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 bridge