May 24, 2006
js-4282

Remarks of Anna Escobedo Cabral
U.S. Treasurer
U.S. Department of the Treasury

Before White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic
Americans’ First Regional Conference

Thank you Adam! I want to tell you how happy I am that I get to spend this time with all of you today as part of this conference – the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans' First Regional Conference: Partnership for Hispanic Family Learning – here in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And, I want to thank Adam and his staff for doing an absolutely phenomenal job of putting this event together. I say that because most everything that happens in Washington requires someone who is delivering, pursing or negotiating. Adam is absolutely fabulous at all those things.

We have to remember that Washington is a very long way from where most of us come from. We need people in key positions who are advocating for the Latino community. You have no better advocate than Adam Chavarria. He and his team really drive much of the work behind the White House's Initiative on Education Excellence for Hispanic Americans – work I know that President Bush is deeply committed to advancing and is so important to him personally.

The President understands that education can open opportunity for all people who have the desire, work hard and have the dream of achieving greater things in life. Also very important, high quality education is what continues to maintain our country's high level of competitiveness in a global marketplace.

Although there is still much work to be done in terms of improving quality of education in the U.S. and producing a highly skilled work force, we luckily do live in a great country – a country of great opportunity, and a country with an economy, which continues to grow.

Our economy is indeed strong. Tested in recent years by a bubble burst in the stock market, September 11, and the largest natural disasters to ever hit this country – the Gulf Coast Hurricanes of 2005 – it nonetheless continues to grow.

That growth is largely as a result of the free market economy we have built, which was buttressed by well-timed tax cuts proposed by the President and recently extended by Congress, as well as sound monetary policy executed by the Federal Reserve. Just stop and consider the latest economic reports:

Last year, the U.S. economy grew faster than any other major industrialized nation – we've seen it grow 3.5 percent last year.
The rate of productivity is the highest it has been in decades and we have added jobs to this economy for 31 months in a row – a total of 5.1 million new jobs since 2003.
More people are working than ever before. Our national unemployment rate has fallen to 4.7 percent. That is just an incredible number! That number is lower than the average for any decade since the 1950s. This also means that our children graduating from college will likely find it easier to finds jobs too. The job market for college graduates is the best it has been in five years.
Businesses are not only hiring more people – they are also expanding their reach and services. Consider that construction spending is at an all-time high and small businesses are flourishing.
We also see that individuals and their families are benefiting from these good economic times. Real after-tax income has grown by almost 9 percent per person since the President took office, despite the many challenges he inherited, and more Americans have realized the dream of homeownership. Additionally, consumer confidence is at its highest point in nearly four years.

This is great news! However, we now find ourselves today in a place where we need to prepare our children from a very early age to acquire those skills they will need to effectively compete in today's global marketplace, and equip them to take full advantage of tremendous opportunities. This Administration continues making significant strides in this area.

I am really pleased and also very proud that this Administration truly understands the importance of working directly through families in the Latino community to further improve the education our children receive.

I think that gatherings and activities like these will prove significant steps toward improving access and quality of education for our children. The concept of the family is so important in the Latino community – that is what makes today's activities so significant.

I hope that all of us here today, whether we are parents, teachers or community leaders take something away from this conference. We have a fantastic opportunity before us to learn much about the wealth of educational information, options and opportunities that today exist to help people become strong advocates for youngsters' education – particularly within the framework of the needed reform that has resulted from No Child Left Behind legislation.

Today, I want to start by telling you a little bit about where I came from, and why the work you are doing today is so important, in so many ways, critical. And I also want to share later with you a little bit about the work I am engaged today as Treasurer of the United States, as well as share with you other opportunities for improving education – particularly in the area of financial education.

About my background – I am a Californian. I am a Mexican American from a fourth-generation, farm-worker family. What that means is that my great grandparents worked in the fields, my grandparents worked in the fields, my parents worked in the fields and for a very little while, we worked in the fields. To this day, I have cousins who still work in the fields.

Now, my father and mother ended up leaving school early. They did not graduate. They dropped out of high school fairly early in their lives to go out and get jobs and make a way for their family. My father decided at about that time that he should move out of the fields and into more traditional work. But, because he lacked an education, it forced him to travel to wherever job opportunities existed.

I once tried to count the number of times I changed elementary schools. It may be very common for a migrant farm worker's children to change schools very often. In my case, it was simply that my father moved to follow the jobs. I counted 20 (elementary) schools that I attended and decided it wasn't worth keeping track of them any more. I went to three junior high schools and, fortunately, one high school.

My father had to deliver sustenance through the use of his hands but, we found very early on that although he was a man with a very large heart, he was very small in terms of physical stature. The kind of work he did required a great deal of physical labor. He was injured many times over the course of his lifetime. He ruptured several disks in his spine.

In that period of time we did not have the advances we have today in terms of modern medicine. When you ruptured a disk, doctors would literally fuse disks before and after it to hold it in place to protect the spinal cord. By the time I was13 he had had three such surgeries where they fused his spine from the top of his neck to the very bottom of his spine. He had no mobility whatsoever. They told him that he would not walk again. For a year he lay in bed. But, he never gave up. Eventually he made it out of bed and figured out a way to support the family. He could not secure any work with that kind of disability rating. And, he was too proud to try and get disability.

So, what he ended up doing is using a $100 and buying an old used pick-up truck and going out and becoming a "junker." That's the only term I can think of to describe it. What we would do is go out and pick up people's metal trash off the corner – a washing machine, a refrigerator, empty aluminum cans, etc. We would take those pieces into our yard, pull them apart, and us children would pull the plastic off the copper wire, to create a pile of copper, a pile of steel, a pile of iron, a pile of aluminum, and we would sell it back to the scrap metal yard.

We were losing our home, so we moved to a tiny little home in Banning, CA. It was on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, immediately backing up to the tracks. If the train fell off we were going to get hit. It was a two-room adobe house.

So how does this story related to why education is so important? Well, I'm about to explain.

At that point in time, I decided that in addition to working after school and on weekends, it was probably time for me as the oldest of the children to go out and get a job.

I was in my junior year of high school. I was doing exceedingly well because I loved school. It was something that I truly, truly enjoyed. So that I could graduate early I started thinking about working at a fast-food restaurant, which in many ways could be a very good career option.

But, my high-school algebra teacher, Philip Lamm, heard I was leaving early and hauled me into his office one day and said, "Have you ever thought about going to college?" And I said, "Of course, not. We don't have the money. I have never even thought about it." And, of course I never had those conversations with my parents about the possibility of going to college.

My parents dream was that their kids graduate high school because they had not done so themselves. That was the limitation of their exposure. That in some ways was imposed on us. ... And my teacher, Mr. Lamm helped me fill out the college entrance application and visited my parents to explain why going to college was a better and more profitable plan. He also said that he would help me find the dollars to help pay for school.

He did exactly as promised. He literally hand wrote with a pencil my college application. I dictated the answers. He came to visit my father. For those of you who are from traditional Mexican families, you know how hard a sell that was.

Now picture this – I was 16 years old and he was telling my father that I should be sent 500 miles away to a college or university when he really needed me at home. I was in fact the oldest, and my mother had not been able to work for a couple of years because of illness. It was a tough sale. But Mr. Lamm did it. He came up with the scholarship dollars so I could go to college and before I knew it, I was headed off to the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Now what I found out, and probably what every person in this room has discovered, is that when you get to attend college suddenly the world opens up to you. You have so much to choose from. I often reflect back about the neighborhoods I grew up in, and how many of the people I knew back then are still there.

Nobody had spent time with them. Mr. Lamm was not there for them, although he was there for me. What had happened almost fortuitously, almost by accident for me, wasn't happening for them.

Since then I have thought that perhaps the real purpose of this education I received must be to go out and help the rest in our community to understand all of the wonderful options that are available. That is why I believe that each of us here have a great responsibility to use that opportunity to create greater understanding and awareness among parents, teachers, counselors and young students about the world that is opening up to them and the opportunities they will have if they will just stay in school and continue furthering their education.

Today, I try to do that as I carry out my responsibilities as U.S. Treasurer. I have a second little story to tell you in this regard.

For the last year and a half, I have spent a significant amount of time traveling across the country speaking to students of all ages – kindergartners, first graders, second graders, third graders, sixth graders, 10th graders, even college students. Much of my outreach today focuses on highlighting the importance of education in general, but also on teaching financial education lessons – teaching students about managing money wisely and starting a solid savings plan early on.

However, what's amazing to me is that if I walk into a classroom full of kindergartners through fifth graders and I interact with them, I cannot believe how much joy and energy – regardless of circumstances, regardless of what is happening in their home – I see on their faces. They are eager to learn, they are hungry and they believe that they can do anything.

When you ask them, "How many of you would like to go to college?" There isn't a single hand that doesn't go up even though they might not understand what college is. Something happens between kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and high school. We know that. That's why you are here.

You are trying to find an answer to that problem. We are losing way too many young people before they have had an opportunity to really understand what opportunities are out there for them, what's awaiting them.

So you see, what you are doing today is absolutely critical. We have to continue our efforts to try and weave together the efforts of federal government, community, and corporate entities as well as parents. This is true whether we are talking about improving education generally, or whether we are focused, as in the case of the Treasury Department, on improving family financial literacy levels across the country.

We must do so in order that every single one of those children achieve their absolute potential and so that each understands they can dream and make their dreams come true. I have had the opportunity to see those kinds of collaborations really provide tremendous success.

After graduating college, I experienced how it opened opportunities from preparing me a fantastic graduate education, a career on Capitol Hill to becoming a Senate confirmed Presidential appointee.

Coming to Washington was for me in many ways another sort of accident. I went to college at 16, dropped out during my junior year to have four children. I went back after four children to finish my senior year. I decided to apply to graduate to school.

Lo and behold, beyond my imagination, I got accepted to Harvard University. Can you imagine that? I took those four children with me. My husband sold his law practice and they attended classes along side me. In the end, we ended up with a $100,000 in debt. As you can probably appreciate, I knew I needed to find a way to repay those loans. But I was optimistic that that education would be pay me greater returns than what I had originally invested.

My husband got a job offer at the U.S. Department of Justice. I came to Washington too with our four children, and I immediately started interviewing. Before I knew it, I had several job offers from various law firms because I had managed my husband's law firm too.

But then a colleague, Luben Montoya, suggested that I apply for a position in Senator Orrin Hatch's office. I gave it a shot and I found that I had a common vision with my boss on where I hoped my community could go. I remember that during our interview he asked me only one thing. We spent an hour together, but he asked me just one thing: "As long as I promise to absolutely take every bit of advice you give me very seriously and always listen will you promise to remember that I was the one elected." And I said, "Absolutely."

What he did was that he opened for me, for the first time ever, an opportunity to serve the Latino community in very significant ways. I learned in Washington very quickly that the very best product comes from both sides working together. It comes from people of all walks of life understanding and putting their best foot forward and offering a little and sacrificing a little, but ultimately seeing and sharing that same vision so that we can actually achieve it. I think that's exactly what you are doing today.

I am very lucky because this continues to happen throughout my career. That is what President Bush is also doing today on many fronts today. He has placed an impressive group of professionals who happen to be of Latino descent in the positions of highest influence. And he is listening to them. Consider for a moment the courageous and independent thinking he demonstrates in issues as important as improving financial literacy and issues as potentially controversial as developing a comprehensive immigration reform plan. Thankfully, through hard work, we've made much progress in a variety of areas.

What I want to emphasize here today is that the federal government can create the conditions that promote opportunity, but we need to work together – groups outside the federal government – to ensure there is access to opportunity for all, particularly through quality education.

To do this, I think we have to be fairly innovative in our approach. We can no longer say, "Well, this is the way it has always been done. We'll accept it."

What we need to do is to make sure we think out of the box. We have to hold people accountable – those who are interacting with our children. But, we must also hold ourselves accountable.

At the end of the day it's about whether parents have the tools they need to make sure they understand the challenges their children are facing and their children make good choices about class selection. You can't get into college unless you take algebra, geometry, calculus, etc. And you can't proceed further than that unless you are very serious about your studies. Parents have to re-emphasize how important it is for kids to do their homework and turn it in every single day. There is no exception. Teachers have to be ready to give them what they need – to teach them what they need to do well on entrance exams, to pursue their careers, to understand those options, to have strong analytical skills that will serve them the rest of their lives.

Companies, I think, are an important part of this process. They live and work in communities that we do. And they have been, many of them, important partners in proceeding forward with this kind of agenda. But, we need to bring more to the table. We certainly we need to make sure our government officials understand the needs of a particular community and in fact are working hard very closely with us to hold people accountable.

The work that you are doing really is tremendously important. What you are doing is making a difference in the lives of many, many other people. And you can do that one person at a time. You can do it a room full at a time.

Whatever you do, at the end, you will improve somebody's life. I can tell you that as a result of Mr. Lamm's intervention, I have had, and now my children have many more opportunities. The good news is that as a result of the very good teaching I received at home from my parents, they too understand how important it is to use their own gifts to serve the greater good including, very much, being proud of being Latino and giving back to that community. So, the work you do today counts. It matters. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for absolutely everything you do. Thank you for letting me take part in today's celebration, and keep up the fantastic work!

Thank you for your time.

-30-



	May 24, 2006 js-4282 Remarks of Anna Escobedo Cabral U.S. Treasurer U.S. Department of the Treasury Before White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans’ First Regional Conference Thank you Adam! I want to tell you how happy I am that I get to spend this time with all of you today as part of this conference – the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans' First Regional Conference: Partnership for Hispanic Family Learning – here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And, I want to thank Adam and his staff for doing an absolutely phenomenal job of putting this event together. I say that because most everything that happens in Washington requires someone who is delivering, pursing or negotiating. Adam is absolutely fabulous at all those things. We have to remember that Washington is a very long way from where most of us come from. We need people in key positions who are advocating for the Latino community. You have no better advocate than Adam Chavarria. He and his team really drive much of the work behind the White House's Initiative on Education Excellence for Hispanic Americans – work I know that President Bush is deeply committed to advancing and is so important to him personally. The President understands that education can open opportunity for all people who have the desire, work hard and have the dream of achieving greater things in life. Also very important, high quality education is what continues to maintain our country's high level of competitiveness in a global marketplace. Although there is still much work to be done in terms of improving quality of education in the U.S. and producing a highly skilled work force, we luckily do live in a great country – a country of great opportunity, and a country with an economy, which continues to grow. Our economy is indeed strong. Tested in recent years by a bubble burst in the stock market, September 11, and the largest natural disasters to ever hit this country – the Gulf Coast Hurricanes of 2005 – it nonetheless continues to grow. That growth is largely as a result of the free market economy we have built, which was buttressed by well-timed tax cuts proposed by the President and recently extended by Congress, as well as sound monetary policy executed by the Federal Reserve. Just stop and consider the latest economic reports: Last year, the U.S. economy grew faster than any other major industrialized nation – we've seen it grow 3.5 percent last year. The rate of productivity is the highest it has been in decades and we have added jobs to this economy for 31 months in a row – a total of 5.1 million new jobs since 2003. More people are working than ever before. Our national unemployment rate has fallen to 4.7 percent. That is just an incredible number! That number is lower than the average for any decade since the 1950s. This also means that our children graduating from college will likely find it easier to finds jobs too. The job market for college graduates is the best it has been in five years. Businesses are not only hiring more people – they are also expanding their reach and services. Consider that construction spending is at an all-time high and small businesses are flourishing. We also see that individuals and their families are benefiting from these good economic times. Real after-tax income has grown by almost 9 percent per person since the President took office, despite the many challenges he inherited, and more Americans have realized the dream of homeownership. Additionally, consumer confidence is at its highest point in nearly four years. This is great news! However, we now find ourselves today in a place where we need to prepare our children from a very early age to acquire those skills they will need to effectively compete in today's global marketplace, and equip them to take full advantage of tremendous opportunities. This Administration continues making significant strides in this area. I am really pleased and also very proud that this Administration truly understands the importance of working directly through families in the Latino community to further improve the education our children receive. I think that gatherings and activities like these will prove significant steps toward improving access and quality of education for our children. The concept of the family is so important in the Latino community – that is what makes today's activities so significant. I hope that all of us here today, whether we are parents, teachers or community leaders take something away from this conference. We have a fantastic opportunity before us to learn much about the wealth of educational information, options and opportunities that today exist to help people become strong advocates for youngsters' education – particularly within the framework of the needed reform that has resulted from No Child Left Behind legislation. Today, I want to start by telling you a little bit about where I came from, and why the work you are doing today is so important, in so many ways, critical. And I also want to share later with you a little bit about the work I am engaged today as Treasurer of the United States, as well as share with you other opportunities for improving education – particularly in the area of financial education. About my background – I am a Californian. I am a Mexican American from a fourth-generation, farm-worker family. What that means is that my great grandparents worked in the fields, my grandparents worked in the fields, my parents worked in the fields and for a very little while, we worked in the fields. To this day, I have cousins who still work in the fields. Now, my father and mother ended up leaving school early. They did not graduate. They dropped out of high school fairly early in their lives to go out and get jobs and make a way for their family. My father decided at about that time that he should move out of the fields and into more traditional work. But, because he lacked an education, it forced him to travel to wherever job opportunities existed. I once tried to count the number of times I changed elementary schools. It may be very common for a migrant farm worker's children to change schools very often. In my case, it was simply that my father moved to follow the jobs. I counted 20 (elementary) schools that I attended and decided it wasn't worth keeping track of them any more. I went to three junior high schools and, fortunately, one high school. My father had to deliver sustenance through the use of his hands but, we found very early on that although he was a man with a very large heart, he was very small in terms of physical stature. The kind of work he did required a great deal of physical labor. He was injured many times over the course of his lifetime. He ruptured several disks in his spine. In that period of time we did not have the advances we have today in terms of modern medicine. When you ruptured a disk, doctors would literally fuse disks before and after it to hold it in place to protect the spinal cord. By the time I was13 he had had three such surgeries where they fused his spine from the top of his neck to the very bottom of his spine. He had no mobility whatsoever. They told him that he would not walk again. For a year he lay in bed. But, he never gave up. Eventually he made it out of bed and figured out a way to support the family. He could not secure any work with that kind of disability rating. And, he was too proud to try and get disability. So, what he ended up doing is using a $100 and buying an old used pick-up truck and going out and becoming a "junker." That's the only term I can think of to describe it. What we would do is go out and pick up people's metal trash off the corner – a washing machine, a refrigerator, empty aluminum cans, etc. We would take those pieces into our yard, pull them apart, and us children would pull the plastic off the copper wire, to create a pile of copper, a pile of steel, a pile of iron, a pile of aluminum, and we would sell it back to the scrap metal yard. We were losing our home, so we moved to a tiny little home in Banning, CA. It was on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, immediately backing up to the tracks. If the train fell off we were going to get hit. It was a two-room adobe house. So how does this story related to why education is so important? Well, I'm about to explain. At that point in time, I decided that in addition to working after school and on weekends, it was probably time for me as the oldest of the children to go out and get a job. I was in my junior year of high school. I was doing exceedingly well because I loved school. It was something that I truly, truly enjoyed. So that I could graduate early I started thinking about working at a fast-food restaurant, which in many ways could be a very good career option. But, my high-school algebra teacher, Philip Lamm, heard I was leaving early and hauled me into his office one day and said, "Have you ever thought about going to college?" And I said, "Of course, not. We don't have the money. I have never even thought about it." And, of course I never had those conversations with my parents about the possibility of going to college. My parents dream was that their kids graduate high school because they had not done so themselves. That was the limitation of their exposure. That in some ways was imposed on us. ... And my teacher, Mr. Lamm helped me fill out the college entrance application and visited my parents to explain why going to college was a better and more profitable plan. He also said that he would help me find the dollars to help pay for school. He did exactly as promised. He literally hand wrote with a pencil my college application. I dictated the answers. He came to visit my father. For those of you who are from traditional Mexican families, you know how hard a sell that was. Now picture this – I was 16 years old and he was telling my father that I should be sent 500 miles away to a college or university when he really needed me at home. I was in fact the oldest, and my mother had not been able to work for a couple of years because of illness. It was a tough sale. But Mr. Lamm did it. He came up with the scholarship dollars so I could go to college and before I knew it, I was headed off to the University of California at Santa Cruz. Now what I found out, and probably what every person in this room has discovered, is that when you get to attend college suddenly the world opens up to you. You have so much to choose from. I often reflect back about the neighborhoods I grew up in, and how many of the people I knew back then are still there. Nobody had spent time with them. Mr. Lamm was not there for them, although he was there for me. What had happened almost fortuitously, almost by accident for me, wasn't happening for them. Since then I have thought that perhaps the real purpose of this education I received must be to go out and help the rest in our community to understand all of the wonderful options that are available. That is why I believe that each of us here have a great responsibility to use that opportunity to create greater understanding and awareness among parents, teachers, counselors and young students about the world that is opening up to them and the opportunities they will have if they will just stay in school and continue furthering their education. Today, I try to do that as I carry out my responsibilities as U.S. Treasurer. I have a second little story to tell you in this regard. For the last year and a half, I have spent a significant amount of time traveling across the country speaking to students of all ages – kindergartners, first graders, second graders, third graders, sixth graders, 10th graders, even college students. Much of my outreach today focuses on highlighting the importance of education in general, but also on teaching financial education lessons – teaching students about managing money wisely and starting a solid savings plan early on. However, what's amazing to me is that if I walk into a classroom full of kindergartners through fifth graders and I interact with them, I cannot believe how much joy and energy – regardless of circumstances, regardless of what is happening in their home – I see on their faces. They are eager to learn, they are hungry and they believe that they can do anything. When you ask them, "How many of you would like to go to college?" There isn't a single hand that doesn't go up even though they might not understand what college is. Something happens between kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and high school. We know that. That's why you are here. You are trying to find an answer to that problem. We are losing way too many young people before they have had an opportunity to really understand what opportunities are out there for them, what's awaiting them. So you see, what you are doing today is absolutely critical. We have to continue our efforts to try and weave together the efforts of federal government, community, and corporate entities as well as parents. This is true whether we are talking about improving education generally, or whether we are focused, as in the case of the Treasury Department, on improving family financial literacy levels across the country. We must do so in order that every single one of those children achieve their absolute potential and so that each understands they can dream and make their dreams come true. I have had the opportunity to see those kinds of collaborations really provide tremendous success. After graduating college, I experienced how it opened opportunities from preparing me a fantastic graduate education, a career on Capitol Hill to becoming a Senate confirmed Presidential appointee. Coming to Washington was for me in many ways another sort of accident. I went to college at 16, dropped out during my junior year to have four children. I went back after four children to finish my senior year. I decided to apply to graduate to school. Lo and behold, beyond my imagination, I got accepted to Harvard University. Can you imagine that? I took those four children with me. My husband sold his law practice and they attended classes along side me. In the end, we ended up with a $100,000 in debt. As you can probably appreciate, I knew I needed to find a way to repay those loans. But I was optimistic that that education would be pay me greater returns than what I had originally invested. My husband got a job offer at the U.S. Department of Justice. I came to Washington too with our four children, and I immediately started interviewing. Before I knew it, I had several job offers from various law firms because I had managed my husband's law firm too. But then a colleague, Luben Montoya, suggested that I apply for a position in Senator Orrin Hatch's office. I gave it a shot and I found that I had a common vision with my boss on where I hoped my community could go. I remember that during our interview he asked me only one thing. We spent an hour together, but he asked me just one thing: "As long as I promise to absolutely take every bit of advice you give me very seriously and always listen will you promise to remember that I was the one elected." And I said, "Absolutely." What he did was that he opened for me, for the first time ever, an opportunity to serve the Latino community in very significant ways. I learned in Washington very quickly that the very best product comes from both sides working together. It comes from people of all walks of life understanding and putting their best foot forward and offering a little and sacrificing a little, but ultimately seeing and sharing that same vision so that we can actually achieve it. I think that's exactly what you are doing today. I am very lucky because this continues to happen throughout my career. That is what President Bush is also doing today on many fronts today. He has placed an impressive group of professionals who happen to be of Latino descent in the positions of highest influence. And he is listening to them. Consider for a moment the courageous and independent thinking he demonstrates in issues as important as improving financial literacy and issues as potentially controversial as developing a comprehensive immigration reform plan. Thankfully, through hard work, we've made much progress in a variety of areas. What I want to emphasize here today is that the federal government can create the conditions that promote opportunity, but we need to work together – groups outside the federal government – to ensure there is access to opportunity for all, particularly through quality education. To do this, I think we have to be fairly innovative in our approach. We can no longer say, "Well, this is the way it has always been done. We'll accept it." What we need to do is to make sure we think out of the box. We have to hold people accountable – those who are interacting with our children. But, we must also hold ourselves accountable. At the end of the day it's about whether parents have the tools they need to make sure they understand the challenges their children are facing and their children make good choices about class selection. You can't get into college unless you take algebra, geometry, calculus, etc. And you can't proceed further than that unless you are very serious about your studies. Parents have to re-emphasize how important it is for kids to do their homework and turn it in every single day. There is no exception. Teachers have to be ready to give them what they need – to teach them what they need to do well on entrance exams, to pursue their careers, to understand those options, to have strong analytical skills that will serve them the rest of their lives. Companies, I think, are an important part of this process. They live and work in communities that we do. And they have been, many of them, important partners in proceeding forward with this kind of agenda. But, we need to bring more to the table. We certainly we need to make sure our government officials understand the needs of a particular community and in fact are working hard very closely with us to hold people accountable. The work that you are doing really is tremendously important. What you are doing is making a difference in the lives of many, many other people. And you can do that one person at a time. You can do it a room full at a time. Whatever you do, at the end, you will improve somebody's life. I can tell you that as a result of Mr. Lamm's intervention, I have had, and now my children have many more opportunities. The good news is that as a result of the very good teaching I received at home from my parents, they too understand how important it is to use their own gifts to serve the greater good including, very much, being proud of being Latino and giving back to that community. So, the work you do today counts. It matters. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for absolutely everything you do. Thank you for letting me take part in today's celebration, and keep up the fantastic work! Thank you for your time. -30-