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For Public Comments to the Commission, please click here
00112
1 who don't graduate. Are being left behind
2 today.
3 A lot of the research that we are
4 seeking to do has already been done. And I am
5 very action oriented. I am an entrepreneur.
6 I want to take action. I want to make sure we
7 don't reinvent the wheel. We go back and look
8 at what has already been done, all of us read
9 it, and then say what else needs to be done.
10 With the media one of the things I
11 did, they created the reading program. They
12 had all the material put out in Spanish. They
13 have videos. The DePaul Center. Univision
14 Telemundo, and newspapers like Opinion, went
15 out there with a public service announcement.
16 Phones were ringing off the hook at the
17 Department of Education. It was one of the
18 most successful campaigns ever done in the
19 history of the Department of Education. And
20 Hispanic teachers and students and parents
21 were getting all this information in Spanish
22 free from the website that they were being
00113
1 offered. There were a lot of good things that
2 have been done.
3 My biggest concern being on this
4 committee -- as an example, in 1998 a couple
5 of bombs went off in embassies in Africa.
6 2000 people were killed. The Congress came
7 out and created a commission and Governor
8 Gilmore was the chairman of the commission.
9 They had the most prestigious people in the
10 United States. The head of the Defense
11 Intelligence Agency. The head of the
12 firefighters union. Public health officials.
13 They were charged with writing a report, and
14 they did write a report.
15 In December, 1999 -- they gave a
16 report to the President of the United States.
17 Within a year later, December of 2000, they
18 gave a report to the President of the United
19 States on what the country had to do to defend
20 itself against terrorism here and abroad.
21 They made five findings. The United States
22 had no national policy, no national strategy
00114
1 to combat terrorism. The President and the
2 executive office has no division to coordinate
3 the 23 different federal agencies that are
4 dealing with terrorism. The House and
5 Congress have 32 different separate
6 subcommittees. There is no coordination.
7 If someone had read that report
8 they determined later that maybe it would have
9 prevented what happened on September 11th
10 because there are some very specific things
11 recommended in there having to do with airport
12 security, FBI lists, and tying in to different
13 databases.
14 My concern, as I have seen all the
15 reports that have been written to Presidents
16 over the last ten years, that we don't become
17 another group that writes another report that
18 just sits there and nothing happens to it.
19 Everyone in here, I have looked at all your
20 bios, resumes. We are not people who seem to
21 have ever failed at anything that we have set
22 our minds to do. I want to make sure the work
00115
1 is done, let's take it and let's have a
2 focused action.
3 This group that we have here was
4 replicated in Massachusetts a year ago. Why
5 isn't this replicated in Florida, and all the
6 other groups, and then coordinate with them.
7 There is a lot of specific actions that we can
8 take. I want to make sure that we focus on
9 action, action, action instead of words,
10 words, words.
11 MS. SANCHEZ: Let me show you guys
12 a couple of things. Right here are some of
13 these other reports. Only a couple. All of
14 these are available on a CD we can send to
15 you. These particular three I am going to
16 give back. This is the Bush report and we
17 only found three. In the Smithsonian. I need
18 this back.
19 This is the Federal report that
20 comes out that I told you was the voluminous
21 material that we managed to synthesize into
22 this material.
00116
1 This is What Works For Hispanic
2 Youth. Version one, version two. That's why
3 we are talking about best practices.
4 It does well, initiating programs
5 for kids, whatever, that never meant anything
6 to people on the ground. I think there was a
7 disconnect. Charles and I talked about this.
8 Between where this report is and real people
9 calling our office every day from universities
10 across the country saying how do I start, who
11 are the first people I call, how to connect
12 and build a network operation.
13 MR. PARET: Leslie, sorry to
14 interrupt you. Are any of these -- I looked
15 for them and I couldn't find them. Are any of
16 these on the website?
17 MS. SANCHEZ: No longer.
18 The last one is the report to the
19 White House strategy session. There were five
20 key reports, one of which is an outreach
21 campaign, a public awareness campaign. This
22 recommendation was in at least four of these
00117
1 reports. So we want to be sure we will get
2 you all that.
3 MS. SCHOFIELD: I want to say, the
4 information, I would like us to look at how
5 can we share information. When we look at all
6 the data, I know I am not going to have enough
7 time to read everything. I would be more than
8 happy to read one document and be able to come
9 and report on what I read, so we do get as
10 much data as we can in the amount of time
11 available.
12 MR. HANNA: I think, Leslie, to
13 the degree -- I am not saying everybody here
14 is going to read all of this here, but I think
15 we can get photocopies of this out to folks.
16 MR. GARCIA: We actually should
17 commit -- we have to give recommendation to
18 the President of the United States. To read
19 all this stuff may take ten hours. I
20 certainly think you have ten hours.
21 MR. HANNA: There is no reason
22 committing the same --
00118
1 MS. SCHOFIELD: I want to make
2 sure that I am just not talking about this.
3 There are things all of us should read. This
4 is probably, yes, something we all need to
5 read. But I think there is a lot of data out
6 there in the different committee areas that we
7 need to also look at. Take advantage of it.
8 Make it manageable.
9 DR. VAZQUEZ: In terms of the
10 media, I think Leslie or somebody should
11 guarantee, with the First Lady, or the
12 Education Department, to be there to engage in
13 that type of activity. Coordinate with them.
14 We want to go to the media, meetings with
15 them.
16 MS. SANCHEZ: We have gone to, the
17 initiative, a partnership. We act as a
18 catalyst, between Telemundo, between the
19 Department of Education and the White House
20 initiative, to launch a series of educational
21 programs, four over the course of the year,
22 and several PSAs, which we showed at
00119
1 Mrs. Bush's early childhood summit. We are
2 helping them write content. We put the
3 1-800-USA-Learn and have bilingual folks at a
4 service center.
5 What is interesting is nobody
6 knows how to move that message. We are going
7 through the PSAs. It has been a very
8 successful program. That idea that there is a
9 service center 1-800 number, people can
10 actually find so solutions. In these
11 publications there is not a distribution
12 channel for business folks. There is not a
13 distribution channel for management. That is
14 probably a key area.
15 DR. VAZQUEZ: I think we should
16 have read that.
17 MR. HANNA: One of the things we
18 want to think about, two words that might be
19 synonymous but have different meanings.
20 Report and plan. Yes, we are charged with a
21 report, but within the report is a plan. So
22 to the degree that within the plan we keep in
00120
1 mind, Charles, what you are talking about,
2 action. That can be media action. If as we
3 are devising a plan for each of these
4 committees, and what we intend to do, if part
5 of our thinking is, look, we don't want to
6 just write recommendations, but if we are
7 thinking along the lines of we are devising a
8 plan, what is the plan for putting this into
9 action and what are checkpoints we might set
10 up and that sort of thing.
11 MR. GARCIA: We find out that
12 4,800 members of the Department of Education
13 in Florida, I am sad to announce, 2,800
14 members in the Department of Education. In
15 those 4,800 employees here in Washington there
16 is 300 in a Bureau of Research and Development
17 with an $800 million budget. Our Secretary of
18 Education will be here testifying tomorrow
19 before the Senate on whether they should keep
20 that up or not. This book was published, you
21 will see in the front, because of the grant
22 from the Office of Educational Research and
00121
1 Evaluation. They have $800 million. If 15
2 percent of the children in public education
3 are Hispanic -- let's see, 800 million, we are
4 talking about $120 million should be dedicated
5 to Hispanic dropout prevention R&D. If they
6 have 300 employees, 45 of those employees -- I
7 can read a balance sheet, too -- should be
8 working on this issue of some importance to
9 the President.
10 If you start thinking in terms of,
11 okay, now let's look at the different
12 departments of education, space, how much
13 money, resources, personnel are dedicated to
14 R&D to this issue, if we can somehow replicate
15 that on a state level, ultimately it is really
16 going to put our ideas into effect and use the
17 President's bully pulpit to get the governors
18 together and say, bring your secretaries of
19 education, let's talk about this.
20 MR. HANNA: That's the kind of
21 example that might be within, say, the
22 committee on the government.
00122
1 MR. GARCIA: I am going to lunch
2 with -- Greenspan is going to be at the lunch
3 and the President of the United States is
4 going to be at the lunch. Let me tell you
5 what this lunch is about. They decided four
6 or five years ago that in this nation
7 Americans don't save enough, so they have a
8 saving conference on trying to get Americans
9 to save more money. This is such an important
10 issue in this country that Alan Greenspan is
11 going and the President of the United States.
12 We are sitting here talking about
13 a half million to a million children being
14 left behind every year. And we need to focus
15 that type of effort on a national problem just
16 like the focusing in on saving money.
17 MS. MAZZUCA: Why don't we take
18 about a ten minute break. We don't have to
19 check out until 12:30 so we can come back here
20 at 11:25 and we will wrap up by 12:00.
21 (A recess was taken.)
22 MS. MAZZUCA: Charles' input,
00123
1 certainly -- I mean, everybody's input, I
2 really appreciate it. Let's let the dialogue
3 begin to flow. But we have about a half-hour.
4 For some of us a little less time to actually
5 come up with our time lines. Come up with
6 meeting dates of not only the commission as a
7 whole, which I think has some information for
8 us.
9 MS. SANCHEZ: It is right in your
10 hand. Frank has it.
11 MS. MAZZUCA: Whether or not to go
12 with -- the committee structure on what we
13 have talking about, what to add, what to take
14 away. We have a lot to do in a half-hour.
15 MR. GONZALEZ: I would rather keep
16 it simple. Too many subcommittees. The more
17 subcommittees -- it is such a large problem.
18 There is a lot of work that has already been
19 done. It will take us quite a bit just to get
20 up to speed. If we need to do something
21 differently at that point, we can. At this
22 point I think we should just make it at simple
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