Thank you for your wonderful enkbangagement with us this afternoon. Weve had two wonderful panels. Were excited about whats to come from our next speaker dr. Steve perry. He told me to keep his sproux shor introduction short so ill do that. Widely respected, dr. Steve perry is one of the most soughtafter educators in america. A diverse array from leagues, even President Donald Trump reached out to dr. Perry on inesiason what matters to parents and children. His unique and powerful voice has been featured on msnbc, fox, cnn, al jazeera, tv, b. E. T. And nbc as well as on the Oprah Winfrey network on multiple shows. He provides a fascinating perspective that is not often found in Public Discourse and hes been fighting for disadvantaged children and families for 30 years. Please join me in welcoming dr. Steve perry. [ applause ] long time, no see. Pretty grand entrance. Thank you so much for having me this afternoon. Thank you for staying to be part of the extensionist conversation. Dr. Payne, thank you. Sincerely, thank you for what you do and what youve done. Its all too easy for us to get caught up in ourselves not recognizing that there are people upon whose shoulders we stand. And you represent the best of our community. Again, sincerely, humbly, i thank you for having me and the rest of us here. Also i thank you for the work youve done to make it possible for children of color and black people in particular to have access to an education. A lot of people talk about it, but youve been about it. So thank you so much again for that. Id also like to thank all the sponsors who are here. Koch foundation, thank you for what you do. Maybe a month ago my sons wife and i went to the africanamerican museum, which is fascinating. Its just a stunning, startling, compelling experience. What made it even more compelling is that we were there with ruby bridges. It was cool because my sons, 11 and 14, they see her still as the kid. So they were just caught up in the fangt that theyre sitting there talking to ruby bridges. And so one of the curators who was taking us around said to them, you know, one day maybe your dad will be here. And they were like, no, he wont. Hes not really that important. And theyre right. Im probably not. But what they did talk about was when we went through the africanamerican history museum, we saw controversy. And i say that because i must be becoming more visible. Because as i come to speak more often people ask me to not be so controversial. Im not saying anybody here asked me to do that. But im just going to point out that sometimes our friends are afraid of what is really the Inconvenient Truth. And i dont know what it is that i say thats so controversial except for the fact that i am aware that black people are as smart as any other group. That latinos, that people who are poor are equally intelligent. That nobody got the gene pool lottery. Everybody has access to the same capacity if given the same opportunity. And here we are having a conversation about brown versus board of education 63 years later. The problems that persist with their then and theyre here today. In fact, there are segregated schools. I appreciate smart people that come up with the same old thing. You can call a pig prom queen but that thing is still bacon. There is segregation. We need to understand that segregation is real. Segregation is limiting someones access by virtue of the fact that they are different and in this country what that typically means is black, latino, or poor. There is segregation in the United States. There absolutely is. And what becomes controversial much in the same way as charles houston and, i dont know, Thurgood Marshall were controversial was they looked at this Inconvenient Truth and say why should my children not have the same access as everybody else if theyre the same. Arent they american . See, whats so troubling to me is that in our conversations we often overlook the obvious. The obvious is that there is a system in the United States of america that is designed to ensure that poor people and black people in particular but people of color in general do not gain access to the quality of life that chief Justice Warren talked about. Earlier, dr. Smith talked about a book written by another controversial figure. You may have heard of him. Dr. King. Where do we go from here . Community chaos. He did talk about a lot of things in that book but it was at the end i found the comments most compelling. In the final chapter, the final book that dr. King wrote, he talked about education. Dr. Martin luther king said that american schools do not know what to teach or how to teach. Thats dr. King. Guess hes controversial. Because he pointed out something that should have been obvious to many of us. That this system is not broken. We keep referring to the Public Education system as broken. It aint broken. Its working the way it was designed in 1635, to make sure that white kids from small communities gain access to the power that was believed to be theirs to hold. In an agrarian society, an agrarian calendar. When we say it was broken, maybe we dont understand the definition of broken. See, something is broken means it doesnt work. Its working. The same system was designed on the same time as another system we often refer to as broken. The justice system. Also designed to make sure that black people in particular dont gain access to freedom. Theyre the same system. Same ugly sisters of one another. Same system designed to produce the same results theyve been producing since they were designed. And the reason why in this day and age they persist is because were unwilling to have the honest conversations about why were here. Its very easy to have a conversation about gardendale. Gardendale, alabama. Come on, how hard is it . Right . We know our friends the southern racist, they just bumble their way. They dont try to dress it up. Just look, we are seceding. They even said seceding. Are you bugging . Are you saying seceding today . Youre not even going to try to come up with a different word . Exodus. Redistrict. Come up with something. No, not them. Theyre going to secede. See, thats easy for us. Thats an easy low hanging fruit. For us these high minded northeasterners to discuss, how dare they secede. Why would they do such a thing . Its about as racist as your Teachers Union making sure black latino poor kids cant get out of the schools. Thats pretty damn racist too. You cant call it anything other than what it is. When one group does not want a group of children to go to school and gain access to quality education, we call it racist. Theyre racist. Theyre racist. Yeah, they probably are. Just about as racist as those frenimies of yours. These are the ones that drive the subaru. Got the hillary Bumper Sticker on the back. Headed to whole foods. Say they want to support Public Education. Their Public Education aint the same as your Public Education. You cant support mine if mine is different than yours. If i dont have access to the same thing you do, then were not supporting the same fight. When you were fighting to make sure we focus on the teachers more than we are the children when youve shifted the focus of education around to make sure that we focus on the employees, not the students, then you, my friends, are walking really close to that line of racism. I know we dont want to call our friends racist, because thats like throwing water on a witch, but thats just what i do. See, i dont have the time to be polite to yall. I got a couple schools to run. With real kids in them. Im not a public speaker. I work in education. I got a real job where i tomorrow morning will be back in bridgeport, connecticut. A place we started a school where over 85 of the children could not read, write, or do platte on grade level, 85 . But yall said you want parents to be more involved. 1,000 applied to our school. Thats pretty damn involved from where i sit. They voted with their feet. Oh, yeah. But my good friends the dems in connecticut are against school choice. 850 of them went right back to the old school. We cant change this until we start to change how we look at the problem. If we can always pass it off on a convenient enemy, the person were used to blaming for these things, then we never hold ourselves accountable. Look, i can send my sons to any school. Because i know the game and i can make my way through a School System and show people how to be successful even in the worst School Systems. And we can always find the anomaly. Theres always some school with a Large Population of africanamericans with a strong history that we can focus on and talk about. But we can say we want to send our own kids to that school. But you cant disavow yourself from the advantages you already have today. Your understanding of the Education System allows you to beat the system. But thats not whats going on for the sister whos raising two, three kids by herself while her husband is incarcerated. Thats a different thing. They fighting a different fight than you. They need school. This is all they have. They cant augment their Academic Experiences because they had to learn what augment and Academic Experiences are. They have been done wrong by the system they are forced to send their children to. The reason theres still segregation is we still dont believe that black people and poor people deserve access to the same education. Because if we did, we would do away with school districts. Dont worry. Yall aint got to clap. They cant hear you. If we wanted every single child to have access to a quality education, then the state would take on the responsibility of education. The reason we do it the way we do, thats the way it was set up in 1965, a small group of white people, in 2016 when they are doing it in glendale, i mean the same way its happening in manhattan, i mean the same way its happening all over the country. See, the deal here is that the system is doing just fine. The Public Education system is doing just fine. The reason why its doing fine is because weve defined Public Education as the product, not the process. See the product of Public Education is a school they refer to as a Public School. A Public School building. A Public School. But not the process of educating the public. See when you educate the public, you do not care what method they are educated by, whether its charter or traditional. Online or in person. Neighborhood or magnate. Vocational technical, or yet to be designed. The reason why we care what type it is is because we care about the product and the product is driven in large part by, again, our good friends in the unions. See, as long as they can garnish the wages of the teachers who work there, then its a Public Education. But if they cannot garner the wages of a Charter School principal or a private school principal, then its not a Public Education. Doesnt the public go there . Arent the public being educated . See, it would seem because i currently run a Charter School that im a Charter School advocate. Im a good school advocate. I dont care what kind. See, because ive seen most specifically the black community segregated. Cordoned off to the educational scraps that this country has had to offer. Ive seen us claw our way through the system to try and find the break in the matrix, to try and find a way to teach children to read. Or like many of us who find ourselves teaching our own grandparents to read. My grandfather was born in 1918, died in 1999. He was illiterate when he passed. It seems terrible that our concern is more about the controversy of the conversation opposed to the violence it pushes upon children. Why are we not running into the streets . Why are we not hurting in our very soul . Why are we not crying out when we see a child who is seven years old says i hate school. Why doesnt that rip us to our core . What are we afraid of . You scared of grown people . Im scared of kids. Reason why im scared of kids is the way you create a perfect weapon is not to put a gun in the childs hands, its take education out of their future. Look around. Look around. The reason why brown versus board of education was decided the way it was in large part was because the Supreme Court realized that you could not fully participate in america if you could not fully be educated. Shocker. Ben franklin said that many years before. In fact, its been said over and over in every continent that in order to fully participate in whatever country you are in, you need to have access to an education. And in the black community, we talk about preaching the word. We talk about preaching the word and what that means for many of us is connecting to god. And we say that in order to truly understand who you are, you must first understand the word. And our word in many cases is christianity. Because you connect to your very humanity. And you connect to your humanity, you can be more humane. If you are more humane, you can be more considerate of others and you can live out what it is to be human, which is to put your own selfinterest aside and look at the greater good. What we have now is a system that is driven solely by self interest. The interest of organizations and individuals seek to keep their children away from other people and keep their jobs. On the one side, you have the gop, who clumsily work their way through these things and find themselves in places like gardendale. Then the other side you have the dems saying they are trying to maintain communities. But why do we maintain communities when somebody is sending off their children to a private school whos wealthy and white . Their community doesnt seem to be falling apart because they sent their child to andover. You watch al franken, and he goes hard on betsy devos. Ask him where he sent his kids to school. Mr. Pro Public Education. Not so propublic when it came to his own house, huh . See, im about calling out the hypocrites. If youre for it, be for it for you and everybody else you roll with. If i come to your house and you frying up some pork and ask what are you eating, saying i dont eat that mess, it will kill you. I want what youre eating, chief. Dont serve me what you dont want in your own house. It is all too easy for us to get up those of us who have options, who have the opportunity to choose to say that we choose the neighborhood school. Yeah, you also choose to live there. You also chose so many other things. So you cant look at your choice in isolation. We in this country know that many of us did not choose i did not choose to live in the Public Housing project that i was born into. I did not choose to be born on my mothers 16th birthday, to an eighth grade dropout. I did not choose those things. So you cant compare my choice to your choice. You cant even compare my choice as a father to my choice as a child. I tell my sons all the time, man, i wouldnt have liked you if i was growing up with you. I would have stolen your bike. They said, well, id just get a new one. And thats why i wouldnt like your ass. See, we have to recognize that when were looking at choice, there has to be parity. We cant be talking about choice if choice is not the same for everybody. I am pro vouchers. I know a lot of yall like to call it another things because you in the echo chamber thats d. C. You dont want people not to say bad things about you. I dont care. You can talk about me. Im headed out any damn way. But im pro vouchers. You know why . Because you are too. You know why i know you are . Because some of yall got something called a pell grant. Thats a voucher. Let me take it a little further for you just in case you figure, well, my family didnt get pell grants. Good for you. Some of yall may have had some section 8 along the way. A couple of you may know somebody who got some food stamps. You may not have known that because you were too little, but i want to introduce you to this thing, it was called a block of cheese. You laughing because you know you cannot make Grilled Cheese with it without burning the entire house down. See, those were all vouchers. Medicaid, medicare, all vouchers. See, we understand vouchers when we understand wait, the things that benefitted me . Yeah, those very same things. Yeah, that one right there. See, the way in which were going to begin to finally end this segregation is to allow the people to decide. When parents are allowed to vote with their feet, they will choose the schools that are best for them. And choice is the root of how you separate segregation from decision. And theyre very different. Segregation is put upon you. Moorehouse is not segregated. Spellman is not segregated. Howard, not segregated. Hampton, not segregated. Smith, all women, not segregated. They chose to be there. A very big difference when a person can choose where they go to school because thats what this whole point was about. The Civil Rights Movement was about choice. Rosa parks wasnt saying everybody got to sit up front. But if i want to sit up front, i want to have the opportunity to. Nobody has to want to eat at woolworth. But if i want to eat at the lunch counter, i want to be able to go there. So we come back to this notion of segregation. The reason why we have segregation is we want people to feel comfortable in their space. We dont want people to feel the controversy. We dont want to offend people. Well, to me its offensive when a city like bridgeport, connecticut, which is in fairfield county, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States of america, almost 95 of children in some schools cannot read, write, or do math on grade level. The school that we started in bridgeport, the school that we started in bridgeport is not segregated, though its almost entirely black and latino. Its a choice that these families made for their own future. They bet on a school that didnt even exist. I need you to understand how badly our Community Wants out. Not one parent in the entire city knew even where the school was going to be. Yet 1,000 applied. 1,000. Had we accepted all the students that applied that year, we would have been the Biggest School in the city in just our first year. But i know we tell the story of how africanamericans, latinos, and poor people dont really care about education. Really . Weve been riding that underground railroad since a long time ago. Not just to get out of slavery, but to get out of segregation. Because there are quite a few families who today sent their children to a school thats outside their district and they said their aunt is keeping their children. People are literally forfeiting their parental rights. Folks, you got to understand this. Somethings got to shake us loose. When a parent will forfeit her parental rights and give her child to someone else today so that she may say that i am doing all i can, this mother will lie, she will say that her kindergartner lives somewhere else, wakes that child up in the morning at 5 30 a. M. To put them in a car to take them to her aunts house to get them on the bus so the man, yes, the man can hire offduty Police Officers to go around and check the backpacks of children to determine whether or not they live in that community. This is what we have when we are afraid of controversy. This is what we have when we continue to lie and say that the choice is the same. Its not the same. You dont support Public Education until you support educating the entire public. It is not until you believe that every single child is as worthy as every other child. Not another parent has to lie. Imagine any of you i know nobody in this room has to do it but just imagine, if you will, just sit back on this notion for a moment and wonder, what would the conversation be like as you sit there with your little girl, and shes 5 years old, and youre getting her dressed for school, getting her little uniform on, getting her ready, getting her backpack. You missouri, you live with your grandmother. You live with your grandmother. This is your address. Say you know you live with your grandmother, right . You understand that, right . You live with your grandmother. Anybody ask you, this is your address. Say it to me. But i live say your address for me. Say it again and again and again. Yall can get on the donald trump thing, do whatever you want to do, yall can argue about that fool however you want. You can holler about devos. Thats whatever. But that was happening under obama too. That was happening under clinton too. As a matter of fact, thats been happening since we got here. We been lying about where we live to try and break the back of segregation because weve been trying to get our children the education any way we know how. But you see, our kids dont like school. And our parents dont value education. We need to decide what matters to us. Is it about getting along with the grown people and not saying anything offensive, or is it about being offended by the fact that our children still go to some of the worst schools on the continent . Our school in hartford, we accepted five kids from iraq. At once. A family. Not one of them spoke english when we got them. The oldest one was in ninth grade. And their junior year, they took the s. A. T. S. The child who did not speak english performed on the same level as the black kids from hartford. Almost identical s. A. T. Scores. I defy you to find a community in these here United States in which africanamericans are not experiencing some level of segregation. Not just interschool, interdistrict, im also talking intra. Im talking about you can go to the schools that are supposed to be integrated and see africanamerican children in classes like extended algebra or prealgebra. Consumer math or some other goofy notion. Meanwhile, we fight the only schools that have shown any Real Progress like Charter Schools and voucher programs. The only ones that have shown any Real Progress because the people who work in them are not union. I guess mine is a responsibility of staying controversial then. Because if the only thing that you could say about me is that i told the Inconvenient Truth, so be it, because ive got to go back to harlem and bridgeport tomorrow. I dont have time to worry about making friends. I got enough friends. Tell middle schools all the time, you aint in school to make friends. Well, i aint here to make friends either. None of yall have to like me. But i do know this. You do know im telling you the truth. Because everything ive said, youve seen. Everything youve seen, i need you to Say Something about. I need you to call into question the very system that has destroyed our community that makes parents teach their children to lie. That has mothers being arrested for sending their child to a school that is outside of the district. 63 years later, were here talking about desegregating schools. And as a nation, were not even embarrassed. Somebody talk about something for 63 years, i figure yall should have figured that out by now. We figured it out and decided the children who are black, latino, and poor are just not valuable to us. I dont know what you believe in and thats fine if you dont believe in anything, but i do know this. I believe that the cure for cancer is probably hidden in the heart of a little black girl in newark, who goes to a school in which nobody learns to read, write, and do math, and so she just stops trying. I believe theres a fantastic novelist somewhere in baton rouge, and people made him feel like theres something wrong with him for being smart. They called him a white boy. I believe theres some great educators in schools that kids hate school. But they hate it too much to believe in it. We, the people in this room, the people who have spent some part of our day even if youre employed to do so here today trying to figure out how to unring this bell of racism, how to fix this basic notion. I need you to consider the following. At the feet of liberty, just up 95, just outside of manhattan, its a request to the entire world to bring us your tired, poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Theyre here. Regardless of whos president , theyre here. They have been here for a while. The question is, do we value them . Do we value them enough to be controversial . Do we value them enough to fight, to make enemies, or to make a difference . Thank you so much for your time. And attention. I guess ill be answering questions. [ applause ] questions . Any questions . I want to say thank you. Thank you, brother. I really appreciate you. Thank you. I just want to tell you how he and i do the same thing. Eddie, right . Brother eddie is share a bit of your story real quick . Brother eddie spent some time away. Some decisions he made when he was younger. And he came back, changed his life. He didnt just change his life by changing his life, he changed his life by changing the lives of others. So hes out in the streets for real, trying to stop cats from hurting themselves and hurting other people. So you never know who youre sitting next to, right . Never know who youre eating one of those really sweet danishs with. Were all here fighting the same fight, regardless of which side of the battle we find ourselves on. So brother, i appreciate you. You keep doing what youre doing. We need you. We need you. One quick question, please. I perceive that what youve said is in your heart, in your soul. Thats correct. Thats where it came from. But theres another portion of that thats been formalized through the Education System. Could you speak to that to your am i being clear what im asking in terms of how you got to bring that wisdom and spirit to fruition to be able to articulate it in the way that you did. So, you know, my schools greatest contribution to the education conversation is very, very simple. And i really mean simple. Our schools start with a basic presumption that every single kid has something worth saving. So it starts there. And then all we did from there was copy Successful Schools. See, the reason why many School Systems have failed and will fail forever is because, one, they operate from a deficit model. They tell you what these kids cant do and why they cant do it. These people i refer to as frenemie frenemies, they talk about their families are so poor and their families are indigent. They have to take care of their brothers an sisters and walk them to school. They come up with every excuse in the world. They shouldnt take tests and if you make them take tests, its going to make them stressed out. What theyre saying is please dont judge me by the performance of these children. They aint that smart any damn way, so dont push me to be responsible for their performance in the classroom. If you dont hear that, you are missing what theyre saying. Right . My wife, she bought this new scale and stood on it. I was like, this damn thing is broken, because that is not how much i weigh. The fact is that what we did was we copied successful models and i can tell you really quickly, the first thing we did was we started as a parttime out of school program. Some of you heard of upper upward bound. I went through an upward bound program. Right . Im not just a hair club president. I was a poor minority student who was going to be the first in the family to go to college. So i went through a parttime program. Went through that. Then the other thing we did was we copied what we saw in successful private schools. So we went to visit successful private schools. At the time there were not really any Charter Schools when we started our first school. So we couldnt go visit Charter Schools. The magnate schools were just Getting Started in connecticut, so they werent really there. All there were were these things, so i went to visit them. And what we found was they were absolutely the same. I need you to hear this. Upward bound programs serve children from disadvantaged populations, kids that were not supposed to be on track to go to college. These elite new england prep schools are supposed to serve just the opposite. But they begin with the same basic presumption that everybodys going to college. And no one asks the kids at the prep schools, hey, do you want to go to college . No one asks them that. It never occurs to them. They just go. Everything is designed for that. The same thing is true of the upward bound program. They did the same exact thing. Everyones just presumed. Then they do a couple things that are exactly the same. There are no remedial classes in elite prep schools. None. I did not say there were not children who didnt need them, i said there are no remedial classes. What we find in many traditional schools especially in urban failed schools and there are such things as failed schools. Those are schools that every single year on 80 , 90 of kids cant read, write, do math. Thats a failed school, right . If your car didnt start 90 of the time, okay if your hairdresser you got to know who youre talking to. If your hairdresser messed up your hair 90 of the time. So in this case we took what we saw from the very Successful Schools, the successful upward bound program, and we pulled the two together. Schools, the successful upper bound program, and then we pulled the two together. We created an extended school year so our school year is year round. People you know youve done well as a school when people start to say you cheated. Thats when you know, right . Thats the honor. Thats the depth of racism, i just need you to understand. The depth of racism is when you see a Successful School that serves almost entirely black, latino, and poor kids, the only way it could be successful is if somehow you picked the right kids from the right families and the right way in this magical process called the lottery because black people dont know nothing about lotteries. And somehow put them in this right place as opposed to taking a look at what we actually do. We just took the same exact model. And then the final part is when people were not doing a good job of teaching, we let them go. Its just that simple. It really wasnt this long, drawn out dance of two years of this, three years of that. Its like, look, chief, we could be friends from a distance, but you got to go. And i never got so caught up in the fact that youll hear people talk about the color of their faculty. Kids dont care what color the faculty is. I know that people really look, i have had staffs that have been 15 out of 16 black. Trust me. Been there. I just want good teachers. I dont care what color they are because the kids dont care what color they are. If you could teach a kid how to do math, i dont care if you have a thick south korean accent. We just hired somebody with one. A thick, south korean accent. Thats dope. They should just listen better. Im not tripping over that. I just want the kids to learn. I do not care whos teaching them. I really dont. You understand what im saying, right . The fact is that all we did was take what we saw work. The reason why many of the traditional School Systems fail almost absolutely to educate black, latino, and poor kids almost absolutely is because they are not designed to move to consider what the kids need. And inevitably, they have the same people teaching the same what they do this is the dance, right . They hire a superintendent, much ba balihooed, came from this point. Almost as soon as she gets there, somebodys already in the background, well, she got fired from the last district. And it isnt 14 months before theyre ready to run her out of town and bring the next one in. The first school in hartford, we ran it for ten years. We had six superintendents. Do the math. Six. But the same teachers in the system. Same principals in the system. Same custodians in the system. Same contracts in the system. All the rest was the same. Now, always there would be somebody from Central Office who would come back with this goofy new way to do something and everybody was to learn it this week. Before they left, because they got fired too. All we did was do the opposite. I grew up with a lot of people who drank and did drugs and got in a lot of trouble. And i just what i did as a person, i just said im just not going to do what they do. I dont know what im going to do, but im doing to avoid that. We took the same strategy wen we started our schools. Just dont do what they do. Whatever you do, dont do that. Dont make it hard to fire somebo somebody, because thats bad. Dont make it hard to hire somebody because thats stupid. Make sure you can bring in the most talented, committed, hardworking people, one of the benefits of running a Charter School most of my faculty are certified but some of them are not. Youre not certified . Come on. President obama could not teach at a d. C. High school because hes not certified. I wanted to hire a surgeon, a surgeon, to teach biology in hartford Public School, shes not certified. Your know, all she is is a surgeon. Because shes not certified, africanamerican female, played division 1 basketball, then professional basketball, just wanted to be a high school teacher. Hire her, except for the fact in the Public School you cant. So suggested i hire a teacher to teach and have her be the assistant teacher. The School System cannot be successful under any circumstances, its dead on arrival. Sadly, though, children are doing to go down with it. Grown people are not. They are fog to get to live in suburbs eight months out of a year give themselves a pension, nice suburban cool up the street and fight for education, Public Education that is. All we did was avoid doing what weve seen happen for generations. There needs not to be any studies on schools. Water is wet and fire is hot. Figure that out. We know how to run Successful Schools. We see them all over the United States of america in some of the poorest communities. Ill say the final thing. I went to visit idea Public Schools, which is a Charter Network in texas. Idea Public Schools, Charter Network in texas that educates, i dont want to say their numbers, high 70s, 70 minority. At least that many. I dont want to say. Mexican students from mexico. Some schools so close to the border you can actually see mexico. Thats english as a Second Language Group no one was able to figure it out but we were able to figure it out when they are french. But when they speak spanish we cant figure it out. They have six schools, six high schools. Four of them ranked in the top high schools in the United States of america period. How is that possible . They must be cheating. Weve got to let the racist have their due. No way you can educate latinos, too dumb, cant give them education, access to it and they flourish. Thats what they did. What they did was every single kid has to take ap courses. Wow. You mean you can just place a kid in an ap course . Yeah. Twelve ap courses by the time they graduate high school, every single kid. No parent has to come in and advocate. No test they have to take, no neighborhood they have to live in. They dont have to know somebody who is a guidance counselor. They dont have to know the system. If all you do is go to an Idea High School youll take ap courses. Same way you look at Laguardia High School in new york where they take Early College courses like they do at capital prep where we sent a young lady to Providence College, who was the first in her family to go to college with an associates degree. Yes, shell be graduating from Providence College where she received a full academic scholarship, also special needs, i should have mentioned that, right . All the things that are supposed to stand in the way if you dont have, except for the fact they didnt stand in the way because she was in a system that said, oh, youre smart. You should take College Classes as a freshman. There she was, little girl 14 years old, today was her first day at work at our school in prestigious port. In bridgeport. She decided to be a social worker and give back. [ applause ] thank you so much, dr. Perriry, for that powerful message. Thank you to our panelist and moderator. This has pn an amazing day that surpassed my expectations and i hope you enjoyed it as well. Were looking to have more discussions about this as we explore issues around barriers and fragile opportunities that is the center for advancing opportunity. I dont want to keep you from enjoying the food and reception. On the way out youll receive a lapel pin for the first center for advancing opportunity. Did you want standing between you and liquor and food im sorry, spirits and food. I just want to take just before you go, this is our first event. And i want to recognize our staff. I mean, when i walked in the room and saw the beautiful staging and the color coordinated chairs and all of the little tchotchke you have in your chairs, purple, lavender wouldnt have been my color. Guys, youre like, what am i going to do with this book. He likes it, put on my spring tie. If my team would stand up. Particularly, let me start off briefly with the folks who really were the core team for the center for advancing opportunity. Of course, jennifer wider, please stand. [ applause ] candace kent, is she right in the back. [ applause ] and lamont rucks. Hes probably out making sure your spirits and food hes from events, candace is project manager responsible for all the work, getting everyone here, helping design the program, et cetera. Of course jen is the fearless leader who helped create, frankly, the concept for the center for advancing opportunity. Too often the focus is on the ceo of the company, da da da da. Ive got to tell you, guys, you outdid your self. I hope each of you will leave. We have a big event which will be state of the opportunity and americas summit. If you thought this was good, were just going to bring it down. Im telling you now, wear your pin, tell folks what were doing. Intentionally words on it. People say whats that pin. You can say its the center for opportunity. We have great work happening. Steve, again, by the way, to all of our panelists, every one of you brought so much here for us today. I hope you leave here. Whether you agree with everything a particular person said, that doesnt matter. Our goal is to advance opportunity. That requires we challenge ourselves. Challenge conventional thinking. The definition of lunacy, keep doing same thing and expect a different result. That was the vision for that. Brennan, before i close, i have to thank you again. Hes been our partner at the foundation, let me be clear, and i want to thank you. Please enjoy. We have some wonderful food out there, wonderful spirit. The rest of the team, before we leave, please stand up. I just want you to know all of my collective team. [ applause ] and check out our website for the rest of the information, all of this c cspan. Opportunity. Org, a lot going on there. Thank you for spending so much of your precious time today. God bless. Today treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin testifies about his budget, irs operation, Cyber Security and seizing terrorists bank accounts. We have live coverage at 4 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. Defense secretary james mattis and joint chief chairman Joseph Dunford head to capitol hill later today. They testify before Armed Services committee on the pentagons 640 million budget request. Live coverage beginning at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 2. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies. It is brought to you today by cable or satellite provider. Tomorrow testimony from attorney general Jeff Sessions before Senate Intelligence committee. Hes expected to answer questions on several issues including Ongoing Investigation into russian influence in the 2016 president ial election and about former fbi director james comeys testimony before the Committee Last week. It will be the first time the attorney general has testified before Congress Since his confirmation hearing in february. You can watch live coverage tomorrow 2 30 eastern on cspan3 or stream live coverage online at cspan. Org or listen live on cspan radio. Next a look at Maritime Security and the challenges of maintenance in the navy with vice admiral thomas moore, commander of naval sea systems command. He spoke at the center for strategic and International Studies for an hour and twenty minutes. All right. Good morning, everyone. Im a senior fellow in the International Security program at csis and im delighted to kick off this mornings Security Dialogue with vice admiral moore. The Maritime Security dialogue is a cohosted series between csis and Naval Institute and