California Capitolweek #538 6/1/01
((Jack))
Thanks for
joining us. This week, we examine an
issue central to the success and future of our state, education.
The state’s
energy crisis has clouded the picture, and while the education success stories
are there, so are the challenges
((Melissa))
And, Jack,
funding may be one of the biggest challenges of all. We’ll share what happens if we don’t meet student needs in just a
moment.
But we
begin with a report card of where we are today:
The dropout
rate is improving. Graduation for the
Class of 2000 is up slightly from last year.
Still,
one-third of Latino students, for instance, in the Central Valley do not finish
high school, and are less likely to earn a college degree.
((Jack))
The
Legislative Analysts Office says school building needs vastly exceed recent
investments.
The LAO
says one in three students attend an overcrowded school or one in need of
renovation.
((Melissa))
Teacher
retention remains a challenge…
According
to the Secretary of Education’s Office, more than thirty thousand new teachers
will be needed each year as the population grows by 2005.
((Jack))
So what
lies ahead for our public schools?
Joining us
now:
State
Superintendent of Public Instruction, Delaine Eastin…
California
Education Secretary, Kerry Mazzoni…
((Melissa))
Also with
us, Kevin Gordon, with the California Association of School Business Officials,
formerly with the California School Boards Association…
And Wayne
Johnson, President of the California Teachers Association…
Thanks for
being with us.
((Jack))
Wayne,
let’s put you in the hot seat first.
You know, we’ve spent a lot of money over the last few years. We’ve certainly had a lot of emphasis and
focus on education. Are we getting
anywhere? Are we making any progress at
all?
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
We are
making progress, and I think it’s going to pay off. The Governor has put a lot of extra money into public education
in the last couple years. I think that
is just beginning to sow some fruits of—
((Jack))
Actually,
it started with class size reduction.
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
Yes.
((Jack))
In the
Wilson Administration. It’s been
longer; more like four or five years.
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
But major
funding has come in the last two years with the Davis Administration.
((Melissa))
Delaine,
are we near the national average now?
Are we getting where we should be?
((Delaine
Eastin, State Superintendent of Public Instruction))
We’re
nearing the national average, but I’ll tell you, this is the most expensive
state in the union. We should be having
a conversation about being one of the five highest supported or ten highest
supported states. We were when I was a
kid growing up in California, and when you consider the cost of living in this
state—modest homes in the San Francisco/Bay Area are selling for six or seven
hundred thousand dollars, and it’s the same in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo,
Los Angeles, and San Diego. I mean, we
really need to have a longer and better conversation about what we do to
increase student spending even over and above getting to the national average.
((Jack))
Karen, that
information about the drop-out rate, especially in the Central Valley, is
frightening.
((Karen
Mazzoni, California Secretary of Education))
It is frightening,
but I think there’s a lot of good news. We know that all groups of children, all ethnic groups, and all
socioeconomic groups are improving. We
are able to track that in our statewide test.
We still have a long ways to go, and we still need to close the gap
between our low performing children and out children that are performing highly,
but we’re on the right track.
((Melissa))
Kevin, how
much is energy the elephant in the room that’s clouding these important
priorities that, in a normal year, would have gotten much more attention.
((Kevin
Gordon, California Association of School Business Officials))
Right. Well, certainly, it’s on the agenda. The legislature is giving it a great deal of
focus, and so, we’re really doing what we can to maintain some focus at a
little bit more subdued level, if you will, in the legislature, but we’re
working very hard on a lot of these issues that everybody has been talking
about, but even the energy issue is our issue to some extent because, of
course, school districts across the state, like every other kind of consumer,
are experiencing increases in energy costs—
((Melissa))
Some money
was set aside to help schools pay those bills.
((Kevin
Gordon, California Association of School Business Officials))
Correct,
correct. A significant amount of money,
and I think the Governor’s objective there was that nothing should distract
us from the objectives that we have to continue on the march of implementing
some of these reforms, making sure that the standards-based approach tha
t
we’re inserting into both curriculum and testing and the other things, and
that all these things continue moving forward, and we’re not distracted by
the issues in dealing with energy. So,
it’s there. It’s dominating a lot
of the attention of the legislature, but we’re still moving forward on all
the policy objectives we have for education.
((Melissa))
The money
that we have, are we using it correctly?
Wayne, do you, for instance, think that expanding the middle school year
is a smart priority with limited funding.
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
Well, Kerry
and I disagree on that. We see extending
the middle school year by six weeks—and I know they’ve revised that now so
that they’ll take some of that money and put it into low performing school.
We don’t see extending the middle school year as serving any purpose
at all. Basically what we have in California is the have and the have-not
schools. When you compare the top
ten percent of the API schools versus the bottom ten percent, it’s a one hundred
and eighty degree flip. In the bottom
ten percent, ninety percent of the kids are ethnic minorities, ninety percent
of the kids are poor, seventy percent of the kids are English language learners,
seventy percent of them attend the oldest, most overcrowded schools in the
state, and they have the highest percentage of non-credentialed teachers.
If you go to the top ten percent, it’s just the opposite.
The ethnic minority level is very low, there’s no poverty, there’s
no English language learners, there’s no year round schools, and they have
the lowest percentage of emergency permit teachers,
so we’re saying if you really want to affect the quality of education in California,
you’ve got to focus in on that twenty-five percent of kids that are not making
it, and the thirty percent of Latino kids that are not graduating from high
school and going on to college. That’s
where the need is. The other seventy-five percent are doing fine.
They’re graduating in record numbers and—
((Jack))
Wouldn’t
extending the middle school year help do that a little bit?
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
But how is
extending the middle school year in Beverly Hills going to help these kids?
((Jack))
Well, what
about in East Los Angeles?
((Delaine
Eastin, Superintendent of Public Instruction))
Well, let
me point out that the schools that are most in need of it are the least likely
to be able to take advantage of it. You
can’t extend the school year if you’re on a multi-track, year round schedule.
The lowest performing schools in our state are the ones most likely
to be on a multi-track, year-round schedule.
The one’s that have the spare classrooms, the vacancies, are the one’s
that can extend the school year. Some have
said, “Well, we’ll just have a longer school day.”
Wait a minute. On a multi-track, year-round, the children
already only go 163 days, and they probably go 7 hours a day, and some have
an hour and a half commute each way. This
is insanity. You can’t have kids go
to school twelve hours a day if you add their commute, so in reality, we would
have been better off doing any number of things. I mean, in terms of parents, they would rather see us reduce class
size in the fourth through eighth grades. There are a lot of things that we ought to think about.
((Karen
Mazzoni, Secretary of Education))
Well,
actually, I think if you want to be honest about this, when you look at LA
Unified, which has the most impacted schools, they are ready, willing, and
able, and are supporting this proposal to lengthen the middle school year, even
at their multi-track schools, so there are ways to do this. We also need to, if we’re going to talk
about class size reduction, we have to be honest that when we did class size
reduction, we created a situation in California that is unacceptable, and that
is, we added non-qualified, non-credentialed teachers to our classrooms, and
they ended up in the very schools that we are most concerned about. As the legislative process has gone on, the
middle school proposal has been modified to focus on the lowest performing
schools, and with substantial amounts of money per student going to children in
the first and second deciles, the lowest of the schools. I think that is good news. I think that it points out the process of
negotiation between the executive branch and the legislative branch.
((Melissa))
As folks
look across the education spectrum, there have been many improvements made in
the K-3 years. Is middle school where
we really go downhill? Is that why
there’s a focus on middle school?
((Kevin
Gordon, California Association of School Business Officials))
When you
look at the dropout rates, for example, you find that some of the greatest
dropout occurs in the ninth grade, right after they get done with middle
school. The other thing is that when we
look at what’s happening with the high school exit exam and the great emphasis
that’s going to be placed on that, we need to be looking at middle schools and
what’s going to be happening there.
There must be something to the proposal when you have LA Unified, San
Francisco Unified, Sacramento, Long Beach, all the major areas—those
superintendents and leaders have been supporting the proposal. Now, it’s been modified. There’s a great deal more flexibility, and
that’s really to the credit—
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
Yeah, but
you’re supporting it for the money. I’m
from LA Unified, and Delaine is absolutely right. LA Unified is looking for the money, and they’re not going to
have it. Half the schools that are on
year round are on concept six already.
Those kids already go an extra hour a day, and there is physical factor
of how long can you go to school, and how much can you absorb in a day? They’re not going to be able to extend the
school year in those concept six schools.
They’re already maxed out. It’s
not going to work in Los Angeles; it’s not going to work in Long Beach. They’re looking at the bottom line, which is
the dollar sign.
((Delaine
Eastin, Superintendent of Public Instruction))
And give
districts a choice about whether they want a longer school year or whether they
want smaller class sizes. Beyond that,
although achievement drops in middle schools, it drops even more dramatically,
as you know Kevin, in high schools.
That’s where we’ve made the least progress in terms of overall
achievement, but I don’t disagree. Our
top schools are among the best in the country.
You can take Beverly Hills and Hillborough and Ross and compare them
with Westchester County. Our fully
English proficient kids are above average on the Stanford-9. Not one Californian in a hundred knows that.
((Jack))
How does
that translate? Are we doing a better
job getting our California kids into college, so that they can get into the
California economy, make money, pay taxes, and take care of us as we age?
((Delaine
Eastin, Superintendent of Public Instruction))
We’re doing
rather well at the top half. It’s the
bottom half. That’s why we have to
focus like a laser on the low performing schools, on the low performing
kids. You know, we have the finest
university and community college system that the world has ever seen still to
this day, in spite of cuts that occurred there during a twenty year period when
we being eviscerated in K-12. We’ve
continued to maintain higher ed, partly because they get more federal dollars,
and private dollars, and they do fundraising.
((Jack))
So the
answer is, “Yes, we’re getting more kids into college?”
((Delaine
Eastin, Superintendent of Public Instruction))
Well, the
real challenge is we’re getting a really high number of our top kids at our top
schools into college. It the bottom
half that’s suffering, the blue-collar children. Many of us, I would venture to guess, sitting at this table were
the first in our families to go to college.
The worry is that in the future there won’t be as much of that. We are not reaching as far into the
blue-collar ranks to bring the kids out into the opportunity to go to
college. That’s what we need to do.
((Melissa))
Are the
accountability standards making a difference?
Are they getting us along the path that Delaine thinks we need to go
down?
((Kerry
Mazzoni, Secretary of Education))
Certainly,
they really have focused the schools, and they have focused the state on
student achievement, and that’s where we need to be focused. There is no longer an attitude of excuses
that some children can’t learn. We’ve
set the bar high for students. That’s
extremely important.
((Melissa))
And we’re
not overwhelming teachers with accountability measures?
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
Well, you
have to have accountability; there’s no doubt about that, but accountability will
only go so far. For example, we visited
a school down in San Bernadino, Abraham Lincoln Elementary. It’s a school built for six hundred kids;
they have fourteen hundred students enrolled.
They have to bus five hundred out.
They have a turnover rate every year in that school of 233%. 90% of the kids are English language
learners. They’re all poor. We went out and visited the school for an
hour, and when we left, the principal said, “Just wanted you to know that in
the hour that you were here, three new kids checked in, and seven checked out,”
and she said that that’s a typical hour.
Now, accountability isn’t going to work there. You can hold those teachers as accountable as you want to; it
won’t make a difference because there are social conditions there. You must stabilize that community. Are those children smart? Of course they are. Can they learn? Of course they can, but they have to be given a chance, and in
that environment, I don’t care who you hold accountable—principal, board of
education, teachers—it’s not going to work.
END
DISCUSSION PART I
((Melissa))
We want to
spend a few moments talking about teachers because as we discussed, California
needs many more of them, and there are some incredible stories of innovation
and inspiration taking place every day in Golden State classrooms…
Meet Scott
Malloy, A California Teacher of the Year…
TEACHER OF THE YEAR
((Scott Malloy, CA Teacher of the Year))
In the other job that I had before, I would have
nightmares. Teaching, as tough as it
was during the day, I would sleep like a baby when I went home, so I think that
kind of told me that that was a good place for me. It’s kind of like clay; you can do what you want with it, and
it’s fantastic; everyday, you get to use all the sides of you. You get to be a showman; you get to plan
ahead; you get to use your hands at night making your little materials for
manipulative lessons or whatever you’re interested in, you can pull into the
classroom.
((Addressing Students))
The old models don’t really work anymore. I have to be able to admit that I don’t
really have this mastered yet, but I’m going to go ahead and learn with you
students. The old model of me understanding
everything and giving it to you, that’s going out the door, that’s true. Let’s not be so quick to turn our schools
into test prep zones.
((Scott Malloy, CA Teacher of the Year))
I try to approach all the different modalities of
students. I try to meet the students
where they’re at.
((Student))
He’s very strange, but, like, in a good way. Like, in a very, like, I guess I could say
intellectual way. You know, his jokes
are always about math.
((Scott Malloy, CA Teacher of the Year))
Math is just a strand in the fabric of human culture, and
marching through these standards is not going to turn students on…
I bought a Dr. Evil costume from the movie Austin Powers
for eighty dollars online. That eighty
dollars was the best money I’ve ever spent.
At rallies and special events, I’ll sometimes show up sometimes as Dr.
Evil because I wear my hair like he does, and I have a pinky ring, and then one
day, we had a pageant, kind of a parody of the
Ms. America Pageant for the teachers, and my nephew came out as Mini-Me. It’s kind of a wink at the kids. I know that I don’t have any power unless
they’re along with me. Every day brings
surprises. Some days, I know what I’m
doing right away from the start of the day.
Some days, I don’t really know where the day is going to go, and
something beautiful pops out. That’s
the great thing about teaching. You
don’t know where your influence stops.
It kind of ripples out, and it’s a way to live forever.
END TEACHER OF THE YEAR
((Melissa))
Scott’s
definitely a star at (Get info from Pam), and we look at teachers like Scott,
and that’s what we need more of. How do
we get more Scotts in the classroom?
((Jack))
And you
need, what, thirty thousand of them?
((Kerry
Mazzoni, Secretary of Education))
Yes, it’s
sort of a daunting challenge, but I think one of the things we need to think
about is people like Scott who weren’t considering education. We need to think about how we are going to
get those people right now who are thinking about going into business or law or
medicine and attract them into the profession.
It’s a very serious issue, and it’s a very serious issue relative to
men, and we can’t end up with a teaching core that is strictly women. Boys and girls need male role models, and we
need to create a profession that is competitive with private sector industry
and that has good pay and that has good conditions.
((Jack))
Wayne, you
represent the union, the California Teachers Association, so you have an
affinity for teachers that is different from the other people at this table
because of your membership. What do
they specifically need?
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
Attracting
teachers is a major problem, but retaining teachers is a larger problem.
((Jack))
Do you have
a whole host of them getting ready to retire?
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
Oh yeah.
55% of California teachers are forty-five years of age or older.
Almost 10% are fifty-five years of age or older. We know that there’s going to be a mass exodus,
and 30% of all new California teachers quit within the first five years, and
in urban and inner city, 50% quit within the first five years.
((Delaine
Eastin, Superintendent of Public Instruction))
And every
year we add more kids than they have in the state of Wyoming. Every single year, we add a state to our
student population, so with the retirements and the growth and, frankly, the
attrition, it’s a real problem.
((Jack))
In other
words, we’re walking backwards?
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
We need a
very thorough study as to why people are leaving teaching. Young, creative, talented people are
leaving, and we need to fix it. My
theory is that the system is antiquated.
It’s an old military system. You
have young, vibrant people coming in that are better educated than the people
that are leading them in the administration.
There needs to be a change in that relationship.
((Melissa))
In terms of
attracting people to the teaching career, one of the things that folks look at
in the private sector is “What does my office look like? What are my facilities? What is my support staff?” Is this the time, and we’ve spoken about
bond issues, to maybe invest in some of the structural support issue that would
make it more attractive for someone that’s spending so many hours in the
classroom?
((Kevin
Gordon, CA Association of School Business Officials))
Right, and
school facilities continue to a problem and a big challenge for the state of
California. We need about twenty—or,
actually, it’s closer to thirty to forty billion dollars to invest—
((Melissa))
Okay, so it’s
a money issue, and when we stack that on top of the energy crisis and the bonds
needed to get us out of that, are school bonds getting lost?
((Delaine
Eastin, Superintendent of Public Instruction))
If
education is our number one priority in California, then we ought to have a
bond for the schools that’s bigger than this energy bond. The reality is that this need is
extraordinary, and you can generate some money locally that is a match to state
money, but Aristotle said, “What a society honors will be cultivated.” If you want to bring teachers into this
profession, then they ought to be treated as professionals. They ought to go a clean, well-lighted, safe
environment. They shouldn’t have to go
down to the principal’s office and stand in line to use the telephone. They should have technology on their desk,
and they should, in fact, be acknowledged in a pay sense. For some reason, people don’t seem to
realize that when the school day ends for the children, it does not end for
their teacher. Just as the child has
homework, the teacher has homework. So we’ve started on a path. Jack O’Connell carried legislation to raise
teacher’s salaries that this Governor signed, but it’s just the beginning. We ought to pay them for a lot more staff
development time, and, overall, raise their salaries dramatically.
((Jack))
Kerry, last
week when we did this program on the subject of energy, one of the things we
looked at was the seventy-three million dollars per day that the state is
currently spending to keep the lights on, and Melissa brought up the point that
you could build two schools for that amount in one day, a high school and a
middle school. We are faced with this
horrible energy problem, and what is that going to do to our education goal?
((Kerry
Mazzoni, Secretary of Education))
Well, the
Governor has kept education
as his highest priority. He, basically, has kept the budget whole for education. There have been some adjustments within that—
((Jack))
But there
are limits aren’t there?
((Kerry
Mazzoni, Secretary of Education))
There are
limits to that, and we certainly hope that this energy issue will be addressed,
and we certainly need support from the federal government as it relates to
energy, but this is the time to stay the course in education. When there is a downturn in the economy,
when there are hard times, that is exactly when we must not cut education. We are on the right track, and it’s the
engine for this economy. If we were to
cut it right now and roll back what we’ve done, that’s the wrong move, and so
we must really have our priorities right.
As Delaine says, this is the most important thing, and we really must
stay the course and make sacrifices in other areas.
((Kevin
Gordon, CA Association of School Business Officials))
It’s very interesting,
though, when you look at the energy crisis and the resources that have come
together to try and deal with it and the expenditures of general fund
money. We’ve had a crisis with regard
to school facilities and housing students statewide, but where was that effort
and that energy to try to solve the problem in a really big way? Well, we think you should take every
opportunity you can get, and next March, there will be an opportunity to go to
the ballot for the bond, not waiting until November, and we think you really
ought to do that irrespective of what’s going on with energy.
((Jack))
The
Governor just met with the President, and the discussion was about California’s
economic future. Unless there is some
break in this energy problem, Gray Davis is talking about a California, which
would trigger a US recession, which may even trigger a global recession, which
brings us back to 1990 all over again, when California went through this once
before. What are the contingency plans
that education has to be able to deal with that eventuality? What do we do?
((Delaine
Eastin, Superintendent of Public Instruction))
Well, it is
a question of priorities, and I said this in the 90s, and I say it again;
in a family, when you have a problem, say a spouse gets laid off, you don’t
just say, “Well, we’re going to cut everything a little bit.” You set certain things aside. The health and safety of your family comes
before you buy new carpet or anything new.
You don’t go on vacation; you fix the roof. You decide what the priorities are, and I appreciate the fact that
the Governor didn’t cut education in this environment. What we need though, is a long-term strategy
so that schools can predict what kind of resources they’re going to have. I mean, they signed multiyear contracts with
teachers. That’s not an irresponsible
thing to do. That’s a responsible
thing to do, but then they have to have a certainty about the ongoing increases
that they’re going to have. The span
of control is much broader in education
than it is in the private sector. One principal has 22 teachers, a half-dozen
aides, custodians, receptionists. This
is not a fat system. This is the leanest
system that we’re running in the country just about, and I would suggest that
we need to make sure that we never cut education the way it was cut for about
a twenty year period again.
((Melissa))
Let’s look
at though, we need to get the job done.
Meantime, the testing continues, the day to day instruction continues in
the classroom. Are we still getting the
job done? How, in fact, is our testing
going? Wayne, are you afraid, say, that
testing will suffer along with all these other accountability measures?
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
Well, I
think testing is overblown. We can tell
you who is doing well and who isn’t, and we can give you there names and—
((Melissa))
Probably
not necessary at this time to do that, thank you.
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teachers Association))
But we are
getting that job done with the top 75% of the kids. For the last several years, 65% of California’s high school
graduates have gone onto college, and about 31 or 32% of those folks
graduate. Again, it’s that bottom 25%
that are slipping through the cracks.
((Melissa))
And is it
true that in the lower performing schools that at least a third of the teachers
have emergency credentials?
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teacher’s Association))
They
average about 25%, and in some, it’s worse.
We have schools in Los Angeles where 80% of the faculty are emergency
permit. It just sort of depends, but
they’ll average 25%.
((Jack))
We’ve seen
stories where, in California, there have been teachers that have not taken the
incentives, the cash bonuses and that sort of thing, and the argument is about
testing, and the argument comes down to, “We’re teaching kids how to take tests
as opposed to learning the underlying material.” Is that what’s happening to a certain degree?
((Wayne
Johnson, California Teacher’s Association))
Well, I
think you’re going to see a major rebellion against all this testing among the
teachers in the state of California. As
I travel around, I just hear this constant outcry against it. For example, on the Star-9 test, we’ve got
1.2 million non-native English speaking kids; they have to take the test in
English. Now, I know they say that
they’re doing it to establish a baseline, but teachers say it’s just a horrible
experience to put a kid through. We
have a ninety minute math test for second graders, which second grade teachers say
is child abuse.
((Jack))
Right. Since we’re down to about thirty seconds,
Kerry, can I give you the last twenty for the final thought?
((Kerry
Mazzoni, Secretary of Education))
I think it’s
important to have a statewide testing program, because it needs to inform
our decisions at the classroom level, at the school level, at the district
level, and at the state level. Without
that kind of data, we won’t be able to focus in resources because it will
be the program of the day that some legislator thinks will be the cure-all,
and so this way we can focus resources, we can look at things that are proven,
and, hopefully, address those lower children.
((Jack))
And on that
note, we are out of time. Thank you all
very much. Thank you for joining us…
Energy news
has dominated the Capitol recently, and some people are using this time to
engage and educate students about state government and the political process.
((Melissa))
Jennifer
Fischer has a story about an annual program that teaches kids in the workplace,
instead of just the classroom…
ASIAN YOUTH LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE
The
Senate chambers at the State Capitol is a room of authority, where leaders take
center stage to tackle important issues…
But take a closer look, these aren’t your average Senators. In fact, they aren’t even old enough to
vote…
These young men and women are juniors and seniors in high
school. Fifty students from all over
California were selected to attend this year’s Asian Pacific Youth Leadership
Conference here in Sacramento…
((Georgette Imura, Asian Youth Leadership Conference
Founder))
Yeah, we’re seeing a lot of students who are the first
generation. We’re also seeing a lot of
students who are themselves immigrants and don’t have a real strong command of
the
English language.
In
just four days, these ambitious teens have to learn what it takes to be a state
senator…
Sixteen year old Mimi Nygyen said that this conference
changed her outlook on politics…
((Mimi Nygyen, Student, Santa Ana))
Just because I’m Asian, why can’t I work my way up?
Georgette Imura started this program eleven years ago after
witnessing a lack of Asians in the state legislature and in school groups…
((Georgette Imura, Asian Youth Leadership Conference
Founder))
We would see boys stay and girls stay and come through the
Capitol, and there were very few students of color among those groups.
This Asian Youth Leadership Program isn’t just about the
process of state politics. In fact,
organizers say it’s really about self-confidence and teaching the students they
have a voice, and they can use it when they go back to their community…
((Georgette Imura, Asian Youth Leadership Conference
Founder))
We give them a chance to talk a lot about some cultural
issues, maybe some issues of racism or discrimination that they might be facing
in their own communities and their own schools.
Chuck Ko moved with his family from Hong Kong to Hayward,
California just six years ago…
((Chuck Ko, Hayward Student))
From what I’m learned, it’s that most people here accept diversity,
but from this conference, I also learned to preserve my cultural pride, to know
my identity, and to support Asian American legislators. Just being together in the same room makes
me feel that I’m special and that we can make a difference.
END ASIAN YOUTH LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE
((Melissa))
Educational
opportunities like this one showcase how the community can get involve with
schooling, and they offer a glimpse into the workplace and motivation to meet
their goals in school. Great idea.
((Jack))
Next week,
we return to the energy issue. We’ll
take a look at President Bush’s plan, Gray Davis’ plan, and how each impacts
the environment…
Until then,
we’ll see you next time…
((Melissa))
Goodnight.