this state has failed i children rights they have not done a good job is about no excuses right no excuse i mean as we can give plenty of skew says while he has a feeling why does such a huge disparity when i say i wish you no excuses we need to do what all we need to do to ensure that every child is graduating on a high school they choose to go to college fantastic let's push for that and that and let th goal you know but there should be absolutely no excuse and we have to invest in that in vestment is not always about finding it is about a definitely a mindset of every teacher everyone in a straight or every state that kids can be successful but that is a part of my job too it's a go back to my community and say i need you to show up we are powerful people doing powerful things but it just doesn't stay in our community we have to show up at the capitol we have to fight for what we believe we have to make a stand what we believe no one is going to do this for us we should not expect anyone else to do this for us we have to take a stand and show up be at the table with those who have the power to create to change and be a voice for what we need five community nobody can bring solutions to our community but as we have the answers so that's part of my goal is to have us as community people to show up it's not a party thing but we know the political process is about those who are in power so show up and still being gauge you know bringing those pairs you're working well to the capital so they can know that process they is a process that is about them that they need to know about so that we can create a change that's what the whole civil rights movement was about it wasn't about elected officials all the politicians or those it was rich it was about ordinary people doing extraordinary things it comes from the community at a ground level  i think you're saying that there there's just qadri of the super town that's repaired and wants to engage and sondra are you able to engage those parents who are north minneapolis parents from a part of the leadership forum and is there a role for people that are in north minneapolis to support and engage in what used to advance the work of northside of cheeseman zone yes so so i you know i tell you i believe thank you single you know aspect of their lives particularly our boys and i are resource poor boys i think that what needs to happen this is what i'm seeing happen and i'm seeing people from all walks of life race  income in north minneapolis outside of north minneapolis really moving for al because they know that the city and the state can't be well unless north minneapolis is healthy i'm seeing that do that see i'm them do that and i'm we have a group of folks who are supporting all of this wrap around that we're doing with families and and how we're working with schools you know and the schools that are doing you know really working hard to change this thing and our wonderful school leader burn idiot johnson we have a group of  call friends of the future and they are you know like a hundred strong and they contribute even with our grant they know that we want to sustain this beyond the grant and and right now i think the name of the game and i think represented moran would agree for me is educating our community you got to do some education first you have to have a relationship in order to have full engagement in the issues that are impacting the most and so that's what we're doing right now i starting like jeff was saying we told parents you know ask if your child has that grade level the school leaders told me here in north minneapolis that most of the kids are two to three to four grade levels behind and many of our parents don't know that that's overwhelmingly over ninety percentage ninety percent of the family said yeah that they you know really love their local school the united negro college fund did the same thing and found the same results across the country well leap year and throw some things that are kind of unrelated but related for both of you appreciate at the recent article on you the interview with you in these terror tribune and you made comments about north minneapolis a place where there are two thousand i think  preschool children but where some kind of policy is allowing the placement of a high number of sex offenders and you challenge the wisdom of policy that connects vulnerable children in a environment are the places predators in an environment that it with one of the children that's one thing to talk about and how does that whole policy continuum show linkages or lack of linkage just things that don't make sense or do make sense that hurt our children and our families the second question representative moran has to do with something we discussed later today with  is like ten thousand people leaving work with every day in minnesota the state replaces around three thousand people every year how do we get our people into the jobs and those jobs or jobs that influence in effect policy at the state level and how do our ability how does our ability to get meaningful and powerful positions impact educational outcomes and decisions like the ones that you a negative one that puts offenders in around children and neighborhoods and the questions start with you've got about a minute have to talk about it so ok just a feeling so we look over the next twenty years you know we have the baby boomers going to be retiring you know also is opportunity and the versity of our state it's difficult to change and so i agree that you know i'm not well if we all we all we don't do well if we all do weigh all but we have to begin is now create those opportunities when we're not planning for tomorrow we planned for ten twenty years out where we have a skinny guys who won't be graduating soon but also preparing those who aren't now for work force and you know we have to create those opportunities you know kevin has a goal of thirty two percent people of color working on any construction jobs you know some people they grumble about that like it's impossible to happen like you know where we're going to find people of color you know they're there we're not hiring them we're not searching them you know our people so that we can have the successes we need and we do serve in the we have to bequeath to the generations that well well you know you know people people feel valuable when they're valued and and i think that that's what we're starting to see i am very hopeful by the way i think that that's what we're starting to see is that my neighbors are with us i mean you know it has to start with us you know so so many of my parents aren't showing up at the school board meetings right now but you know because we value our kids while our families are being educated while we're mobilizing we're not standing still and because because fundamentally al when you know jeff said it he said that eric went around and looked at the schools that were doing it around the country who had resource poor kids who who had black skin you know no daddy you know struggling moving around paul paul right and still were educating them at incredible and replicate it what he saw great teachers in the classroom so we can't we have to have teacher evaluations how do you know if they're great right now what's happening at the capitol with the senate ok is that they're saying they're going to postpone teacher evaluations for yet another year we passed it that's the best again we do in politics you can get some passed doesn't mean is going to be executed having a great teacher is fundamental and then having teachers based on those evaluations stay in the classrooms wrote a time this is an education legislature for the state of minnesota our thanks to jeff his son and education consult an attorney who worked on behalf of the school district and on behalf of the african