>> host: out of their federal budgets in some way? >> guest: out of whatever budgets they have in some way. >> guest: you've got to remember the pakistanis have viewed afghanistan in the context of their troubled relationship with india and a few.as somewhat of an insurance the policy of rear area. and there's still a lot of suspicion among pakistan. because in the past as we were in afghanistan, we've been stuck on that. they too were upset about the way we attend in afghanistan after the soviets lost. so they were to some extent still hedging about how long is the u.s. going to be there and we need to have the taliban on our side at some point in the future. >> host: so the obama administration, how is it addressed the pakistan question? >> guest: well, i think they've been doing a pretty good job so far. you know, most of it -- most of

the effective work is going on behind closed doors. but clearly we've seen some good cooperation from them. we saw the arrest of a number to tell a band figure recently. you know, -- >> host: a rest wasn't just happenstance? >> guest: i don't think so. they probably could have arrested him earlier. again, they were doing a better job now cooperating with them and we are providing more assistance to them as well, hich i think snake in we are providing more assistance es well. y. these are our nato allies. let me read this e-mail that we got from colonel paul callous addressed to you. we met in cobble when i escorted you, i work strategic reform and have followed you since. i look forward to reading your

hits. how do we deal with the other center of gravity in the war. do you believe the west has the will to sustain the major efforts required for the counterinsurgency fight and how do we get word out on the improvements over the last two years. you have the respect of the u.s. armed forces. >> great question from a great soldier. this is an important question. what we have seen with some countries with canadians is a decrease in commitment to afghanistan. they deployed a range of forces to can the hearth and primarily in canada are city. we have seen the dutch's long term commitment waning.

the german population has expressed wavering commitment over the long line. i think the bulk of the effort in the insecure parts of afghanistan will be a u.s. effort to. with help from the british, i do not believe and in an ideal world by would love it and these countries will send forces into areas of deep-seated insecurity. that is the reality. the second thing is there are areas where we could continue to ask for assistance. some european countries have very good police forces. the french and italians finding ways to get more help for police forces even if it is not in the most insecure areas can be helpful. there are ways to continue to

get allies on board. has this war begins to turn is ttentially in a position to atio. european population and support may begin to change. >> daniel in maryland. anase go ahead. >> this is an interesting program this evening and i thank c-span for its continuing excellence. edam wondering, you mentioned a few moments ago, we hear a great deal about the significant and problematic distrust between eertain elements of the pakistani intelligence and the cars i government if not of the larger package to community. i am wondering if any of you, mr. jones especially, know of any attempts to arrange direct communication or even back channel communication between those elements of the pakistani

intelligence and the car direct government or other centers of itadership in the suspicious passed in community. y' there have been instances of that that have been going on quietly. and i would like to make the point that hamid karzai has certain moral authority and is the most unifying figure in the country and he is someone who is capable of brokering certain compromises with elements of the taliban. >> there have been efforts to improve the relationship between president hamid karzai, more the civilian leadership of pakistan. in that sense reaching out to the civilian side can influence the military and intelligence side. that is how we have seen the

pakistan and afghan relationship begin to develop. >> please have the authors give nopsnopsis of their books at the end. i missed the first portion of your show. >> my book really looks at the question of why the insurgency began in afghanistan after a the u.s. overthrow. i look at a couple of factors. one is the collapsing governance including corruption issues and focus in particular on ways in eloplast chapter of stemming the insurgency and develop more effective counterinsurgency efforts. a mine is a series of case studies. basically argues that leadership it comes down to which side has better leaders in certain areas i leadership and identifying how we get those people into

positions of authority. >> thank you for being here to discuss the afghanistan war. eoming up, two more hours of booktv in prime-time. up next is michael steele, chairman of the gop who was that the reagan library talking about his new book, a 12 step program for defeating the obama agenda. you will hear from pulitzer prize-winning economist joseph stigma on our afterwards program. his newest book is called free fall and he is interviewed by lori wallach of private citizen. on bos coming up on booktv in prime-time. you can follow booktv on twitter at twitter.com/booktv. we have updates throughout the weekend on the weekends when we have 48 hours of programming on c-span2. now here is michael steele. >> seth jones 11 is a political scientist at the rand corporation and professor at georgetown university.

for more information visit rand.org. mark moyar is professor at the marine corps university. visit mark moyar.com. chicago parents transform their neighborhood school. jacqueline l. berger addresses this in how to walk to school. this event is an hour. >> my name is jeff smith, executive director of d.c. voice. i want to tell those of you who are not volunteers or affiliated with our work a little bit about what we do and why it relates to the book we are here to hear about this evening. there is a brief story i would like to share, related to our work and what we are about to hear. we do community action research. we organize community members, volunteers from across the city and in the region to go in schools and in their view

principals and teachers and collect data and bring that data back to talk to policymakers about what principals and teachers are saying need improved. one time when we were out of school at north beach i was walking through the back of a classroom and this young lady was drawing a beautiful little picture on her desk and i said what is that you are trying? could tell it was a person or a figure. she said this is a picture of god. you can't draw a picture of god. no one knows what god looks like. she said good because they will in a minute. how many of you know a lot about community school? three four folks. to the rest of you i said good. you will in a minute because that is one of the things we want to hear about. they see voice has been in this community at columbia heights and adams morgan for the last

ten years where a civil rights organization whose loans civil-rights issues public education in the district of columbia. we carry out our mission through community action research. we just celebrated our tenth anniversary on december fifth of last year. [applause] thank you. and we celebrated the sixth year we have done what i was talking about. the ready schools project. we have gone into schools across the city and interviewed school staff, principals and administrators about what support they are receiving and what they need to deliver high-quality instruction. we have gone into 100 schools each of those years. in the 2008/2009 school year restarted our town hall meeting series. we had five town hall meetings throughout the city, identical on friday and saturday and

people of different backgrounds and geographical locations and from that town hall series formulated our action policy campaign. that campaign was centered around three things, improved comprehensive professional development for school staff, parents and resources toward naders and every school that needs one, and community schools. schools that state open longer in the evening and offer more comprehensive services not just for students but their families and school families and neighborhoods and communities. this year we went and interviewed over 100 principles and had five town hall meetings in november. with the fifth one close to the secretary of education. from that we were able to hone in more closely on our three point campaign. we have some of these -- progress update at some of the

tables as to where policymakers are with regard to the three point campaign some of which have agreed to introduce legislation in the coming four weeks and some of which have not met with our volunteers. all of which will meet -- be responsive to these issues through community engagement and organizing. with that i want to bring somebody who has been involved for long time as a board member and a community member and recognizing before he comes up someone at the sounding table, the founder of the bookstore and we recognize them. [applause] and if you could give a round of applause to the folks who put these flyers together and helped facilitate these community meetings. [applause]

thank you. marty blank is the director of the coalition for community schools. if i can make short we remind folks around that three point campaign we have been organizing cwide call ins and reform campaign action. this book has a foreword by arne duncan and an afterword by rahm emanuel, relates to the things we have been talking about together and some of the things marty has been working on. thanks. [applause] >> thank you. it is always a treat to be in a local setting where people are thinking about ideas you have

and you are with friends with whom you have tried to make change in the city on behalf of the children and families of the community and connect that to the national work at the institute for educational leadership and a coalition of community schools. secretary duncan has been a terrific advocate for the simple proposition that our communities have a real responsibility for the education of our children. if you listen to the education rhetoric today you would think the only thing that matters in kids' lives is what happened in a classroom. of course that matters but what happens in their lives and their families and how their communities are connected to our schools is absolutely crucial and the secretary has been a terrific advocate for that work in creating what you will hear about in the next few minutes, and 150 other community schools in the city of chicago. schools that are rooted in their neighborhoods and are trying to turn around not only to live of

children but support their families and communities as well. we have many places that are doing this kind of work and hearing jacqueline's opportunity to understand how parents and school leaders and community agencies and organizations can really turn around not will leave this school but many schools and contribute to the education of all of america's children. it is a delight to have you with us in washington and we look forward to listening to you this evening. [applause] >> thank you so much for inviting me. it is so nice to be involved in this and wonderful to be in this neighborhood that feels very much like my neighborhood in chicago. thank you erica and dorothy and jeff and marty and all those fine people who helped sponsor this event.

what i thought i would do is talk to you a little bit about how we did what we did in chicago, and then i am going to show you a very short video about what we did which will make some other things clear and time for some robust question and answer period. so here's the short story. my husband was supposed to do all of the research on schools and if you live in chicago that is a really big project. then he told me he was too busy at work and i was going to have to do that. you can't just do this to me. you cannot drop this project in my lap. this is a really big project. i had a 2-1/2 at the time and he said you are not working. if make yourself useful and

figure it out. i said that is great. my girlfriend and i decided we should check out metal hearst which was our neighborhood school and see how terrible this place was before we panicked, before we set down that path or moved out into the suburbs. who wants to spend the rest of their life eating at olive garden? not me. we met with the principal at the time, she walked around for three hours. what do i have to do to get your kids to come to school? at that point no one in the neighborhood went to school there. it was bused in from overcrowded schools. not to satisfy a racial mandate but the neighborhood refuse to go. so we said that is very interesting. we will come back tomorrow and let you go. we came back the next day with

this five page typewritten letter of all the things we thought would have to be in place in order to make a neighborhood walk back on mass. she read the list and said let's get going. it is going to be a very busy year. so we organized and we organize all of them in the park and you say what did you do when you were nothing? and i was the ad executive from gatorade or went on and on. and what is on sale as intriguing as that is. of the next six hours, maybe if we put our heads together we can figure out how to fix this place to stay in the neighborhood we adored and continue the silly conversations we have had in the

park for the next six years. we put all of them on teams and have infrastructure and pr and curriculum and marketing and enrichment and special events team and all of those teams in order to make the project work. you couldn't fix the library one year and say three years from now we deal with the enrichment peace and after that we will hit curriculum's. by our lights we figured we had nine months to pull that off. we came with the idea of nine months because we knew if it was not on the table at the moment everyone got rejected from a magnet school which was inevitable. somewhere in the bailout moment, all of that energy in the park everyone was a four-year-old.

the decade before susan got there, they hired two principles to get the school under control. it was one of those morgan freeman kind of places. it was up and up to create a great job. even though the school is on the upswing, she was not able to convince the neighbor that we are to school.

when we walked in the door, by most people's standard it was a fairly well-run decent public school. this was not a train wreck. most people would say it is okay. so much that no one who is in the neighborhood, and the 300 kids, who chose chicago public schools. that is how bad the situation

was. real problems are relieve the. the waste to get supplies. 70% of our efforts, the thing we had to tackle. this is what each team did. how do you develop chemistry? how do you suddenly get a neighborhood to give school a second look and how to change that? this is 120-year-old beautiful building that looks kind of like a penitentiary. it looked alike bleak house.

there wasn't anything about it. they start work on this school and we fixed this school physically, errors physically nothing. we had half a million dollars of goods and services and it was a gallon of paint at a time. there is not an inch of the school that has been licked by neighborhood artist and i can tell you it is love on a plate and totally delicious. when i am done talking i will show you a short video about the schools so you can see it otherwise i could talk forever.

next was the enrichment team. the need to contract services and create partnerships for the school. we did a lot of things. we started some serious our reach. the first thing we did was partnered with the chamber of commerce. all the events in the neighborhood take place at the school so we have halloween hooplas and easter egg things. those things take place in the front play a lot of the school. we started a farmer's market. even though the school doesn't make as much money from it, someone runs all the markets while the first chicago market and we brought the market so people are going to the same

place which hasn't happened in 25 years. it brought all of this energy every single week into the front. but the most important thing of all the partnerships we've made the enrichment team had a real tickled. how to bring art and culture and sports and stuff like that into a school when you don't have any resources? we went around to all the people who are best at what they did. whoever they were, the partners, our families were already utilizing. charge your normal rates. all we ask and exchange.

the second thing they had to to was the regular curriculum they some nominal amount. we have a dance music. suddenly we have more than we could have dreamed of and it was at no cost to the taxpayer, virtually no cost to cbs. we heard of the community school grant and we have a community school that is ready to go. if people would just take a risk on our school we promise the mayor's office that we could deliver, this community school's grants would transform our neighborhood. the fees that we develop brought in some much energy not only into the neighborhood but into our school and it was really the single most important thing that we did in terms of transforming

the school because it gave the school a way to absorb the goodness. it really was the mandate of the school. every community school has a not-for-profit partner. hour after care provider was the jewish community center. kids can have stacks and stay there all afternoon doing homework or whatever. they can still take advantage of all the activities all afternoon. it is simply criminal to throw 600 students out into the universe at 3:00 in the afternoon when you could invite 30 partners into the school. keep all of that energy into the school. we are trying to free us from

having our weekend cluttered up with all of this junk. this was a way to bring it all in. next thing which was for the academic team, no one was going to come in for ballet or sports. we had to raise the bar. i don't know anything about early childhood education. that is really about it. there were a lot who did know. they went to all of the private parochial and public schools we would have considered. they sat in on all the classes and videotaped the teachers and after 4-1/2 months of research they came back happy which was really good news because had

they come back and said this school is fundamentally broken, we likely would have said i hope your new library works for you but this is not going to work for us. the changes they wanted to see the school do, the most important thing they wanted, which they were cool about was access. they wanted to be in the classroom. access was almost as we discovered later unheard of in any school, public or private and you want to be there every day helping out, super. won't be in your kid's classroom but in another kid's classroom. great. whatever. the promise of that access. the promise of oversight went along way toward raising the academic bar and bringing in a very skittish population. we walked into an

extraordinarily toxic climate. this was not a story that is full of unicorns and rainbows and happy daffodils. it was really tough. we had one teacher who had a restraining order against her for hitting students still in the classroom. we had some teachers who muttered obscenities. there was some crazy stuff going on but most of the teaching was a okay. it doesn't take many sub par teachers to contaminate a staff. i think the pc way to put it is teachers have educational vision, found suitable accommodation elsewhere. the way that happened is quite remarkable. it happened faster than any of us could have anticipated.

one of the byproducts of the community by in an all these parents in the school, translated into the fact that every single some parts teacher at the school and fled ship within two years of this movement fallen terribly. that is extraordinary. the reason that happened is there were so many external pressures that suddenly showed up that made it hard to go on with the status quo. one of the other reasons why our movement succeeded is because we believed that susan was a great it decatur. run a school, run it well. they don't have to be a party planner or fund raiser or marketing wind. just be a great educator.

susan promised us if we invested with our kids and took this tremendous leap of faith, she promised our school would deliver. she promised her teachers would rise to the occasion. she promised she would be able to take us on the plane and get us through. this schoe school delivered in . became more than the sum of its parts. the fourth team was the marketing team. it is really interesting. apparently, you can reposition and read brand a school as easy as serial. who knew?

one of the great joys is your not just doing ho hos or twinkies or something. this is something everybody desperately need and wants and it is a real flying. we were able to talk to leaders in advertising in chicago and say how do we remarket this place? you can't just say look again. we need something more clever than that. in the early days it was a lot of smoke and mirrors. but very soon, that smoke and mirrors campaign gave way to reality. i think i said that so that anybody would be able to follow our blueprint on that. the last team was a fund-raising team. we learned very quickly that no one wants to give money to a failing public school. none of the mommys aware working like maniacs wanted to dish out

money when they were putting so much equity into a school. the question is how do you do this project with nothing? that was one part. the other thing is high am not saying no to money. teachers need more money. schools need more money. money would be super. but all the money in the world is not going to improve the school until schools are able to radically transform the way they do business. schools have to be receptive to changing the way their models' work so that everyone can benefit. so we did not start fund-raising in earnest until four years in to the movement. when the neighborhood came in, there were so many really smart people who walked in the door to new about fund-raising and development where as i was

walking around, d. you need your shoes? we could use your shoes. now there is a fund-raising apparatus in place that had a hand off ready proposal. if your interested in nutrition there's a 20 page shuffle ready line-item power point thing ready. there isn't anything anybody could possibly be interested in in a million years that this development team wouldn't have a program ready to go for you. radical >> from what we looked at. the reason i say that is in retrospect seven years later, some people might say money and power, money did not power the revolution. people power revolution. and we did it with nothing. and i mean nothing.

money is not necessarily the answer. the only thing we need money for is a $40,000 position for the resources because they mommy cannot run a community center as a volunteer. a $40,000 position transforms an entire neighborhood. the reason i wrote the book is so that i could leave this experience and it would be a 1 off concept and people might say isn't that great? isn't that super? that would be okay. but we weren't rocket scientists. we were not physicist's building a reactor. we were eight moms in a diner. if we could do what we did in my

diverse neighborhood with a really skittish thing and all the garden variety garbage every school has to work with, if we could do it in my neighborhood i know this could be done in almost every neighborhood in america. let's pretend moneys got together all over this country and let's say everybody fixed what was in their own backyard. if that happened, i really think 70% of america's problems would be solved dramatically overnight in one fell swoop. it would be that simple. maybe that is overly ambitious. let's say it was 20% of the schools that got fixed. that would be incredible, systemic change. that would be extraordinary. i was just in d.c. a few months

ago. there were all these policy wonks there, education specialists. change takes decades. change is incremental. changer does not take decades. change is not incrementally. we don't have time for that anymore. ask any mom who has a 4-year-old and she will tell you she does not have seven years for her neighborhood school to turn around. she does not have the stomach to play a lottery. she does not have the money to pay for private school assuming she can get in and ever eat out again. we don't have time for that. but i do know that the time is right for this. when i was in d.c. i met with these democratic senators on the education committee.

when they are done with health care which is two more weeks it will be climate change and a little more worse off and when that happens education is next on the docket. when that happens, the whole country is going to be talking about education for two months. so we have this amazing window. right now it seems to me that everyone thinks education is so messed up that there isn't anything they possibly could do to fix it and we have to wait for somebody else to come up with a plan for how we can fix this. the neighborhood school worked in this country for 100 years. the entire country, every urban area in america is based on the neighborhood school model. so the whole idea that that model is fundamentally broken, i have a hard time wrapping my

mind around that. it seems to me that if i can get this very simple idea inserted into the national debate at the beginning when everyone says -- when obama says what can you do to make this country better? i could plant a victory garden. i could recycle. i could volunteer in a soup kitchen. in that list of all the stuff normal people could do, my biggest dream of dreams is the very top of that list people say i could fix my neighborhood school. i could gather six of my friends and walk into a printable's office and say we are here to help and we will mobilize the people in your neighborhood to make whatever your dreams were come true and if we could do that, it would be really extraordinary. we are at a unique crossroads in history when people are talking

about education reform in a way that is far more serious than people have done in a long time. if this opportunity passes us by, that will be a real shame. i am telling you, we are not geniuses and if we could do it, everybody could do it. i will show you this little video. if you could leave this evening. put five books in the hands of someone you know. give it to people with young children. give it to a principle.

did your older men. it is something doable. it can happen. i will show you this video. i tell you what we are watching. this is really fancy. very impressive. can we dim the lights little? can we make the lights darker? while we are doing that -- okay.

i am so glad i have no responsibility for this. is this mike working? that is my daughter and that is ted. these are our front door. we did all the doors. that is susan with the rockets. this is our farmers' market. those are my kids. this is jeff garland.

this is our easter egg hunt. this is terry who made those amazing solar neils for the scroll. there is arne duncan who has been with us from the beginning. this school has diversity. it is 20% black, 20% hispanic. with our first fund-raiser, our

wine tasting we built two new playground for the kids. we turned it into a sky. a lot of recycled art. it is a city school. all the windows are graded but we turned them into light boxes. ♪

>> we are now a site for the chicago marathon. we are -- is always extra festive in my neighborhood. i love my neighborhood. we signed a $210,000 partnership with the chicago blackhawks. we started and inaugural hockey league and a dance room. we are a performing arts school. it is a dance room for the kids. this is where the students hang out. we had two amazing -- they were there before we got them. from the 30s. this is horses throughout literature. and across from the mural we had a seating area because there has to be a place for people to sit down. we blind globes over the main

hallway. this is atlanta on the way to lunch. the kids swim to lunch. this is our banking center. harris bank has a banking center where kids learn about checking in credit and all the other things kids could learn about. here is our lunchroom. we have a salad bar. if this was a gift for our teachers. there was a tremendous amount -- this is the earth's floor of our community school. earth/sky space. that is earth.

this is the space floor. the teachers just layer artwork and student work over the murals. here are parents putting together our africa mural. these are museum quality artifacts that came from the gallery. this is our india wind. this floor, this win is for special ed kids. it is tactical so kids can touch and feel. now you are going up into latin america. the national museum for mexican fine arts gave their time and made this latin american -- it was really delicious.

♪ this is our psychodelic wing for first and second graders. here is rahm emanuel, his first act of congress to come back and open our open house. he has been with us from the beginning. this is our artists sky floor where the dance room is. we painted over the lockers. anything that was ugly we painted. hi am mostly an artist and this is the fabric project on have

done for the past five years. we are on the gay pride roots. we were in policetown. we made it more explicit and we were the first school, the first gay pride parade. we are on every 8 blogging in the country. we even had a crazy klan from kansas protesting which was a real treat. that is my little world. [applause]

♪ >> let's give jacqueline another round of applause. [applause] i think it is safe to say more of us know something about community school than we did 35 minutes ago. one of the golden rules is never give up the microphone. but cnn -- c-span has made that kind of hard. why don't we go ahead and if you have a question please come up to the microphone. great. a am here to bodyguard the mike. >> people who would rather speak than ask, you said the neighborhood school work for 100 years and was just a cadre of eight of these moneys who made it happen but for most of those 100 years we had a model of a

two parent, one income household and that is not the case anymore. how many hours of work did this really take? >> thousands. there were thousands of people involved in this project of all different situations. it wasn't just us and i don't claim we did it all by ourselves because we didn't. you have to be able to ask. we learned how to ask. we need help. one of the great duel is of meeting everything is everything you get is perfect. >> i am a d.c. public school

teacher because i can hear because i thought this was an intriguing topic. if you can sum it up in one book we are good to go. one of the questions i had in this neighborhood, eligible to attend to go somewhere else. the capacity and resources to choose other options. the school was mostly over crowding in other communities. what happened to those children? there was an influx of students who saw this as a very good free option. >> we did not displace anybody. the schools decided to stop busing before we went in the door but every student who was

at the school from overcrowded schools primarily african-american and latino. almost 100%, every single one of those kids decided to stay and still through eighth grade. the demographics to shift dramatically in the seventh and eighth grade of the kids who came through. that will be a criticism that we get, that we have gotten, which says you can't get enough middle class caucasian people in a room without having a good school. it is great that you are patting yourselves on the back for doing so well. now you have this influx of a middle-class stable neighborhood base. one, that is not true. all these kids stayed. we had a slow trickle of neighborhood people come. the thing that is remarkable is

the benefits were seen across the board by everyone almost immediately. in third grade the incoming kids from our tuition based preschool found the neighborhood. when they got to third grade and were tested for the first time they had the highest test scores in the city. they were 100% for math and 90% for reading which is pretty great. of the seventh and eighth graders for the past two years who are still from an overcrowded school every single one of them scored high enough to get into a selective magnet school in chicago. they are 90% on free and reduced lunch. test scores were 76% or something like that. those were extraordinary statistics. one of the the benefits of

bringing in resources and energy and all of that stuff is it really does benefit everybody. everybody wins with that. is not just a question of taking over from have nots. is creating a school that is best for everyone. does that answer your question? >> i am erica and i work for d.c. and i got the call to invite you to do this and i am glad we did. 35 years ago i did what you did. i have two comments. i worried about this. i was working part time when i did it. i was in a two parent household. i don't think it is a comment that can be negligible, can communities do it? there were a lot of single-parent or everyone working full time.

it is a different world than 35 years ago. the others thing i want to commend you on is we formed ten committees and they were -- the same committee, six committees and after school and before school, that was another way to spread the word and we met at different times of day to meet people's work schedules and by having ten committees and the goal of ten people on each one, that meant a 100 people to make this happen. we turned around the complex of schools. how are you doing when the parent population doesn't have the time or doesn't seem to and anything else about your committee structure? >> we were not all stay at home moms. half of us had full-time jobs. some of us had part-time jobs. we have a model that says we do board during nap time than most

people do all day. we did this at 3:00 in the morning and doing lunch and everywhere in between. the same thing happened at my middle school in the 70s too which was remarkable. merriman eisenberg started the children's museum, groups of children like yours banded together, six in the 70s, rated all the preschools and everything fell apart during the two strikes in the 70s and the lot of other competing forces. so the spirit that you have when you did your thing and the spirit marilyn had when she did her thing and the spirit that my mom had, i would argue is no different than the strain you guys have. every age has their own problems and hangups and constraints but

that spirit that says these are our kids and this is our neighborhood and we can do this is a universal thing. i hate to say that it will be women but it will be women. women changed the world every day. >> this is a little bit interesting to erica's question that i talked for a couple years. thinking about the social capital that you guys brought and how that is different from other parents, your thoughts -- a lot of parents haven't had successful or positive experiences, the main not be as comfortable as you were walking into their school and approaching the principal and do you have any thoughts about that

and do you partner or connect with any other local schools to help them build this capacity? >> sure. it is happening independently with and without our help all over chicago. it really is a movement that is happening. this is one of the great joys of the community school movement. it is not a 1-size-fits-all model. we had a fee for service model. i think our model that we developed can work in any stable middle-class neighborhood in this country. our version of its. i talk about this in the book. if kids are in danger of getting shot on the way to school no one is hanging out to 5:00. there is a whole range of other problems. if an neighborhood is underserved and underprivileged they will have different needs

than my community has but that is one of the great things about community schools. whenever a neighborhood needs is what the school is supposed to deliver. a fee-for-service model worked in my neighborhood. obviously that will not work in a lot of other neighborhood in chicago but the community school movement was originally intended for those neighborhoods can come in with a range of social services and support networks that are different from the networks that we need. the idea is lucinda teaches and irish step dance in the neighborhood. that is what your neighborhood needs. if your school needs more dental, more family services. if that is what your neighborhood needs, that is what should be delivered and so it is not just something that works in

a certain kind of neighborhood. it is not a top-down thing it is locally based old school notion of delivering what people need. ..

not to do that. we walked into a really toxic environment. so what they said is to create constituencies where there are none. and factions where there are none. so our movement differed tremendously and that we didn't work so hard in organizing the parents who are already at the school. who were already a very disenfranchised group. we did not work on that. we worked very hard on organizing neighborhood parents who were not at the school already. we were trying to leverage resources and create networks and create connections from outside what existed in the school. and, frankly, one of the problems that schools have is that their heads are down so far to the grindstone that they don't look up and say, what's outside of these walls? what could we bring in outside because they're so busy trying to get people to come to potluck

dinners or whatever it is. now, i'll try to channel susan for a second. susan kurland and the school coalition consultants and hull-house were far more interested than we were in mobilizing the parents who were at the school. and they worked very, very, very hard to do that. and it was a point of contention with us because we only have so many hours in the day to do this, you know? and we're trying to do this really, really big project. once the -- once the rubric was set up where we had a platter of stuff -- it was said build it with your principle. put it on a silver platter. they'll eat less and they'll ask for a appetizer in which case you'll be delighted to provide it or they'll walk away from the table. but at the end of the day you will have a platter of food that everybody can eat. and that was sort of our guiding

principle that we were going to make a silver platter of food. and that we weren't going to, you know, stray far from that path. now as soon as something got in place within less than two years, there was far more opportunity for parents at the school of all different levels and skill levels and times and interests to add their voices and help in various ways. but until there was something to add to, it was very hard to engage that population. it was contentious. it was difficult. i think i -- i mean, i try to address it because these are all real issues, right? and most -- most reform movements across the country derail specifically because the incoming population is not sensitive. to the socioeconomic and racial situations that's on the ground. we're very sensitive to it and very strategic in the way we went about things and, you know,

these were just realities in which we were trying to make a school that was best for everyone and navigate some very complex waters. >> thank you. >> if you could just say yours and marty could say his. >> okay. >> together and those will be the last two questions. >> thank you, for being here. my name is thomas byrd and i'm with the d.c. parent resource center and on a daily basis i work with parents to try to enlighten them and empower them to do some of the things your group is doing. first of all, i commend you for your efforts. my question is real brief. your case you had a very cooperative principle and a school willing to work with you and meet you halfway. >> thank god. >> and therein lies my question. had not been the case -- >> we would have walked out the door. >> you had a principal that was

willing to work with you and dedicate her school to joining your vision, what we have done in that case. >> we would have walked out the door. it takes two, right? parents have to show up and a principal has to open the door. and you can't do it without principals saying, yes. susan was a great educator, right? but had she said no, her greatest gift personally is that she just said yes. you want to put a bathtub in the library, super. you can you think renovate it six weeks for free. fine, keep me posted. you can come up with an ad campaign, great! you know, and she was very receptive. and most derail because a whole bunch of people walk into a principal's office hi, we're here to help and the princess, you know, i don't think this school is probably right for you.

if you don't think -- in fact, i think there are four schools down the block that are better. so you need both. you got to have -- you got to have a principal. you got to have parents. and you need one more thing, too, and that's a building engineer. he said yes, too. >> there are 150 of these in chicago so there must be some other principals who are responsive and supportive. but i wanted to ask you talk about this resource coordinator proposition. how did that happen and how does that get funded? and what's your relationship to hull-house? could you just clarify that quickly, please. >> the community schools in chicago is a partnership between private resources and chicago public schools. so they sort of split the funding for this one paid position. so jane adams hull-house manages this culture aal medusa. you will give your money to jane and she's in charge of programming and all that and so

they're in change of it and then you can do all that stuff but that money just gets filtered right back into the provider. so that's the real key, right? how do you fund that one position? and, you know, that's a constant -- a constant source of anxiety for my little school even now. even with all the great things that we've been able to do, which is how -- where's that $40,000 going to come from? now, my school does not have money for pencils. my school is now so well off at 45% basically free and reduced lunch that our building works at a quarter of the budget of a similarly sized school in chicago that is an underprivileged school. so we work on a really, really bare bones limited budget. so where's that $40,000 going to come from? and in all the crazy schemes that are floating around and fancy schemes that are floating

around d.c. these days, think about what the return is on your investment. one $40,000 position to transform an entire community. and service not just the kids there, but anyone who lives in the neighborhood can take a ballet class. it's anybody. just sign up. we take nettlehurst kids furst but we'll take anybody in the neighborhood who wants to come. one $40,000 position is really all it takes to pull this off. and that's pretty close to free in my book. compared to, i don't know how much are we spending in afghanistan? it's nothing, but yeah. it's a question of lobbying. it's a question of explaining to people. and one of the problems -- one of the -- not problems. one of the challenges of the community schools movement, i think, in some ways is that people won't know what that is. when somebody says, what's a

community school, they're going to think it's some kind of crazy top-down doomed to fail educational initiative. like what is that? is that like a halfway house? what is that? well, it's just -- it's just your normal neighborhood school that you got to knit a really yummy sweater around and we as a community are going to knit it all together and my sweater is going to look different than your sweater which is going to look different than your sweater. but somebody doesn't have to buy all the yarn. but you do need money for needles, right? so not much. >> that's the last question. and thank you -- >> so we're inviting you to join us in formulating our own movement here in d.c. one in which we think we have the good ground making for. i want to open with a board

member, another one from our board of directors this evening. and as he comes up, i was just reflecting on this series now of book talks we've had here in this room. all of which actually my daughter has attended. and our last one was with -- with bill ayers. that was the only actually one where we received terrorist threats for even holding it here in d.c. and the one before that with -- is it ann martin? after-school success and prior to that our first one was actually with ann henderson the author of beyond a bake sale and the author of "community -- public school public will. and the last thing he said to us here in this room which caused some people -- a really good guy said communities get the schools that they deserve.

communities get the schools they deserve. and in that he was saying, you know, if you want good schools, get up off your butt and go get them. they're not going to come find you in your living room. they're not going to show up at our work and say, here we are. the best school you ever wanted in your neighborhood. all you got to do is now send your kids. we wish it was that easy. we wish that all of our communities, all of our neighborhoods, whether people have the time to do what jacqueline did or not. whether they have an organized constituency or not would have the best world class facilities and learning centers for children in our neighborhoods. but they do not and they will not unless those of you in this room, those of us in this community do something about it and we have to work together to do it. we can't do it individually. we have to do it correct actively -- correctively does and that's what d.c. voice does. we have these cards to tell you

what we're doing in building a movement in the community. [applause] >> thank you, jeff. and jackie. i'm a native chicagoan and i know what you're talking about. as a clergy and a member of the board i feel a new spirit in the air. i was sitting there and i was watching, the waiting, the watching and the dreaming. and so what we come to do today is to challenge you as a board member to challenge you. don't wait. don't watch. and dreaming will keep you in a nightmare. it's a new day. parents, principals, educators, administrators, clergy, congress persons, mayors -- somehow we got to make that which we imagine for a long time become a reality. i appreciate what you said.