talk more about steam because the arts are added into it. it seems as if you're going to use terms like innovation and creativity and creative work class, you can't create distinct sort of silos of the humanities and science if you're going to compete in a global economy. but are the kind of things you see the government could do to create a partnership with local and state governments to improve those kind of things, and make us all competitive in the future? >> let me speak as an educator on the panel, then i of course diverted duty as well. first of all, any institution that says that it has people arrive at the door who are not unprepared have to then make an articulation of what it is they expect in terms of knowledge skills and ability. but then you have to people are

listening in terms of the k-12 system, in terms of people having certain baseline skills and how you bridge to the next level. secondly, i worry sometimes when we talk about training programs in particular. that we say that there are people don't have the skills for the jobs that are needed today, and that is certainly true, but some of it is the geographic dislocation that people with skills are not where the jobs are and so the question is whether there are incentives and programs that could get people to make geographic moves. a third is how compelling is the curriculum, and one does more location oriented education, because what i think is, what are the most, how do you simultaneously train someone in a certain kind of skill, but give them some undergirding knowledge that allows them to

help self portability? so, if we are really talking about a migration, which i think there has to be, in our manufacturing sector, and it's already happening, you have people are going to be working with much more sophisticated systems, with computer-driven, with use of sensors and actuators and robotics, and i'm not so clear that we are educating folks to that. that doesn't get totally at your question about what skills people arrive at the door with, but we all know that we need to think of different ways. so i come down on the side of two things. the back to the fundamental come because i'm a theoretical physicist, but i tell you what. if you can't read, write, add, subtract and multiply and divide, things on your feet, do a few fractions can understand what logarithms, what a few statistics are, i don't see how you're going to do anything. but on the other hand, -- [laughter] >> has a room is walking out. >> but on the other hand, we have a number of --

>> my wife is an english major, you know, right? [laughter] and i'm sure she can add, divide, think on her feet, read and write in a not so sure about the logarithms. [laughter] pic the other thing is you talk about the s.t.e.m. and we built $200 billion go to an experimental medium performing arts center. why? because we believe in the cultural and the arts. but in addition, you can't just talk about the arts to keep the arts in the creek and. the real issue is what is the value added and how does this play into what you are doing across the more integrated front and use those things in new ways, giving the technology to reach our students in a different way, cannot different pedagogue ritual approaches. >> i would just add, and i won't give examples. i am serving on a white house commission on looking for candidates solutions that the first lady is during com and so we have been searching in communities for really good

interventions that are working that address is set of issues. and the driver for us, think about the depression we feel listening to some of allen's data. we were looking at data our first meeting that showed the exponentially quickest growing country in terms of middle school dropout rates is the united states, in the last seven years. and so we are on a trajectory which really is going to put us at far increased risk than the one you just described. and we can't solve that with the federal government. we have got to think about community-based solutions. and so we will be issuing a report with recommendations, but we're going to populate a website with all of the really great examples that we have found from around the country, and i really commend that to you. because it's a very good and really heartening demonstration of the kinds of interventions

that work. but we have a serious national problem here. >> i think we're out of time, unfortunately. i think the one thing i would just and, my last two comments, if i were in charge of all state and local economic policy, which no one has appointed me or even suggested that i be in that role, but -- >> go ahead. [laughter] >> you know, the most important thing for living standards come for americans are skills. to a first order, people get paid what their skills are. into the last two comments, i think the k-12 system has not been, test scores are flat for 30 years. college completion rates are flat for 30 years but it shouldn't be surprising, and intern wages have been for me americans have been declining or flat for a long time. so i think first day of local governments, the most important thing is to get the education systems working as well as they can. [applause]

>> i think there is just a terrific panel. it's entirely possible that we left the best for last. thank you very much for doing that. as i said when we kicked off the day, i know that there's competition at it. martin, i know. no, not a. [laughter] you guys did a great job, too. which is what i was just about to say, martin, so thank you. which is as i promised early today, among other things, brookings intellectual properties, and i think that's what we've seen today. so i couldn't be more proud and pleased by what we've seen and what it expresses about brookings. i have one last thought. there were a bunch of different perspectives, not one industry that government unions, scholars, and other actors in the community. one theme that came back to us

is the absolute importance of good governance in facilitating progress. and we heard it from a variety of different angles, whether new industries, not having to ever go to ketchikan went into state and local screen what we called technology, work around this function government in, and whether important questions that were raised about can you actually have a continuing economic prosperity in the absence of functional governance. if there's one thing, what we're going to do from the biggest i just what we have heard, come forth with actionable past forward, make this a very practical day. but the one thing what brookings can we do and in the we are going to focus on is how we can great some kind of roadmap for functional government to this town without which very little gets done, or if it does get done it gets done despite what happens you. so thank you very much for coming. enjoyed your weekend. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> the u.s. house returns from its holiday break today. they will organize for the second session of the 112th congress this afternoon. >> we will have live coverage of

the u.s. conference of mayors winter meeting shortly. while we wait, comments from senior white house adviser valerie jarrett at a memorial yesterday for dr. martin luther king. >> good morning. it is indeed an honor and privilege for me to be here this morning. i want to say, looking at that video, reverend sharpton, your words were inspirational, and you joke about the fact that you look different. but i think we should all action to congratulate you pick it was a very conscious decision on your part to decide you want to live a little longer, and to exercise and eat well. and we appreciate you doing that. so how about a round of applause? [applause] i appreciate your kind words of support, and i appreciate your friendship, so thank you. i also want to recognize the winning -- the wind beneath your wings, who does a terrific job. congratulations. [applause]

my colleague and friend who works so hard each and every day to protect the environment so our children will grow up in a cleaner world, lisa jackson, administrator jackson. [applause] barry gordy, alexis, james mitchell and maurice cox, all of you have done a tremendous job in your careers, not just professionally budget civic commitment to the movement. so thank each and every one of you as well. [applause] so yesterday i was in atlanta. i had the humbling privilege of addressing the congregation at ebenezer baptist church. and as i was talking with the president the day before i went down there, we were reminiscing about his last trip to atlanta when he spoke at ebenezer baptist church, and it was four years ago. now, a lot has happened in four years. everybody kind of jokes about

the president gray-haired. migrator is not that funny. [laughter] we have aged a little bit. and as we talked about his last trip there we put in contact. when he was last at ebenezer, it was a few days after the new hampshire primary in the presidential race. everyone remembers this amazing victory in iowa. and i have to tell you that after that victory there with those of us who thought because his victory to receive the democratic nomination was going to be both certain and swift, but when the results came in in new hampshire, many of his supporters were suddenly rattled, including me. and unsure of the path forward. the evening of that primary debate, then send obama said, and i quote, we know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way,

nothing can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change. and he added, for when we have faced down the impossible odds, when we been told that we are not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of the people, yes, we can. yes, we can. well, obviously he was successful and elected president, but we all know that's just the beginning of the story. president obama new that change would not be easy, that the challenges awaiting him were great. and, indeed, his historic victory was quickly followed by the reality of the worst economic crisis since the great depression. we also faced a health care crisis, an energy crisis, a public education crisis, two

wars, a growing unrest around the world with the fear of terrorism always present. we face gridlock in washington, and a growing courses in our countries dialogue were to me people, reverend sharpton, seem to have lost the ability to disagree without being disagreeable. so yes, change has been hard over these last three years. but let me ask you this. when was change not hard? when was changed not hard? when i think about change i think of the many people from the civil rights era who have visited the white house, some for the first time since president obama has been in office. people such as ruby ridges, i will never forget ruby standing next to president obama outside of the oval office as they admired a norman rockwell painting of a very, very young ruby ridges walking to school, standing so proud, and her

courage as she was surrounded by guards walking to school, and is taking there's a tomato smashed against the wall behind her. and the president said to rudy, i stand on your shoulders. were it not for your courage, i would not be here today. and he gave that same message to the sanitation workers from the 1968 strike in memphis, who also visited. and just last friday, to the tuskegee airmen who fought so hard to integrate our military, and who were honored just this past saturday by debra lee and b.e.t. all of them he said the same thing. their courage and their efforts allowed him to be where he is today. our president has worked very hard to bring about change during these challenging times, and what i think about our progress over these last three years, i think not just about the countless children, white,

black, brown, around our country, who will grow up in a country where they think it is perfectly normal for an african-american to be president of the united states. .. [applause] i think about the police cadets at the, they were graduating from the academy who i met in columbus, ohio, several years ago after the

recovery act was passed. they were joining the force because the president fought for federal funding to pay for their salaries and salaries for teachers and firefighters who would not have their jobs if it had not been for his efforts. i think about the man i met in detroit who was laid off from the automotive industry. i met him he was standing tall. why? because he had been brought back to work. the president believed in investing in the automotive industry. not just let barry gordy and automotive industry die but let detroit die. i think about when i recently returned home from to chicago for the christmas holidays and i was in the airport, i saw maybe what many of you saw, and that is our military returning home to be with their families, come back from iraq after the last tour of duty. [applause] and i think about the fact

when i think about change, that each and everyone of us sleep as little bit better at night knowing that osama bin laden and his lieutenants are not walking the face of the earth, plotting against our country that we love. that's what change looks like to me. i believe in dr. king were with us today, he would celebrate with the progress we have made, but just as reverend sharpton has done he would challenge us there is much left to do. as king said in 1963, just at this anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. we are caught in an inescapable network of mutualty tied in a single garment of destiny. whatever affects one directly affects us all indirectly. for in today's america too many of our neighbors still struggle for fairness and justice. many were struggling long before the most recent economic crisis, particularly in the plaque

community. -- black community. the recession only made things worse. parents wondering how they will provide for their children. young people wondering how they will ever pay back their student loans. senior citizens being forced to choose between paying their rent and their prescription drugs. teachers, firefighters, policemen, whose jobs are in jeopardy because republicans in congress would not pass the american jobs act. these are the stories that motivate the president each and every day to keep fighting for us. as he said in his speech last month in kansas, quote, i believe this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their their fair share and everyone plays by the same rules. fighting for a nation that reflects our most deeply-held values is what it means to carry on the legacy of dr. reverend martin luther king, jr., who believed in the timeless

creed, that i am my brother's keeper, i am "my sister's keeper". a leader who once said that the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stand at moments of comfort and convenience but where he stand at times of challenge and controversy. president obama stand with each of you. at the dedication the king memorial a few months ago, president obama reminded us that dr. king's legacy that teaches us change has never been quick. change has never been simple or without controversy. change depends on persistence. change requires determination. so we know, this is not a time to be weary. nor is it a time to sit and expect the the president alone to solve our problems because we know that if we all work together with steadfast commitment, reverend sharpton, we will

in fact crack and crumble that wall of jericho. for as dr. king said, the arc of moral justice is long but with all of us working together it bends towards justice. thank you very much. [applause] >> we are live now at the capitol hilton here in washington, d.c. where with the u.s. conference of mayors are gathering for their 8th winter meeting the focus is on the economy and job creation. we're expecting remarks from newark, new jersey mayor cory booker and dallas mayor mike rawlings among others. also labor secretary hilda solis. expected to get underway in just a couple of moments.

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[inaudible conversations] >> waiting for the u.s. conference of mayors winter meeting underway. meantime the u.s. house is coming back this afternoon to begin the second half of the 112th congress. members are returning from their holiday break this afternoon. we are expecting the house to gavel in at 2:00 and then to recess until 6:0 eastern for votes, including a vote to elect a new sergeant-at-arms. members will return tomorrow for votes on president obama's request to raise the debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion. of course you can see the house live when they gavel in on our companion network c-span, starting at 2:00 eastern with votes at 6:30 eastern on c-span2.

the senate held a brief session this morning. legislative session will get underway in the senate on january 23rd, when they return from their holiday break. of course you can see the senate live here on c-span2. [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] >> just a minute or two away from the start of the 80th winter meeting of the u.s. conference of mayors. we'll have live coverage of it as soon as it gets underway here on c-span2. our road to the white house coverage continues this afternoon on our companion network c-span with just four days to go until the south carolina primary. republican presidential candidates are crisscrossing the state campaigning in a number of different areas. former house speaker newt gingrich is housing a town hall meeting in west columbia, south carolina. that is at phillips market this afternoon. this is one of seven stops that he is making throughout the state. we will have live coverage of the town hall meeting on our companion network c-span, starting at 1:30 eastern. and if you're using twitter get the latest schedule for all three c-span tv networks

following c-span now. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, again. good afternoon. and. let let me welcome you to once again to the employability crisis, preparing the future workforce as a competitive city strategy. again, i'm mike rawlings,

mayor of dallas and we are have a jam-packed afternoon for you. we've got 11 presenters, five sessions, to cover the gamut of some of the things we want to talk about. hopefully we'll give you some best practices and strategies that you can take back to your cities and implement. we are working as well on codifying and pulling together our best thoughts to be able to present to congress and some of the things that we think how this should be funded in the future. but let us move today to the highlight of the day and that is, i'm honored to start this session by introducing the department of labor secretary hilda solis. secretary solis was confirmed as secretary of labor on february 24th,

2009. prior to confirmation as secretary of labor secretary solis represented the 30 second congressional district in california, a position she held from 2001 to 2009. a recognized leader on clean energy jobs, she authored the green jobs act which provided funding for green job training for veterans, displaced workers, at-risk youth and individuals and families under 200% of the federal poverty line. she's also focused on a subject that is near and dear to my heart which is the youth of america. we are delighted she is able to join us to talk about the summer jobs plus program, an initiative launched by the white house and the department of labor on january the 5th. this initiative is a call to

action for mayors, businesses, nonprofits and government to work together to provide pathways to employment for low-income and disconnected youth in the summer of 2012. despite the lack of federal funding for the summer jobs program secretary solis has worked tirelessly to insure that young people in america have an opportunity to find valuable work throughout this summer we look forward to her remarks. i think it is a great way to start this afternoon and we'll have her speak and then have a few questions and answers. thank you, secretary, for being here. secretary solis. [applause] >> thank you. thank you, mayor rawlings. what a wonderful opportunity to be here. good afternoon and to

everyone and a pleasure to be with you again this year. i want to thank all of you for the opportunity and privilege you've given me to join you here. we have several mayors here but this is i believe one of the first events before you officially get started and it couldn't have come at a better time for me because i'm also traveling tomorrow but i want to thank you again for providing me the opportunity. i didn't see one of my local mayors, i don't know if he is here but i know his staff is, mayor antonio villaraigosa, who i wanted to give him my best wishes for the work he does here with the mayors and with all of you. but to everyone in the room, i can't underscore how important the role that you play in terms of workforce development and your staffs. i know we have a lot of folks representing industry as well as our workforce board and how important that is for our families because

of the work that goes on locally in our neighborhoods and communities. and you know, it's no secret, you all have a very tough job and it's gotten harder in the last few years, but even in the toughest times sometimes against all odds i know that all of you here have stepped up to the plate in so many different ways and you may not always get recognized for that but i've had the privilege of working with many of you, and i know many of you spend tireless hours, over time on the weekends dog a lot to help support for those needed constituents you serve every single day and i know you care deeply because you wouldn't be doing what you're doing. some of you obviously have other professions on top of your role as elected officials. of course you're not doing it for the money but you're doing it because you really care about what you're committed to. i understand that as a former elected official.

my first job as an elected official was actually serving on the board of the rio honda community college. there were five members. believe me the rubber meets the road, when you have constituents, faculty, staff, vendors, and people coming up right in front of your meeting, telling you, i'm sorry, this agenda item didn't get on this time, what are you going to do about it? or why were changes made and weren't appropriately noticed for things. so i know how that is but i also know what it is like working in the state legislature, having worked in the state of california for some 12 years there, in the assembly and in the state senate but also in the congress representing los angeles county. and one of i think the most hardest-hit communities during this recession or past recession which was the area known as east los angeles in southern california. i know what some of those challenges are and how important it is and what it means to be able to have

support by our local elected officials. it is something that i know doesn't, doesn't lose at least my sight because i know that we have to work with many of you to get our job done here at the federal level. and i listened, i try to listen, to a lot of the input that you all provide. some of you here in the room have come up with fantastic ideas. i think we've even been able to put some of those into play. more importantly i want to ask you to help us do a lot more because that's what it is going to take. right now we are in this situation, as you well know, where fiscal hardships are being faced by many of our constituents but particularly in those hard-hit cities around the country where we have not seen a quick recovery or as quick as we would like but i would like to say it is important for us to keep our eye on the ball and to understand that every single day here we're working towards refining, reforming,

and making our programs more efficient. and one of the things that comes out of my mouth every single day is, jobs, jobs, jobs. and what that means for our economic stability and sustainability. and that is so important because jobs aren't created here in washington d.c. they're not created by the department of labor and unfortunately many people will run into me and say, secretary solis, you're worried about job creation. i said yes. how come we're not creating enough jobs? and i look at them and say, guess what? my priority is job training. that is what i get funding for. we implement rules and regulations to do that, but the bottom line is, creating that synergy with you all in your communities and with businesses, with business leaders. i know we have a couple of them here in the room because i've seen some of them already, but the bottom line is, trying to create an environment where people don't always view federal

government or my agency in particular as one that is somehow an i am paidment to the progress that you want to see the local level. i want to make that very clear because often times people, businesses, are the first ones to say, well, i haven't interacted with your department and quite frankly i'm afraid too because i think there is going to be a lot of red tape that comes with it or some type of restrictions placed on me or my city or my business and i try to tell them that we are here to provide service. i am service-related agency where really the bulk of our work goes out in the field where we have 3,000, one-stop centers that are around the country, in rural america, in inner-cities all over. we partner with community colleges. we're found colocating with other agencies like the sba, hud and we're come up with new innovative ideas so more business people will take us

up on what we're doing. it, i have to be honest, sometimes it does bother me when i hear that some good businesses, you know, i want to be careful what i say, are using a tremendous amount of resources for training. and i can understand that because they want what's going to be fine tuned for their particular industry. fine. no question about that. but did you know that there are other resources at the federal government can provide to assist you in finding that ready work force, whether it is connecting you, the business person, with the community college, or with the training group that is out in the service area, making those connections, posting those positions. actually going through and screening employees and giving them the right kind of direction, counseling, resume' writing, coaching that's needed. all that comes at the expense of the workforce boards. that is what we're supposed to be doing.

but i'll tell you, it surprises me there are a lot of businesses and even perhaps a few localities that haven't really taken up you know, this issue of working closely with the workforce investment programs. and i can tell you that in many cases, it is a well-kept secret in some areas but a lot of you here i know personally. we have worked with you. you're our best advocates. there is no way i can get on the ground to 3,000 one-stops. there is no way i can get on the ground to talk to all the small businesses medium-sized and big businesses and those businesses are thinking about leaving and going to another community. you all know that better than i do. you are the folks that can assess and understand what your local economic needs are. if we can work together in partnership, that's the way i want to go. and i'll tell you right now resources are very limited. and it will be even more competitive in the next few

years. all i can tell you is, i want to make sure that we are at, we are at that stage where we are really competitive. that we are really making sure that we're giving people an opportunity to be able to get the best training, certificates, credentials and we're hooking up those community colleges and training groups and cboes, because i'm not going to leave them out, community based organizations and institutions of higher learning who are all partners in the one-stops and workforce investment programs. to be partners with you, so you can call them. if you know that a factory is going to be closing down, or you know that someone is thinking or contemplating of coming into your community but is questioning you as the mayor or a local elected official, what kind of workforce is here, what kind of educational institutions are available? we want to be able to help package that to work with you. some of the best results that i've seen have occurred because there are

outstanding leaders on the ground that get it. they're right on it right away and able to pull together those kinds of resources. if you haven't been able to did that as effectively we want to help you do that we want to help create partnerships and share with you what our knowledge base is and what successful programs we have actually funded, that we will fund and there are some exciting ones and that's what i want to talk a little bit about. some dates, some deadlines, some dollar amounts you might be interested in. you know last week you may have seen there were a group of business lead that's met with the president and the white house staff in bringing jobs back home. instead of outsourcing, we're calling it insourcing, meaning insourcing in your communities in your neighborhoods and in your locales but the only thing we can do is to make sure we're expecting -- connecting with you, connecting the dots with the employer, with the

institution that can find better ready skilled training programs so we have the workforce readily available. i want to talk about the first stream of funding or competition that the department of labor is going to be putting out and it is called the workforce innovation fund. some of you are familiar with it. the acronym is wif. we're talking about 98 million dollars to support employment and training services for individuals who need our help the most and i'm going to underscore, need our help the most. i'm talking about vulnerable workers. what does that mean, secretary? well it means targeting low wage, low-skilled workers, dislocated workers and especially those long-term unemployed. because of the 13 million people that are unemployed right now, we're talking about half of them, or about half of them, about 45% that have been out of work for six months or longer. that's not to say that they're not qualified. many are very highly skilled and some need to have

refresh you are courses or certificates and things of that nature but more importantly we're faced with a staggering number of people who have been out of work for so long, longer than just six months. we're talking maybe two, and three years. and some of them represent some of your cities right now. we want to help you address that need. that's why we're putting this competition out. we'd like to be able to get your input and i want to mention that because a lot, i've heard a lot lately over the course of my visits around the country, about the long-term unemployed. the fact, this is something that is somewhat bothersome, is that there is discrimination going on with people that have been out of work for more than six months. that employers are basically saying, don't apply. and as the department of labor secretary, i'm saying, that is not acceptable. that is not acceptable. if people are qualified, we're here to provide assistance, to list those

jobs, to make sure that we make the best, the best connection so those individuals that employers want can actually find them more easily. so i refuse to sit back and say that somehow these individuals shouldn't be given a second shot. those individuals in many cases have worked very hard in your communities for a number of years, helping to establish economic growth. and now, they have fallen on hard luck. some through no fault of their own because the industry is gone. nevertheless, there is subtle discrimination that i would call, that is going on. and it has got to stop because it is hitting everybody. whether you have a ph. did, an engineering degree, or if you're an mba or accountant or what have you, i see it happening. i would hope you have discussions with some of your industry officials that we do not do the wrong thing. we allow for people to come in and get those interviews and allow for growth and

more opportunity. that application, by the way, is the deadline for that is for march 22nd. so that's coming up right away. you should be working with your workforce investment boards. and i don't think i, you know, can overstate how important that is going to be. but making sure that you bring in some of the partners that i just mentioned. i think it is something that i as secretary of labor will be looking for. the second, a grant competition, i want to mention, is known as rexo. that is our reintegration, ex-offender program for adults. last week, some of you may know, i announced a $20.6 million grant, new fund that will be going out to help organizations, help former incarcerated individuals become taxpayers again. just last week i was at an event, over here in virginia,

with congressman bobbi scott and we heard from the department of corrections, the court system and other law enforcement agencies. and everyone unanimously said the best way of helping our economy is making sure that we're not, pending money on that part of the ledger. that we bring down that cost because we're training people and giving them an opportunity to come back into our society, get reintegrated, clean up, learn how to get back into the mode of working, and also get education and skill training and anything else that they might need. i emphasize the fact that we need to get some of our faith based groups involved in that. so it isn't entirely just law enforcement. to give you an idea, i heard last week from some folks out in virginia they are working closely with the probation department, with the courts and also with, with juvenile youth programs

as well. to help provide the kinds of services that they need. now given, all of these different groups, have had their funding cut back. instead of each individual group applying for one of these grants, we're saying work collectively. so come about as a consortium or so and put and submit an application. we expect to award about 17 of these grants and they should range anywhere from $1.2 million and, we're looking very much in the next few, i guess, maybe 2 1/2 months or so, where we will actually announce these awards. so if you have some folks that are already doing this and can use an augmentation and maybe fine tune their programs, this is a major initiative of the federal government and of this administration. i don't think i have to go on too much about that, but i know that the costs are extremely high when we have to put costs towards

defending our communities, fighting crime. but if we can put people back to work, get their families together, make sure that we put an end to that, i think all of us would be better off. so i think that's very important. the other thing that i want to mention to you, that some of you may be aware of, recently, the president through efforts with the department of education, but mostly the department of labor, we are issuing, as you know, the taa community college career training program funds. and the dollar amount there overall for this three-year program, is about $2 billion. we have already pushed out about 500 million and, have done that purposely to work with community colleges. some of you might say, why the community colleges? we know they do training but one of the things they haven't done as well as i would like to see and we need to do more of is working with you locally and businesses to make sure that we're training for a real

job. that there is a license or there is a credential that comes at the end of that learning experience but done in an maer where you help to identify where the need is. so if you have a shortage of health care workers, nursing, i-t individuals, if you see a growing industry that needs more individuals with more technical skills but not highly skilled in terms of scientists, but you need technicians, then i would encourage you to put forward information, market-based information so you can compete and put together a grant. on the average these grants can start anywhere from about i believe it is 2.7 million for each state. we had in the first round of funding some states that didn't have everything together and we are ready and prepared to help those states that aren't there. so we may contact you or you can contact us and see how you can be a part of that.

more importantly these grants range anywhere from, on average, maybe, 3 to 5 to $20 million. but we're talking about a new way of doing business as well. so, i mentioned earlier consortiums. we funded actually, some of these programs, in combination with community colleges, across borders, meaning states. counties, and cities. so, why replicate or duplicate, when you can say, maybe, down the road, there is a community college that does a better job at one area? we know that is high need but i'm at another community college. we have a different expertise and we know that there's a growing industry that wants this. why not combine those efforts. you can include other institutions of higher learning four-year. obviously you have to have as a partner a major entrepreneur. that would be decided by you. but it should be

market-based and we're looking at competitive fields. so let me give you an idea. silicon valley, right? that potentially is a, an area that is in high need, always demand. people on the cutting-edge. in north carolina, it could be medical. it could be i-t. it has been. florida, could be also, you know, we're talking about all kinds of things. space industry. we're talking about defense, cyber, all these things, could be categories that could qualify. if you know that there is a need in your area, a growing region that hasn't matured because you don't have the workforce, then this might be the type of grant you want to go after. it is competitive but each state at a minimum is guaranteed something. so i want to make that known. the next application for grants will be, notice will be going out in february. that's for another 500

million. so be ready for that. you can contact my assistant secretary who is here, jane oates. would you stand please. john if everybody knows jane oates [applause] she is the person to talk to. you can go online and actually see the kinds of programs we already have funded. so there is a path or guide that you could use that is free and available. we're trying to be very transparent in the work that we're doing at the department of labor. there is no secrets there. lastly before i wrap up and we take some questions, the mayor talked about something that he cares about, that i care about and i think many of you in the room care about, and that has to do with our young people. with the whole notion of putting young people back to work. i don't think i need to underscore that in many of our cities and communities across this country, we have seen very high rates of unemployment with our young

people. 16% on the national average. and in some communities, embarrassingly it goes up to 25, 30, sometimes 40. depending where you are go could go as high as 60% and that to us is very alarming. we're talking about a mixture of types of individuals. you're talking about those that have never had a work experience, young people. you're also talking about college age, high school age, community college age, that can't find employment. part of it is, because of the way our economy is working right now, not everybody is moving on. we have a lot of people holding onto jobs. but we still feel there's a need to create opportunities, to give an individual some work experience. i bet there's probably a number of you mayors including others that started out because somebody gave you a chance to work in your youth at a summer job. i know that i fit that mold.

i had one of my summer jobs as a recreational aide and as a library assistant. back then they used the dewey system. i learned everything that summer where books go. not only was i stacking them but i read them. i could direct people where each subject area was at. boy, it blew my teachers away. so they thought, what happened to hilda? i got a job. but more importantly, i got a paycheck. and i come from a big household when i was growing up. that paycheck meant a lot. it didn't mean my mother and father had to spend extra on me. it meant i could now be independent and start to put my own money away and start saving for things that i cared about. just think how important that is for a young person who is struggling to make ends meet. to take that extra course at a community college. to buy those pieces of equipment or maybe get that other computer or that young person that right now, needs

a summer job because nobody in the household is working? and they're on some other type of assistance, government assistance. that check could make the difference for some kids. i will share very quickly, one story, san diego. true story. a young man came through in california our summer youth program out there. he was homeless and got a job, saved up his checks and was able to put his family into an apartment. young man, not even in his 20s. so you can look at the spectrum and see that there are some kids, youngsters, who really need it because it's a financial hardship for the family. you've got others that it is first time they get a job in high school. for others it is community college. for others it is an adult, 22 years old. who has a family but they need a summer job because they need an extra skill but get the mentoring.

they learn etiquette. they learn the social skills they will not readily get maybe going back to high school, sometimes even a community college, sometimes they don't offer all of that. those are all skills that are valueable. you can't put a price tag on it. but it is so necessary. when i talk about summer jobs, is there money for it? i wish to god there was. you know. the president's american jobs act he asked for at least $1.5 billion. well it didn't make it through the house or the senate. so, we're not going to wait. we're going to move ahead. the president called together individuals from different companies to help us meet this initiative. and we had a meeting at the white house. we already come up with about 170,000 slots. not all, necessarily paid. a lot of them are but some are just mentoring. some are just giving someone a work experience on-the-job training, meanwhile they're going through their summer internship at a place of employment. it could be at a community

college. it could be at a pharmaceutical company. it could be at a bank. it could be at the community service center in a local recreational facility in your city. different things that can happen. it could be at a library. it could be that kind of experience. nevertheless, the president has asked us to put this together. it's all volunteer. there is one centralized form. it is going through the department of labor and we're working to go online so that any employer, any individual that is seeking a position can go online and get all this information. we're working with google. we're working with microsoft. we're working with linkedin, everybody. everybody to see that we wet about the right information on. but you know what? last year i did this on my own and we had about 80,000 jobs created and some of the mayors are right here. i'm looking right at them. mr. coleman, who came in to see me, he said, hilda, we've got to do something

about summer jobs. i said, i hear you. i hear you. let's do something and we did and we started on an initiative. we had about a dozen mayors, some of you are in the room. some are not. that helped to come forward. menino came up with several in boston. we had a good turnout, a good showing. maybe we didn't have half, 25% of the mayors. we need everybody to be on board with this. to help again do what you do best. talk to employers, to create that space and opportunity. and we're still going to push ahead for funding if we, even if we lose, the fact of the matter is, our goal is to get people into those jobs. 170,000 already. lined up. 250,000 is our goal. what i like to see more? absolutely. absolutely. i hope you will raise your hand and be a part of our challenge because we're going to take names right, jane? . . fargo bank also stepped

up. they gave us about i think 1200

wells fargo. a nonprofit came up. giving people to work out in the fields, not just landscaping but learning the profession and learning what it takes to interact and work with individuals that had that as a sport. maybe i should do that. i don't know how to play golf. [laughter] >> nevertheless, we want to encourage you to be a part of it. but i'm going to end with that and just tell you that we're here to work with you. i will have my staff available. i think during the duration of your conference to be able to help you navigate the system at the department of labor. and please keep attuned to what's coming up in the next week in the state of the union. i think you're going to hear some very exciting things come about with respect to workforce training and all the things we need to get people back to work. i'm delighted to be able to be

here with you this afternoon. thank you so much. [applause] >> i think we have time for a couple of questions so if you come up to this microphone, we'd love to answer. thought thoughts? >> tom phillips from capital workforce partners in hartford, connecticut. madam secretary, i'm just wondering this initiative you mentioned with the president, could this become something larger that could be potentially a year-round effort because, you know, we talk a lot about summer youth employment but we also know that we'd like to have these kids engaged in the year. if there's an employer who's willing to extend that

experience beyond the three months or whatever it takes, absolutely. that's the whole point here to make sure that people have an experience that's valuable. that can grow. one thing i want to change subject on very quickly that i think is very important for you to understand is that we're also rolling out initiatives for our veterans. there are a lot of young men and women who fall in the summer youth category but more importantly, we are revamping our own services. we've created this gold standard initiative where basically any returning veteran from our two wars, iraq and afghanistan, can notify our workforce investment board, go online and apply right away and get certified as cold card standard veterans. that allows them to get six months of free assessment, training, everything that we have to offer. and if you are not a part of it, you need to know about it but i would direct you to go

online,deal.gov, that's the gold standard and that's something we're pushing for and we're also working very closely with our business communities to see that we get them employed. they are also experiencing very high rates of unemployment especially that younger category that i'm talking about. so i wanted to mention that. there is a handout also, summer jobs to be at your table. if you didn't get one, raise your hand and my staff will be happy to pass one along. but we need you to pass it. i would love to be able to list all the mayors and all your local employers that want to be a part of our family because what it does is it spurs competition and competition is good for our young people. so i would just encourage you to do that. >> madam secretary, let me just ask one question, one of the things we hear about are companies that have jobs but they don't have the qualified workforce. what are you seeing about that?

what type of industries do we need to work on the most to get people qualified? >> again, it goes back to making sure that there's that conversation with the employer. and if the business can talk with some of our grantees or work with our workforce with you, with the mayors, community colleges, we can fine-tune some of the skills training that's needed. it doesn't have to happen in a classroom. it could happen on the assembly line right there on the assembly floor if that's what's needed. we're willing to fund those kind of innovations. i've seen in texas we actually had a manufacturing component, a mobile unit that actually went out to the company assembly line and on the ground was showing their workforce how to use the latest technology in computerized engineering, machine-related, all these things that are not that hard to provide. many industries as you know

already provide the equipment. but if we can help provide and fine-tune that training, we'll be happy to fund that. but that comes from the ground up. i can't tell you what your needs are. you need to tell me based on market research what your long-term plans are and what the return is. and the thing that we're saying is, you're not just going to get money because you ask for it. we want results. we want to know at the end of the day, that credential is going to mean something. just like anything else. it's a business investment. but it's a human capital investment. >> great, thank you very much, madam secretary. >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you. and let me invite our speakers up to the panel now. and i'll introduce everybody.

it's good to see you. got everybody coming up? good. okay. so let's talk about the afternoon. we're going to spend the next 45 minutes talking about business development and then some sector strategies model and we'll take a break around 2:30. we'll talk about hard to serve populations and some of the risk youth, education strategies which are critical to the united states and we'll close and i will try to summarize. i'm taking some notes up here and i'll try to summarize what we've heard without being redunda redundant. so it's my honor to kick this part off. the panel will include bouillion larrea right here. a president of solutions in dallas, texas. and laurie president of the

chamber. good to have you guys here. we'll wait until both presentations are over to start the q & a. so if you can hold your questions. i'm going to present -- kind of copresent with miss larrea who served as business solutions dallas for 25 years so she's a veteran and she's taught me a lot in a very short amount of time. during her tenure the system has received the prestigious theodore small workforce partnership awards from the national association of workforce boards and alfred p. sloan award for business place flexibility. so it's great to have you here. let's do our presentation and then i'll present you, laurie, okay? so first of all, let me just give you a little biased thought here. that i don't know anything about government. okay? i've been in this job for six

months. i was elected mayor in june. and i've been a business executive for three decades. have been ceo of three companies. so everybody kind of brings different viewpoints to jobs. i bring the viewpoint in knowing how to run a business, not necessarily experience of a businessman or politician so you'll see that point of view in our presentation. we'll talk briefly about the foundation for success, and then the key ingredients for workforce engagement and then we'll give you some examples of that. and by bringing it to life, i'll talk a little bit about workforce solutions. just to give you a little bit of a backdrop on our numbers. we have ten fortune 500

companies in dallas, about a million citizens and about 612,000 workforce. long story short, our employment numbers are trailing -- are better than the nation's by about 1.3%. and our december numbers aren't out yet but in november we were at 8.1% so our trendline is getting a little bit better as well. not quite as good as the state of texas but relatively good in that regard. i'm fascinated about folks taking this issue. they seem to take one side or the other. they seem to focus on workforce or they're focused on business. there seems to be this dichotomy in america on who you're rooting

for in this thing. [laughter] >> and it just seems ridiculous because you got to have both to do it. as many of you have probably read jim collins, he calls that the tyranny of the or versus the genius of the and when you accomplish it. i think the voters have elected us to be geniuses not, you know, kind of either/or sort of folks. so i don't believe we come up with a good solution unless we come up with a solution for both of these sectors. and i don't mean small business or large business or this sort of business. i mean, business business. and workforce are people that want jobs and want to go home and have a good time on the weekend. all right. so what does a workforce need? i think first and foremost, it needs to have an environment for business growth. economic environment, public policies, technological

infrastructure, i think also a workforce needs to be prepared. we'll talk a little bit about that later this afternoon. we need basic education. it's critical of the united states. it's definitely critical in dallas. we're working a long way. higher education the jobs we don't from overseas or folks coming from overseas here. and lastly, you know, a portfolio of workforce abilities. one job and one job does not fit for everybody. we have to have a portfolio of solutions make sure that we make this work. i do believe we need organizational catalysts from time to time. business needs them and i think we need that in the public sector as well. we need to make it easier for businesses in the workforce not harder. we need knowledge and data to

drive decisions. and we need strategies as well as tactical programs that we need to look at. in our case workforce solutions greater dallas is that catalyst. and for me as i started to look at it, again, i don't know workforce solutions as well as laurie does, but i look at it from the eyes of business. to have a successful business you have to have these five -- six things i believe. first of all, you have to have clear and bold goals. something that's not just do better work harder but something that's very specific. second, a competitive value proposition. something that differentiates you versus the competition and takes care of your customer. third, a sustainable operation platform, something you do that makes value pop decision better. fourth, an ongoing drive for efficiency. taking the cost out of the system and making that value

proposition better and better constant constantly, then you got to figure out if you're failing or succeeding and lastly, you got to provide the marketplace with news, innovation, things that you come up with this year that didn't, you know, exist last year. when i looked at businesses, i looked at that with workforce. i was pleased to see that it's there. first of all, they got clear, bold goals. 115,000 jobs each year is what their pass/fail is. a competitive value proposition. we want to be employer-focused. one-stop-shopping here. we do not -- we want to combine all the different phone calls you have to make so an employer gets to make one phone call and deal with all the federal bureaucracy and state bureaucracy there is. that i think, i think, a clear

differentiator. second, our sustainable operating platform is to break down the silos. we've got to cross-train people. there are too many people out there that have got their one niche and their one silo. and they're not cross-trained. so the -- all they're doing is trying to solve their little niche and the customers and the businesses want to make it simple. so we've got to be able to cross-train them. an ongoing drive for efficiency, laurie's thing is to constantly reinvent the bottom line. how are we going to zero-base this and provide more services with less dollars all the time? our metrics as we talked about are jobs. we don't care about getting a's and filling out forms. we care about putting people to work and that's the most important metric here. and lastly, we believe in technology. we've got an online workforce center that brings all this into a one-stop shop to make it a reality. so laurie has got some examples

of it and i think it'll bring it to life. thank you, laurie. [applause] >> thank you, mayor. working with the mayor has been really, really an eye-opener. working with someone who comes out of the business perspective and you say workforce is about employers. workforce is about business. we are here to serve. he's asking the right questions and he's asking the questions that normally don't come up in a workforce setting. when he talk about workforce programming we tend to talk about all of those rules that come from washington, all of those things that we know. our vernacular. it's nice to talk to somebody who wants to put it in a business perspective and say exactly what is it that you do and how does it contribute to this economy? and it makes it very interesting for the two of us, going over the sheet he just presented with you just very quickly, add a few things to this. 115,000 jobs. i want to point out that the

dallas program jobs have benefited as all the texas programs have been by being part of the texas model as some of you do and some of your mayors should know. in texas, the situation operates on more funding than most of the states. there may be five or six states that has integrating of funding at this level but in texas we have extreme. we have the big five. we haves workforce act, the temporary substance to needy families, the s.n.a.p. program we also using the staff froth employment money, not the service but the talent the human resources and child care for working families. if you don't have quality child care that is ready, available and affordable, the workforce doesn't show up. the workforce doesn't come. so let me talk a little bit about how we have managed the child care piece of what we have done as well. also reinventing the bottom line. for anyone in the nonprofit and

we are a stand-alone nonprofit business-led, for any of you in nonprofit, if you just go by, gosh, we got in underbudget, no, that doesn't work. that doesn't work. you have to challenge yourself every day to say, is this the most efficient program i can run? can i get the outcomes for less money, less time? can my people do more quality things than time-intensive activity? that is that reinventing the bottom line. it applies to workforce more than it ever has in a declining budget year -- several declining budget years. ends not processed, again a governance conversation with our birthdays. they did adopt the governance model that says let's talk about what you're doing and don't tell me how you're doing it. i don't want to spend my time in your board room talking about the churn. i want to know what your outcomes are going to be. and i think that's true for all business people. as we present our story and say workforce development can work for you, we really don't want to hear about the silos. they don't want to hear about cross-training professionals. what they want to hear about is

what you're going to do for them, how long it's going to take and what it's going to cost them. moving on, we love to brag a little bit but there's a lot to brag about. dallas is on the grow. we are seeing jobs. we are seeing development. when you look out the window in downtown and you see a lot of these cranes in the air, that means business is good. that means there are jobs. that's putting the right people in those jobs and that's one of the things workforce is here. our award-winning program is north gate constructors. north gate is a zachary key wit cooperative that came on board and won the build the connecter to the dallas fort worth airport. our airports are just booming, dfw and love field have both been through reconstruction in the past couple years. amazing traffic coming through those airports and we need better roads to get there. so this was a marriage that i did not anticipate. but if -- you have books in front of you that are regional workforce leadership. this is our annual report. and this is a culmination of the

efforts of the dallas workforce program, workforce tarrant county, my colleague down there and north texas david setzer and north texas was singled out with their mobile unit. we have some amazing projects and i wanted you to see all those projects but if you turn to the center of the book, you see infrastructure. we took infrastructure pretty much from the president's council's definition. infrastructure includes everything else from transmission and broadband to road construction. and we jumped on road construction. it turns out federal grants from road construction require on-the-job training, meaning that people have a curriculum they must follow on the job, something we know in workforce. they also require that more women be hired in construction. they also ask that more veterans be hired in construction. and that more minority vendors. we made a pact in north gate. we have three companies working on our sector. northgate was the most, willing,

ready and had the jobs. their challenges grant diversity, they needed women in the workforce. women in construction. that is not easy. i've done this business many, many years putting women in construction jobs, women in hard hats. we've tried it. it's very difficult. training had to be under their syllabus for ojt and we had a time crunch and i will tell you they are ahead of schedule. sector-specific response we came together with three different companies that did road construction and we said what do you need? this is what we need and how fast between them. we joined forces at the community college and with some -- more on-the-job training conversation than we had previously done. it was a very short turn-around. 51 hires and there were 25 still pending. 22% women, 47% came off the u.i. roll and 43% texas back to work. what is texas back to work. that's another initiative that benefits us greatly. the state came to terms with let's get these unemployed

people who have low skill and low wage off the unemployment rolls by giving the employer $2,000 credit to hire them and keep them for four months. it makes a difference. so anything that your states and your locals can do to incentivize employers to hire the most need. secretary solis mentioned there is a time here of perhaps discrimination against long-term unemployed. we are hearing long-term unemployed gets turned down because employers fell out they set out a recession. they chose not to find a job. it's hard to say. it's very hard to say but giving an employer an incentive a lower wage worker who has been unemployed for a long period of time -- one way to tackle the problem, texas has done that rather successfully. 22% veterans. that was a stellar outcome for us. in texas, we're very proud of our veterans and we have many of them. 2011, texas honored our employer. has the states employer of the year northgate. our other big story is the omni dallas convention center and hotel. this is one of those that we

turned it around. we took a parking lot and turned it into a multimillion dollar economic boom. it's an awesome hotel. very, very nice. it now is our convention center hotel which previously we did not have a convention center hotel. a very big struggle between our mayor and city council over two mayor terms, two different mayors. lots of things went on to see this happen. omni had to come to the table with a lot and a lot of money. omni had built a similar hotel in fort worth and they knew what they wanted. employer-driven. they came to the workforce system and said, i want you to put this on the table. i want you to give me this. employer-directed. that's what we're about. to date they have 522 of our workers with a projection for 750 by march of this year. i don't think we can ask for better in our results conversation. and these are a ready to workforce partnership. they didn'type out of our stables. they didn't want to come to us and say who do you have, laurie? who can you train? they wanted community college involved and safe-based

organizations. the bottom you see his bridge builders. they developed a curriculum for people in the community. people in the downtown community to go to training and become a hotel employee. hardest program i've ever dealt with. it's very, very difficult but the rewards are great. people who live near the hotel can work in the hotel and we're building jobs and we're building families, people who had been unemployed far beyond their unemployment benefits. the community partnership, res care is our provider, workforce interoperations a for-profit company out of louisville. they're an amazing group to work with. we also got the addition of work in texas which is the state database. 7 full-time jobs. this is the story. this is the story. it was a parking lot, a parking lot that sits adjacent to the u.s. department of labor no less. we didn't take labor's parking lot. okay. it was six-acre parking lot belonging to the city of dallas. it's a $500 million hotel.

it is certified and it's an amazing hotel and they've got some amazing facilities for the downtown nightlife. i mentioned earlier one of the other things that we're known for in dallas and we've done well with is affordable child care and child care management through workforce systems. the workforce system can and should manage child care for working families. that is the predicate for the child care assistance that you be working and keeping your job, a very good dovetail on the economy. and when you're top of daycare when people need it, men and women both go to work. you don't have the issue the child is sick, talk to employers, how long are they without employees because the kid is sick or they didn't have child care that was consistent and reliable? we have two objectives in this. employers depend on employees to get to work and then tomorrow's workforce begins in pre-k. we've got these kids in schools, little 3 years old if they're

not learning to read if they're not eating correctly. that is your workforce of tomorrow. they have to be people we can count on in 25 years. in 2011 we served 24,000 children through this system. about an average of 11,185 in care every day. we do not run a daycare. we simply facilitate daycare for working families through the daycares that are licensed and existing in our community. workforce and business aligned to build a workforce -- future workforce and provide child care for today's working families. a huge plus in our texas model and i strongly encourage other states to follow. with that, mayor, i'll turn it back to you. >> thank you very much, laurie. [applause] >> thank you, fedex we have laurie moran another laurie who's president of the county chamber of commerce, a position she has held for 10 years. she's currently chair of the

national association of workforce boards and has served on their board of directors for the past eight years, a leader in that organization. thank you for being with us today, laurie. tell us what's going on there? [applause] >> thank you. after listening to dallas, i think we should rename this presentation to something like a tale of two cities. and my other observation is why am i from virginia and my accent is more southern than those from dallas. [laughter] >> so let me tell you a little bit about what we're doing because even though we're very different you're going to hear a lot of common themes. my guess is throughout the entire afternoon. and so i'm going to share with you a little bit about what's happening in our community and why that is so important as we talk about business engagement in the public workforce sector. before i joined my chamber of commerce, i worked ford goodyear rubber tire in danville community. it sits on the border of west

virginia which may help to explain the accent. the city of danville today is about 42,000 people. we have an msa of about 110,000 people. at the time i was at goodyear it was the second largest employer. at its peak it had about 2600 people who worked there. today it is the number 1 employer in our region. while i was at goodyear we were dealing with a crisis in our workforce which i became very much involved in. we were watching an aging workforce that was hitting retirement age and yet we did not have the skilled craftsman and workers who were going to be able to come in to the workforce and replace those people when they retired. so our company became very involved in workforce. it was during that time that i was appointed to my local workforce investment board. when i joined the chamber of commerce as the president and ceo, january of 2002, to tell you a little bit about our

community and what we were going through, double digit employment, unemployment was already in our community. we were a community that was built on textiles, tobacco and furniture. and if you want to talk about the perfect storm, talk about what happened in our community. so we were in double digit unemployment when the rest of the country was still doing fairly well. and about a 10-year period we saw over 18,000 people lose jobs in my city and county. population of 110,000, 18,000 jobs just in textiles and tobacco and the furniture market. so when i went to the chamber, workforce development, the job creation piece was the number 1 issue facing our region. it still is today. and you cannot have the conversation about job creation without having the workforce

conversation. they are one and the same for matter what anyone else will say, they are one in the same. we worked closely as a chamber and continued to do so with our local workforce investment board. we worked with our mandated partners. at that time we still had a lot of silos in our region. and the chamber took a key leadership role in trying to bring all the partners to the table to have the community conversation about the importance of workforce development, the importance of working with our employers. we helped to convene a workforce summit that brought 20-plus partners together as well as private sector employers to the table to have these conversations. and as a result, built a relationship with public sector as well as private sector that was built on trust and open communications among all of our agencies. we continued to be a frontrunner

and leader in all of our conversations and a few years ago, came out and said the employer is our number 1 customer. that we can't serve job seekers if we aren't also serving our employers because we have to be training and working with our job seekers for the jobs that are going to be here for them when they complete our program. about 2.5 years ago, the chamber went into a partnership with our community agency program our c.a.p. program to tell you what small communities are like, the executive director of our c.a.p. is the mayor of our city. and so -- and he is a former chairman of one of the predecessor chambers that was formed back in the '80s. so it's a strong connection working relationship with everyone and 2.5 years ago the chamber partnered with our c.a.p. on the summer youth program. we worked with and provided the pre-employment training for our youth, using employers and h.r.

managers from across the region to come in and talk to the youth about the expectations of going into the workplace. we also worked in identifying work sites so that our youth had meaningful job experiences during that program. had a successful partnership with them and saw a tremendous success through the summer youth program and a year and a half ago because of a lot of that working relationship building, the chamber entered into a formal memorandum of understanding, mau with our community action agency who is our one stop operator to provide the business outreach for the one stop center. my chamber has a full-time person on staff to market the one-stop program and services that are available who is familiar with all the services offered by all the partners and literally goes in to be that representative for that business, to help them cut potentially the red tape or the lack of understanding about what's available, to epi.

them get beyond any preconceived and often wrong perceptions they may have about what the public workforce system is like and what's available to them, to help them identify what's best to grow their workforce and to get the best employees possible. i have a staff person who's doing this daily, has been for the last year and a half and working hand-in-hand going back to our one stop center meeting with case managers about what are the needs, what are the requirements of the jobs, what types of job applicants are they looking for and finding the best people for those employers. this person is reporting back to our workforce investment board so that we can look at and start to have conversations around what are the policies needed or what are perhaps different programs or strategies. we're seeing some strong development of our sectors and sector strategies as a result of these conversations. we're seeing employers who are stepping up and coming to serve on our workforce board and i don't know about a lot of you

but we always had trouble getting private sector to come to table a lot of times. they're coming now because they see the value of serving in that role and they're offering to do that. to give you just a few stats of what we've done, in the first year of our program, our business service manager went out and made over 100 employer visits and those were one-on-one visits. met with probably 200-plus other employers in smaller groups in different meetings. we have conducted job fairs, they targeted job fairs and community wide job fairs on behalf of the employers. this past october we did a job fair, had 33 employers participate, had about 500 job openings and as a direct result of that job fair, were able to place 300 of our clients into jobs as a result of that. that's 300 people that i'm not sure would have gotten into those jobs and i'm not sure how easily the employers would have filled them without some of the additional connections.

so we're seeing some great results. we're doing wage and benefit surveys with our employers because we're also trying to help our employers have a better understanding of what the marketplace is, to understand how to be competitive in the marketplace. tremendous work we've seen a real benefit by having the partnership between the chamber and the workforce investment board and the one stop operator and seeing that as a model that we believe has some real good long-term benefits for the region as we've helped to connect employers more to the system. let me say that as my worlds have continued to collide and run parallel, eight years ago as was mentioned i joined the board of the national association of workforce boards. and went in as the chair almost a year ago. i am a firm believer that not just at the local level but at the national level, we have to have more employers engagement in the public worse system.

i believe that employers have the loudest and the strongest and the best voice in helping to shape the policy and to advocate for the work that every one of us in this room is doing on a day in and day out basis. i will have to also share some tremendous thank yous to people sitting in this room. time flies when you're having fun. a few months ago, we'll put it that way, a few months ago we had an opportunity and my chamber partnered with the l.a. chamber of commerce, which is a little bit of an interesting -- a twist a tale of two cities, the danville chamber, the l.a. chamber but we partnered to cowrite and put out a letter for chambers of commerce to support the bipartisan legislation that was introduced in the senate for the w.i. reauthorization. and because of the support and help from the u.s. conference of mayors and people sitting in this room we have 106 chambers

from across the country that we're estimating represented about 100,000 employers that signed onto that letter. and i will tell you the amount of comments and the appreciation that we have received back because of that level of support. and i owe tremendous thanks to the people in l.a., at the l.a. chamber of commerce and the people in this room because as i look around and i look at the people represented, i'm thinking, yes, you're chamber's signed on and we ended up -- we did an initial push and then as many of you are aware because of this differing bills coming out on the house side, we kind of stepped back from that particular letter 'cause it was addressing the senate bill to look at some shared principles that we all believe in to look at a different way to frame it and to go back out and to get that support. but i do believe -- not only at the local level but at the national level we have to engage employers because again, i will come back to what i started with.

job creation and workforce development go hand-in-hand. you do not have one without the other. and so i thank all the tremendous work you continue to do and i'm certainly open to any questions. thank you. [applause] >> so we've got two professionals up here that are very experienced. questions, thoughts? anybody that's got anything? anything you guys want to add that you heard? >> i just will add there is a card on your table that will get you to our online website -- sorry, workforce center, and i mean to bring that up because it is an innovation that i don't think we've seen before. it is a full service one stop online including voice-over training. if you go to the home and hit training for those professionals in the audience, you'll hear some extremely -- and linda davis, thank you so much, linda is with me, some amazing

training that can be delivered and, again, there's so many of us in the country, 600 workforce boards, 3,000 workforce centers how much more of this do we need to bring to the internet? and to begin to share our information so that people can gain from this throughout the country. not just in one location. >> that's what i'm hearing. kind of best practices are out there. the more we can simplify and make this consistent, obviously, things have got to be tailored for each market but not reinventing the wheel is critical. employers and the labor doesn't have time. they need -- they need to make it happen now. great, thank you very much, ladies. i appreciate it. [applause] >> if our next panel can come up, we're going to be talking about sector strategies models

now. moving from business development. first of all, hi. good to see you. i'd like to introduce mayor marilyn strickland and denver mayor michael hancock. michael is here? on the way, there he is. okay, who will focus on sector strategies model. again, let's -- we'll go through the presentation and then take questions. mayor strickland was sworn in as mayor of tacoma, washington, on january, 2012. so you're newer than i am. [laughter] >> it's a typo, right? i thought you were. when were you sworn in. >> third year. >> third year. so that gave me bad information.

sorry. so she's experienced. she has professional experience in both the public and private sectors holding the title of development officer for tacoma public library as well as management positions with starbucks and jay ray communications. she is currently the vice chair of the tacoma pierce county health board, an executive committee member of the economic development board. mayor strickland will be speaking about tacoma's career coach program which provides onsite specialized career services to health care employees, ensuring that they receive the training required for advancement into high demand health care careers, a subject that is near and dear to all of us since the health care industry is growing rapidly. we look forward to your presentation, mayor strickland. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, mayor rawlings. so i'm going to do a case study

and like the mayor of dallas, i brought a professional with me. and i have with me darcy gibson and she's with multicare health system which is one of our partners. so whenever i'm asked to do a presentation, i ask folks, well, what's the desired outcome here? so there's a few things we want to accomplish. we want to make the case for workforce training especially the funding. we want to dispel the myths that government and business can't work together. government is not the enemy. we want to share best practices. that does two things. that shows how you can move people up the wage progression ladder because as communities we want to make sure that our workers make as much money as possible. they spend more money, they contribute more to the tax system, we're able to provide eventual services and finally an example of a program that also serves some of our most vulnerable citizens. so as we talk about the economy, we are often focused on unemployment. but as mentioned earlier, what we don't talk about is the fact that there are lots of jobs that go unfilled.

so there is a huge mismatch between people who can't find jobs and employers. when you think there's a retirement boom coming across every single sector, it really illustrates why training is important and why education is important. so let me tell you a bit about tacombas, for example. so we're part of the seattle tacoma bellevue market. bellevue is 30 miles north of tacombas and tacombas is different from seattle for a few reasons. seattle has a college degree of 35, 37%, ours is about half that. tacoma is a more blue collar city. we have a military base in our mid and say we're a city of about 200,000 people. so tacombas is a little different from seattle. we also have a public school system of 29,000 students and 61% of those students qualify for free or reduced lunch. that gives you a profile of our city. it's a great city, a diverse city. it's my hometown and i chose back to come back to live there

instead of seattle for very good reasons but there are some challenges that we have that are very unique to our city. when i look at the four sectors that are important to our city, we look at four of them. aerospace, boeing is a big giant in our backyard and we have also have a manufacturing facility in tacoma and we provide a lot of suppliers for boeing. health care is very important. i.t. and clean water. but we're going to focus today on health care. go to the next slide, please. >> i'm sorry. >> is there -- oh. >> right there. go forward right there. >> all right. i'm controlling my own destiny. so one of the things that we did with our organization is that we renamed it. this workforce central is our workforce board. and at one time it was called the tacoma pierce county workforce employment training

consortium and like seven words i can't remember and i remember scratching my head saying what do they do. workforce central is a shorter name and we connect people looking for jobs and employers looking for employees. and it's really important, too, because what we did in the year 2000 is that we initiated a health care sector partnership to address the acute workforce shortages in this key industry. we know that we're in the midst of a recession but there are some industries that are just recession-proof and health care is one of them so that's been booming for a lot of us. and what we did in 2001 is come up with a grow your own workforce strategy and we did it by industry partners. and next slide please. oh, that would be me. so if you look here in our list of partners, we have multicare which is the largest private employer in pierce county, franciscan health care system which is about a mile down the road. so you can see a lot of partners also in the education field, base technical college, the

university of puget sound, the university of washington tacoma, pierce college and we're at the center of this. we have private sector partners alt top but we must partner with our private sector partners if we want this to work. so let's look at the workforce shortage issue that we're dealing with. in the year 2000, if you go down the list, rn's it was 10% approximate. laboratory technicians 9%. technicians, 15.3. lpn's nearly 13%. people who work in billing, 8%. pharmacists, nearly 13%. 10 years later, and there's an economy -- economic part of this, obviously. it's gone down dramatically. and what that tells us is that through this partnership, we've helped people move up the wage progression ladder and fill some important positions but also important as well we've been doing this with a lot less. 10 years ago, workforce central had 60 employees and a budget of about $24 million. today, we have 30 employees and

$12 million. so our organization has literally shrunk in half but at the same time the demand recommends very, very high. and darcy will talk later about the nuts and bolts of how this works, but the bottom line here is that there is a shortage in health care. we've been able to deal with it directly by getting people employed, by moving people up the wage progression ladder but also acknowledging again these numbers look great in the 2010 column, but it's if the retirement boom takes place the way we anticipate it will in the next few years, those numbers are going to go right back up. and when we talk about education, we tend to talk about s.t.e.m., science, technology, engineering and math. and those are the four disciplines that are actually related to the four sectors that i explained to you earlier for tacoma and pierce county. when i talk about s.t.e.m. education, it's important to have it through our k-12 program but it's applicable to how we retain adults and how we offer at the technical and community college level.

for example, we just found out that boeing is going to make a lot of planes in washington state in the next five to ten years. that will end up with about 20,000 some-odd jobs all together. so as the workforce ages and retires out, we have to make sure there is more funding at the community and technical college level. i was in college for six years. i have a graduate degree. i love it. but for some people, they want to go to work right away. and in a two-year college and direct training is the best way to get there. and we're applying that same model to the health care sector as well. we want to make sure that our community and technical colleges which train a lot of people who can into health care have access to funding, have partnerships with the private sector so that we can put people in a pipeline that goes directly from high school graduation, training, and right into work. so at this time i'm going to turn this over to darcy who will give you some nuts and bolts about the career. >> okay. thank you.

multicare health services is a for-hospital system and it also has over 90 outpatient clinic which includes home, health and hospice, urgent care and we employ almost 2,000 nurses. and that's rn's and lpn's when you look at the vacancy rate 3.4, that doesn't seem too bad. but we actually have 81 openings for rn's currently so we still have some work to do. and the average age of our registered nurses is 46. we have quite a few that are of retirement age and are, you know, ready to retire. they're just waiting for a little bit for the economy to turn around. so we still have some work to do. we've done great work but we need to continue addressing this issue. so the career coach program, some nuts and bolts about this.

the career coaches are colocated on the health care employer site. and they are available to meet with the health care workers to talk about health care occupations. help them decide, you know, what occupation they may want to advance to, what schools are in the area, how do you get into the programs. and they're available to really provide them with guidance. one of the key challenges for the health care employees is that they are unable to come up with the tuition dollars up front. our organization is not unlike many organizations who offer a tuition reimbursement program. so that means the employee has to front the money, take the course, pass it and then the employer will reimburse them. so the challenge is they don't have the money up front to be able to pay for this. the career coaches can assist

our employees with access to dollars, other financial aid, grants, scholarships to help pay for their tuition and books up front. and that's a really big deal because this is a huge barrier for a lot of folks who just don't have the money to front ahead of time. they also provide ongoing case management so once they help somebody get into a high demand occupation training program, any barriers that they may come across that could prevent them from graduating, such as child care or transportation, the career coaches can assist them through that. one of the reasons that this program has been successful for 10 years is that through the public and private partnership. we realize we can't do this. it takes folks to make this successful. from the employer side, we fund

half of the career coach salary and benefits. we do provide the office space for that career coach onsite. and then the tuition reimbursement that we would have given that employee after they finished, we still actually pay that money but we put it into a pool of dollars so that if we have an employee who comes forward and doesn't meet the financial aid assistance, then we can use that pool of dollars to help them. so that's how it's sustainable moving forward. we also provide leadership on the health care sector partnership. the mayor mentioned that this is a partnership that started in 2000. one of the challenges with this partnership is that, you know, we really need to be able to get together in the same room with other employers community

colleges, universities, our union partners. and one of the challenges that we have is, is really being able to keep that going. and so as part of the public partnership, the career coach and that system helps us coordinate the sector partnership. so they're helping schedule the meetings. they're helping getting the employers to the table and the universities to the table. helping with our agendas, our meeting minutes. it makes it very easy for us to get together and work on these issues. so the other 50% of the wages and benefits come from the wia dollars and the assistance that these career coaches can provide to the employers is something that, you know, we just -- we don't have access to or we don't even know that it's available. and so they can tap into those resources and really assist our staff and being successful. so some program highlights, the

career coach program began in 2001 and we have served over 5,170 incumbents. nearly 60% of those have been completed their training in nursing, that's registered nurses or license practical nurses which is one of our greatest areas of need. so average over 500 incumbents are served each year. i like this slide because it shows where somebody starts when they enter the program. we just picked three categories. there's many others. but you can see the wage progression after three years for these staff. very significant. lpn starting around 13.21. three years later making 22.54. the rad tech, cardiology tech that's a big one.

18.08 to $38.18 an hour. i'm going to turn this back over to mayor strickland. >> so this is really the intersection of opportunity in career boulevard. when we often talk about employing people who are vulnerable we say oh, let's just get you a job. well, we want to move them on to a career path because there's respect and dignity in all work and they should have the opportunity. and there's some incredible stories and i'll just share one with you and darcy will share some others. but what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring people into the labor market who may not have been in it for a long time. we'll we have an initiative in pierce county to end family homelessness. we know how to make that happen. when people are employed are not so dependent on social services and too, again it's about advancing people through our system. i was invited to attend a graduating ceremony for certified nursing assistants.

and there were about a dozen young women there who were all on tanf. they were on transportation issues and they had small children and they were between the ages of 20 to 25 on average. and every one of them got up to testify about their experience going through this type of program with workforce central. it was life-changing for all of them and there was a young woman who said to me i would never imagine i would work in a hospital to help people because i'm always the one in the hospital needing help from someone. when we talked to her what are you going to do after your cna? she said well, i never thought about that well, one day you can be an lpn or a registered nurse. it's not about getting somebody a job. let's put them on a path of dignity and help them get a career. i think that's incredibly important. what i want to do, too, is talk about some demographics. so the career coach program on the left column, 43% minority population, county wide 31.5%. the city of tacoma has about

300,000 residents, county wide which includes suburban and rural about 721,000 residents. military and veterans, 6% are in the career coach program and then county wide we have nearly 20% so that tells us there's actually an opportunity to do better work with joint-based lewis mccord and reach out and even though we talk about nursing which has historically been female dominated you see more men getting into nursing now championship will continue to drive the wages up and have more of a diverse workforce there. [laughter] >> public assistant recipients, 17.5% of our career coach of public service recipients, pierce county, 45.1%. i saw that number and gasped and then i had to do some research and it shows that 54% of children in washington state get some public assistance so that number includes children as well so i feel much better about that now. limited english proficiency, 23.5%. tacoma is a very, very diverse

city. my husband is the principal of the high school with the highest poverty and highest needs and he says there are so many languages spoken there it's unbelievable. so we want to make sure that we're respectful of all cultures and that we're giving all people a chance to become proficient. pierce county wide 2.1%. single parents, 26% our career coach program 11.8%. and as i explained later in the last example about the cna program we do serve single parents and we understand that, you know, helping people move up the progression ladder is important but, again, helping people become employed, regain their dignity and becoming part of the permanent workforce is equally important, of course. so at this time i'm going to turn this back over to darcy and she will create some -- she will share with you some case studies of some different students. >> okay. what better way to show how this career coach program has impacted the lives of our staff

and let you meet a couple of them. so meet esther hester is a certified nursing assistant making $15 an hour. she worked at multicare good samaritan hospital. her dream was to become an rn. she just didn't think it was attainable. she did not have the finances to be able to do that. she saw a career coach flier at work, met with our career coach who helped her apply to nursing school. the coach was able to help her with the tuition up front. and also child care services. three years later, she graduated and passed her nursing boards. i'm happy to say she's a registered nurse on our cardiac unit and she is now making $37.71 an hour. ..

one more. one of our first participants in the career coach program. she was his support partner, which is equivalent to a unit secretary and one of our nursing units. she made $11 per hour. she wanted to become an el the end, so she also saw flier on the career coach program and was able to get assistance to get into a ulpian school. she also received her tuition up

front. she graduated from the program in 2004 and decided she did not want to stop. she wants to continue on to become a registered nurse. she went back to school and became an ariane. no registered nurse in our ic you making $32 for our. another great success story. in our first year of the career coach program received a governor's promise in practice in work force development of war for innovation of coaches to the integration of work force and economic development just a few other quotes from some of our participants and career coach programs. the first one from andrea, if it were not for the career coaching program would not have been a will to see my dream of becoming an are in come true. they accuse so much for their

virginity. little did i know i would have the upper to the to do something that i would enjoy and feel proud of. becoming a radiology technologists. the most important part about the whole experience is that will have a career that will enable me to take care of my mother when she gets older. very difficult working lot going to school. my car broke down, and without hesitation you helped me get through a very stressful time. thank you for your continued support. lastly, i want to express my thanks as an individual into the career coaching program. i am able to continue working for multi care and be a full-time student. there is no way i could never gotten this far but for your help. i feel fortunate to help you as my career coach because you have been so caring. always so prompt and responsive,

and appreciate your encouragement. sooner rather than later and will receive my degree is a registered nurse and will be able to give back to the community through health care. i am so thankful for this. and lastly from one of my co-workers, currently the chair of the health care partnership. the work first central career coaching program is of vital resource that supports a employees with vital career development services. supported and helped empower employees as they pursue their education and gained the skills needed for advancing in the health care field. i have seen the impact this program has made, not just on our individual employees, but on addressing the critical staffing forces faced by s. continuing to demonstrate its unwavering value. thank you for being there for

our employees and we look forward to continued partnership. >> okay. i'm going to wrap this up because i know how we are. his desire here was to show the public and private partnerships can work. in order for it to work, there has to be some sort of a self-interest need being met. this was what workforce central offers to multi care, the largest employer. also important, a human services part of this. when i here people talk of a word like entitlement i cringe because we don't want people to stay dependent on the system. you want people to go to work and be empowered. we hope we provide you with a good best process scenario. happy to take any questions, and i will move this along. >> take questions at the end. >> thank you.

>> our next speaker is denver mayor michael hancock. sworn in as denver's 45th mayor in july 2011. previously served two terms as the city council president and was the youngest ceo of the urban league chapter anywhere in the country, the leader on their rig issues, city finances, economic development, and children's issues. here to speak on the work force strategy to support business growth through industry sectors to be thank you for joining us today. >> thank you. thank you as well for that the representation. to all of you, thank you so much. a pleasure to be here. i will ask our director of work-force development. i will let you run these slides so that i don't screw up. we all know a little something

about that. a pleasure to participate in this forum. on a topic that i think quite frankly is timely as the president and our secretary of labor has pointed out, and as the president has talked about the past two months, it's about creating jobs. you know, i am excited to be here to talk about ways we are using sector strategy to stimulate the economy and growth and provide job of virginities for our current and future workers. we consider work force development to be entered apart of economic development, our overall strategy. we are very aware of the fact that when choosing a site to relocate and expand the company business is first consider the quality of the skilled work force that is their locally. work-force development is housed in an office of economic

development, and our staff members work with the rest of the staff in areas of business recruitment, retention, and the expansion. we have been using sector strategy to serve adult and youth for a number of years. we use them for a work force investments, and we use them for our year-round youth program as well as our programs in denver, and i can tell you, having come from the urban league it was this remark that was usually helpful in helping the early established this foothold in work-force development. we have help businesses in our targets sectors improving the bottom lines. in fact, as part of our recruitment of companies in the denver area we have used our work force of this to be the ones to do their recruitment and recommendations of future possible employees to new

companies. we have simply been a partner to companies moving in to a colorado. however, we have not done a good job and reminding our sectors with the industry clusters that have been targeted. our regional economic development, or our partners. we are working to change all that. we simply can do a better job if we have aligned our efforts with the prairies of the regional park race and target clusters for the region. to be effective as we can in helping the current and future work force obtain skills that they need to participate in the global competitive economy, we need to understand what is happening not only within our county boundaries, but also the regional economy and prepare our residents to take advantage of all of the aborigines offered by the regional economic virginities. this is important today but will become even more important as

the builder of fast tracks. those of you who may not have heard about fast tracks, it is the largest transportation projects in the country right now as we attempt to build up our metropolitan transit system. as the region's gross, you will create a list of virginities for future and current employees in the area. residents will be able to take a advantage of all types of opportunities drive the region. hopefully they will get on the train and had to work. only if, and we all recognize this tamale if they have the right skills to be competitive. that is why this year our work force development innovation has started to a line sectors. that is up private-sector partner that helps denver to recruit, retain, and expand companies to our region. we will continue our work with sectors such as health care and

hospitality, which in no currently has a lot of jobs available. we are now paying attention to what we call regional clusters and offering training opportunities with our community partners, a job seeker customers in these industries. another piece of our economic develop a strategy relates to the airport. if you follow with skillion in denver which is the most powerful economic impact, dia, and then branch national airport is the fifth international airport in the country. three of a 20 fest and at which it is to reject a lot of industry to thrive of closeness

three years ago recruited company called as in a move to denver, in a couple of years ago it invested in a huge plan near the airport, actually, the footprint of our era propolis. since then no fewer than five new companies have moved to denver because they're part of the supply chain system helping as pro are clean energy industry in helping us to attract new jobs to denver. recently we have discovered and the thrill to have manufacturing make mimic come back in denver. already our work force folks are recruiting for a manufacturing technician training program in partnership with at&t college in denver. this program is called still

build, run of. aerospace, bioscience, medical devices, aerospace and aviation, and we see the potential vote -- potential for those industries scarring in and around the airport as part of our era acropolis. redeveloping the master plan as we speak so that we can be more aggressive in marketing an opportunity to these corporations. we know the real the highly skilled work force. we noted to check them let me just say this. will they recognize is that we have been in doubt with the beautiful place to live. we have a great city.

we have a great football team that. [laughter] we call this the colorado paradox. the fact that our work force is

among the most educated in the country, but our high-school graduation rate is less than stellar. denver only graduates about 53% of its students. moreover, colorado is among one of the worst in the states when it comes to the seeming gap. only one-third test provision in mass well over two-thirds test proficient. that is our one of my actions as mayor was agreeable we call the denver compacts. boston, portland, and l.a. have education compact. and we have created several

goals which was my effort to bring university colleges and private sector, all the stakeholders who love to talk about education and heliborne it is to come to the table and put their money as well as the resources where their mouth is. we have established goals. every child in denver will enter kindergarten prepared. every child graduates from high school ready for college or a career. every student enrolls, persists, and graduates from the post secondary institution. it can be a vocational training program, it can be a partnership program with to meet the colleges in the area. number four, we have got to be with the breakneck speed of urgency working hard to close the achievement gap inner-city. this is important to us on a global scale.

without this we realize there is no with forced -- workforce development. cities are being called with a very clear and direct message to prepare the work force for the 21st century because we're competing against cities like beijing, new delhi, and shanghai . in the know who our developers are. the companies that have shipped their jobs outside of the united states. this becomes the foundation for us to bring that back to denver. back to our country. this is why we're starting with the very basic planks of rebuilding this economy and making sure rebuild our work force in preparation for competition within the sectors on a global scale preparing our young people within. they que all very much.

>> fabulous. what questions to we have for these folks? would you, on your coach, so explain again who pays for the education of these folks? >> sure. so the tuition assistance could actually come from many different ways. it could be financial aid scholarships, work force investment act dollars, the employer also funds dollars to the tuition reimbursement tell us so it is a shared pool of resources. >> and that just wanted to follow-up, if somebody went from one hospital to another, how does that work? they're kind of competitors. >> we do have competitors. depends on whether or not that hospital is part of the career

coach program. as you mentioned, we have several different healthcare partners that a part of the program. and so if they have a career coach they can certainly pick up the services that the other employer. >> i think when i was talking earlier with linda win who is art is a kid director of work for central there was a point we have people bouncing from hospital to hospital. one of the things he said : that you get trained and move up the ladder. so i think that was very helpful. >> thank you. that answered my question. other questions? thoughts? who has a compact? and education compact? does anybody have that at there?

louisville. important. dallas has just done that as well. >> hours is not called a compact, but we have that. >> dealing with that issue. >> is that a question? >> yes. the work force director. thank you for this shut up. i wanted to ask a little bit about this as a verses you're trying to bring to bear. my mayor will be on the podium to talk a little bit more about our education compact. we have the same dynamic you described which is all of the educators love it. there were talking about education. has a feeling of come buyout. trying to convert that feeling to action is not the easiest thing. i wanted to learn what your doing in denver. >> great question. at will tell you, that is the biggest hurdle that we're going to have to overcome. i will tell you that i took

office in july, campaigning on the development of the education compact. as a new mayor but it was easy to recruit the money and the power brokers to the table. the biggest challenge is keeping them at the table. one of the first things that i had to make very clear was recruit the superintendent to was critical. people needed to see this superintended engaged. secondly, to have a major star, if you will, from the private sector as a kutcher. we recruited the president of the rocky mountain program as the third chair. but one of the things we had to make very clear, this is not the forum for debate. we're not here to debate traditional versus charter, union versus non union. this will not be the place where we debate this issues.

that, of course been helped by a lot of people to the table. keeping us focused on those goals and not about a verses b or c verses the in moving toward i think that will help us go along way. these busy people will disengage quickly if they feel like you're wasting their time or you're taking them back through the same kind of sitting in a run debate in posturing kind of thing. we have to keep it moving, and we feel that sense of urgency and obligation. >> i would like to respond. we have been having the same conversation about education for 25 years. i ran an education plan for for the various is that the mayor describes. we formed the foundation to raise private support and have tick : 360.

washington state, one of the few states to a nation that does not allow charter schools. horribly contentious. i have come out in favor of charter schools. this requires action by don't want to have the same conversation about the opportunity, achievement gap, and these kids were graduate from high school and are not prepared to go on to college artwork. it has become an urgent thing for most across the country. i tell people that every mayor in every city should be his strongest advocate of education for those very reasons. >> how is your board of trustees dealing with this? >> which board. >> the school district has come out against charter schools. >> advocate for this.

>> people were telling me you're running for the wrong jobs. i am a very vocal supporter : not because their the answer to everything. >> and how does your school board deal with your activity? who cares. and i mean that. and not to be disrespectful to the board of education. there is no universal work or universal to all of us. and at the end of the day it has been those arguments about your territory versus my territory that got us in this mess, the same crap going on in washington. we have a sense of urgency. not graduating, and that graduating. this is a national defense issues, and if we don't get it right we might as well concede to every other country in this

world that has already done everything they can to prepare our kids. this is not about you, not about me. it is about our kids and they will do everything we can to prepare them. i don't mean that in a flippant way, but in the sense that this time for america to wake up and york. [applause] >> i think you're preaching to the choir. >> pique my interest now. mayor, got bless you. let me tell you, this mayor is the first municipally owned charter system, 6,000 students. not trying to buy tax dollars. we have, and the reason we did it is recalcitrance from the school superintendent. >> your city. >> i'm sorry. the great city of pembroke plenty -- pembroke pines to

florida. we decided. i said, it's going to be about education. we have a major committee, all the principles. we get to the quarterly and share resources. i get to every school and read to the kids and do anything they want this mayor to do. i tip my hat to you. similar, but not quite as great as you have. it's all about kids, children, and education. i was the college, community college board for five years, and that just can't say enough. >> there was a question their somewhere. >> let's give our panel and nice -- [applause]

>> our sponsor was supports the work of the u.s. conference of mayors. you're here today. thank you very much for that. with that let's take a 15 minute break and get back here at 245. okay. [inaudible conversations] >> we will have more from this day-long conversation from the u.s. conference of mayors in

about 15 minutes at 245 the state with a discussion on disturbed populations. the house returns from its holiday break today. the organizers for the second session of the 100th of congress include selecting a new sergeant at arms. the house will vote on president obama's request to raise the debt limit. ask congress returns the new washington post-abc news poll finds that new lows for congressional approval. 84 percent of americans disapprove of the job the congress is doing. you can see live coverage of the house on our companion network, and the senate with the other one on friday. legislative business resumes on january toward the third. it tomorrow's washington journal, a look at the role of supertax. because of the supreme court

ruling two years ago they are allowed to take unlimited amounts of money from corporations and individuals. already they spend millions of dollars on tv commercials, mostly negative ads against candid is that they opposed. michael joins us tomorrow morning at 915 eastern to talk about his article. you can find a link to the story in our website, c-span.org. labor secretary held sicily's spoke before the u.s. conference of mayors today about obama administration jobs programs. >> thank you. what a wonderful opportunity to be here. good afternoon. it is a pleasure to be here again with you this year, and i want to thank all of you. we have several mayors. one of the first events before

we officially get started. it could not have come at a better life for me because i'm traveling tomorrow, but i want to thank you for providing me the opportunity. i did not see one of my local mayors. i don't know if he is here, but i know his staff is. mayor antonio the augusta of wanted to give my best wishes for the work that he does here with the mayor and all of you. but to everyone in the room i cannot underscore how important the role the you play in terms of work-force development. and now we have a lot of folks representing industry as well as our work force and how important that is for our families. because of the work that goes on locally in our neighborhoods and communities. you know, it's no secret. you all have a very tough job, and it has gotten harder in the last few years. even in the toughest times, sometimes against all odds i know that all of you here have

stepped up to the plate in so many differ with ace and you may not always give recognized, but i have the privilege of working with many of you and know that he's been a tireless hours overtime on the weekends those needed constituents that you serve every day. and of the you care deeply. he would not be doing what you are doing. some of you obviously have other professions on top of your role as elected officials. you're doing it is you really care about what you're committed to. i understand that as a former elected official. my first job as an elected official was serving on the board of the community college. staff, vendors, and people coming up right in front of your meeting in telling you, i am

sorry. this agenda and did not get on. what are you going to do about it? by were changes made an appropriately noted? and know how that is, but i also know what it is like working in the state legislature, have you worked in the state of california for some 12 years in the assembly in the state senate among but also congress representing los angeles county. one of the most hardest-hit communities during this recession which was the area known as east los angeles and southern california. so i know what some of those challenges are and how important it is and what it means to be able to have support by our local elected officials. it is something that i know. i know we have to work with many of you. i listened to my travel listen

we happen it will to put some of those into play, but i want to ask you to help us do a lot more. right now we are in this situation. physical hardships are being faced by many of our constituents. particularly in those hard-hit cities around the country where we have not seen a quick recovery. i would like to say it is important for us to keep our eye on the ball and understand that every single day here we are working toward refining, reforming, in making a programs more efficient. one of the things that come out of my mouth every single day is jobs. jobs, jobs. and what that means for our economic stability and sustainability. that is so important because

jobs are not created here in washington d.c. they're not created by the department of labor. unfortunately many people who run into me and say, secretary, you're worried about job creation. yes. how come we are creating enough jobs? i look at them and say, my priority is job training. that is what i get funding for. we implement rules and regulations to do that, but the bottom line is creating that synergy with you all in your communities and with businesses, business leaders. and now we have a couple of them here in the room. the bottom line is trying to create an environment where people don't always you federal government or mine agency in particular as one that is an impediment to the progress you want to see at the local level. i want to make that clear because oftentimes people, businesses are the first ones to say i have not interact with department and unafraid to

because i think there will be red tape that comes with it behalfs or some type of restrictions placed on me or my city or my business. i tried to tell them that we are here to provide service. i.m. pei's service related agency where really the bulk of our work goes out in the field where we have 3001-stop centers that are around the country in rural america, and cities, all over. we partner with community colleges. we are found co locating with other agencies, and we're coming up with new innovative ideas. more business people will take us of all we are doing. i have to be honest. sometimes it bothers me when i hear that some good businesses, and i want to be careful what i say, are using a tremendous amount of resources for training i can understand that because

they want what is going to be a fine tune thing for their particular industry. fine. no question about that, but did you know that there are other resources that the federal government can provide to assist you in finding that ready work force, whether it is connecting you, the business person, with the community college or with the training group that is out in the service area, making those connections, posting those positions. going through a screening employees and giving them the right kind of direction, counseling carries in a riding that is needed. all tell you, it surprises me there are a lot of businesses and perhaps a few localities that not taken that this is still working closely with the work force investment a program. i can tell you that in many cases is a well-kept secret.

a lot of you there is no way of checking in on the ground that 3001-stops, small and medium-size businesses and those that are thinking about leaving going to another community. you all know that better than i. you are the folks that can assess and understand what your local economic needs are. if we can work together in partnership, that's the way i want to go, and up tell you right now our resources are very limited, and it will be even more competitive. all i can tell you is i want to make sure that we are at that stage where we are really competitive, really making sure that we are giving people an opportunity to be able to get the best training, certificates, credentials, and we are picking

up those community colleges and training groups and cbo he is not going to leave them out, community-based organizations and institutions of higher learning who are all partners in the one stops and work force investment programs to be partners with you so that you can call them. if you know that the factory will be closing down or you know that someone is thinking or contemplating of coming into your community but is questioning you has a mayor or local elected official would kind of work force and educational opportunities are available, we want to package that to work with you. some of the best results i have seen have occurred because there are outstanding leaders on the ground that it it. right on it right away and they're able to pull together those kind of resources. if you have not been able to do that effectively, we want to help you do that, create partnerships and share with you what our knowledge base is and

what successful programs there have been that we have actually funded and will fund. there are some exciting ones, and that is what i want to talk a little bit about, dates, deadlines, and dollar amounts. last week? i have seen there were ordered business leaders that met with the president and the white house staff in bring jobs back home. instead of outsourcing we're calling it in sourcing, meaning in sourcing in your communities and neighborhoods and your locality. the only thing that we can do is to make sure that we are connecting with you and connecting the dots, the employer with the institution that can find better pretty skilled training program so that we have the work force ready and available. now want to talk about the first stream of funding or competition that the department of labor will be putting out, and it is called the work force innovation fund. some of you are familiar.

we are talking about $98 million to support employment and training services. individuals who need our help the most common the will need our help the most. vulnerable workers. what does that mean? well, it means targeting low wage, low-skilled workers, dislocated workers, and especially those long-term unemployed. of the 13 million people that are unemployed right now we're talking about half of them, about 45 percent that have been out of work for six months a longer. that's not to say they're not qualified. many are very highly skilled. some need to have a refresher courses or certificates and things of that nature. more importantly we are faced with a staggering number of people who have been out of work for so long call longer than just six months, maybe two and three years. some of them represent some of

your cities right now. we want to help you address that need. that is where we're putting this competition out, and like to be able to get your input. i have heard a lovely over the course of my visits around the country about the long-term unemployed and the fact, and this is something that is somewhat bothersome, that there is a discrimination going on the people that have been out of work for more than six months, that employers are basically saying, don't apply. and as the department of labor secretary, i'm saying that is not acceptable. that is not an acceptable. people are qualified we are here to provide assistance, to make sure that we make the best connection so those individuals that employers want to actually find them more easily.

those individuals in many cases have worked hard and you're communities for a number of years since helping to establish economic growth. there was a subtle discrimination that i would call what's going on, and it has to stop because it is hitting everyone, whether you have a ph.d., engineering degree, or an accountant, what have you, i see it happening. i would hope that you will have those discussions with some of your industry officials and not do the wrong thing and allow for people to come in and do those interviews and allow for growth and more opportunity. that application is the deadline , march @booktv to. you should be working with your work force investment board's. i don't think i can overstate

how important that will be. making sure that you bring in some of the partners that i just mentioned is something that i, as secretary of labor, will be looking for. the second competition that i want to mention is known as our e xl. last week, as some of you may know, i announced a $6 million grant, new funds that will be going out to help former incarcerated individuals become taxpayers again. just last week i was at an event over here in virginia with congressman bobby scott. we heard from the department of correction, support system, and other law-enforcement agencies. everyone unanimously said the best way of helping our economy is making sure that we are not a spending money on that part of the ledger.

we bring down that cost because we're training people and giving them an opportunity to come back into our society, get reintegrated, clean up, learn how to get back into the mode of working and also get education and skills training in anything else they might need. i emphasize the fact that we need to use some of our faith based groups involved in the head. it is not entirely law enforcement, but to give you an idea i heard last week from folks out in virginia that they're working closely with the probation department and also with juvenile use pro grams as well. given all of these different groups that have had their funding cut back. we're saying, work collectively. come about as a consortium and

put and submit an application. we expect still were 17 of these grants, and they should raise anywhere from one to $2 million. we are looking very much in the next two and a half months or so where we will announce these awards. if you have folks that are already doing this until i use an augmentation and navy fine-tune their program, this is a major initiatives of the federal government and this administration. i don't the and need to go on too much about that, and though the costs are extremely high when we have to put costs toward defending our communities. if we can put people back to work, get their families together, make sure that we put an end to that, all of us would be better off. that is very important. the other thing i want to mention, some of you may be

aware. recently the president's issued, as you know, the community college career training program bond. the dollar amount their overall for this three year program is about $2 billion. we have already pushed out about 500 million have done that purposefully to work with community colleges. some of you might say why the community colleges. we know the baidu training, but one thing they have not done is working with you locally in businesses to make sure that we are training for real job, that there is a license or a credential that comes at the end of that learning experience, but it is done in a manner where you how to testify where the need is so if you have a shortage of health care workers, nursing, i tea individuals, you see a

growing industry that needs more individuals with technical skills but not highly skilled in terms of scientists but technicians, then i would encourage you to put forward information, market-based information to compete in put together a grant. on the average these grants to start anywhere from about, i believe, to 7 million for each state, and we had in the first round of funding some states that did not have everything together, and we are ready and prepared to help those states that are. we can contact you or you can contact us. more importantly, these grants range anywhere from on average the 83 to five to $20 million. we are talking about a new way of doing business as well. i mentioned earlier, we funded actually some of these programs

in combination with community colleges across borders, many states, counties, and cities. so why replicate or duplicate when you can say maybe down the road there is a community college said does a better job of one area. we know i matter and other community college, and we have a different expertise another is a growing industry that once this. wiener to combine those efforts to iraq we can even include other institutions of higher learning, obviously you have to have as a partner a major entrepreneur. that would be decided by you. this should be market based kind of reality is competitive fields. let me give you an idea. silicon valley. the potentially is an area that is in high need. always demand. people on the cutting edge. in north carolina it could be

medical. it could be i t. florida could be also, talking about nautical and all kinds of things. defense, cyber. take. >> you can see all of the labor secretary's comments at a website, c-span.org. we return you live to the u.s. conference of mayors winter median job creation. >> eight knowledge in the foundation we are delighted the she is able to adjourn is.

impact low-income working families. they lead the public affairs tragic relocations compulsory for before the in the foundation she enjoyed a 14 year career wearing brown and ups were most recently served as vice president of corporate public affairs. who would like to their continued support and. thank you for being here. [applause] we turn to our third mayor's business panel to about hard to serve populations. once again we will have three presenters.

a fan of the redskins since his team did a bad as his mind calamary has taken important steps to fulfill his campaign promise. : deasy by focusing on job creation and economic development through a collaborative approach. school reform and restoring fiscal responsibility. the mayor has been an advocate for district residents for more than 30 years through his work in both city government and non-profit sector. he is actively leveraging job-training dollars to serve low-income populations, and he has developed one city, one higher, employer driven hiring initiative to help put district residents back to work.

that is a we all here to learn about, so we are very honored to have him here today. thank you for joining us. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> good afternoon. i want to think the mayor for an essential action. we, of course, are natural enemies. you know, that he is dallas and i washington. the redskins and the cowboys, you know the drill. i told the mayor earlier that we did not want people to be anxious and upset and tense, so we took all of the fun out right in the very beginning. there is always a method to our madness. so, in any evidence we hope you

enjoyed the weather here also. we decided that it was you to come back. 50-60-degree weather. as well. facilitates you being allowed to go outside. we want you to do that, spend every dollar that you have your pocket. we take credit cards, checks, ious, and anything that will stimulate our economy here in the district of columbia all in the interest of keeping people working in getting them back to work. in the event, i going to breeze through this. work force and economic developments. a key initiative work for us. i came in the office. we established priorities. everyone embraces here in this city. that is, fiscal stability.

we actually had one point had a fund balance that was the envy of the nation. we had a balance which was phenomenal at the time. it got spin down in huge chunks to the point where we were projecting by the end of this past fiscal year, the point of having only about $650 million left in our fund balance, none of which we have any control over because half of it was committed to our bond escrow fund, and the other half was committed to a contingency reserve fund imposed upon us by the congress. for those of you who don't know, the district of columbia has to send all of this budget and local laws to the budget to be approved. >> we have a better track record

. in any evidence we also recognize that this bill to fiscal stability, i huge of plumb their rig, a stalled economic development effort, and the help the people back into jobs. and so just by way of background this gives you a little bit of flavor. it 66 square miles. a growing population in the decade the 20,000 in 2010 the district of columbia grew run firefighter and 75,000 people to 600 want. overton years 31,000. we have grown by only 17,000 people.

grown by more than 50% of the growth that took place over ten years, so we are on an escalating path. we have opportunities as well as challenges. during the day we have a million people or in the city maryland and virginia. approximately 5 million people. we of the only place in the nation where you are in someone else's state. it does not exist anywhere else. in addition to that we have a huge range of income. the median income is $55,000, will we have some people who make lots of money. other people who are down in the 15, a $20,000 range colleges and area like the district of columbia, almost impossible to deal with. and then one of the biggest areas for us is tourism.

we have about 16 million people to come to the district of columbia each year, which is phenomenal. in terms of the problem for us the unemployment rate is huge. until about september we have an unemployment rate if we have been working assiduously on this through some of our folks call i director of business development, david, our work force investment of be happy to talk about it more in the aftermath, but we're trying to reorganize ourselves on refocusing and repackaging our

efforts. by the end of this year, by the end of december through a number of offers that we have made and some of the things that probably serendipitous, our unemployment rate has dropped. ages the awaiting the data. the reality is our unemployment is concentrated in three areas. five, seven, end date. the rate is 14%. nestle of the largest areas of public housing developments. the unemployment rate is 249 percentage. believe there not it's down 30 percent of us six months ago. among low-income d.c. youth, and

the suspect for those who are large citizens, probably a picture that reflects where you are. 40 percent of our unemployed, 40 percent of our young people are unemployed and not in school. we have 68,000 residents who struggle post secondary education of one kind or another endeavor and the degree. a lot of verbiage in numbers up there, but let me try to summarize as best i can. our job growth there appears to be accelerating. try to do everything we can to control that, and not talk a little bit about that. the nation, in 2011, the nation lost civilian jobs. we gained 90500 jobs, which is good for any jurisdiction in america at this stage. ..

>> some of those are the same strategies projected out over a period of time. um, our one city, one hire program is at the heart of this effort. in addition to that, i think we are the last jurisdiction in america to have created a community college. we have one now that's a part of our four-year college and university of the district of columbia, and we are moving rapidly to be able to separate the two because they really have different missions and, frankly, the enrollment now in the community college even though

it's been in place only for a couple of years has already exceeded that in the four-year college which is where we can more rapidly prepare people for jobs. um, and in addition to that, the longer term strategies include something that we focused on now for several years in the city, and that is education reform and expanded early childhood education to kind of get the long view. obviously, there are jobs that are available in early childhood education, but the larger purpose for us is to try to create a cadre of young people who will be better prepared when they go to school, who would get a better education as a result of it, and 15 or 20 years now will be young people who will achieve at higher levels than some of our young people are now. i think we are, if you know differently let me know, but i think we are the only city in america that has universal pre-kindergarten. every 3 and 4-year-old in the district of columbia who wants him or her in a program can go to a d.c. public school, a

charter school -- and we now have 53 charter schools, 99 campuses and 32,000 students enrolled -- or a community-based organization o. that was an initiative i got through the council when i was chairman, and we're now working on the rollout which we will do in just a few weeks of a universal infant and toddler program which will focus on young people, birth to 2 years of age to actually complement what we're doing with pre-k. if i could figure out how to get a fetus into a program, i would do that. [laughter] because i think it makes good human and educational sense, and it makes good financial sense as well when we think about the costs of caressing for young people -- caring for young people who don't have those opportunities early in life. one city, one hire, and i think you have a brochure before you on that, it's a program that we established that is being run out of our d. of employment services under lisa mallory's direction. it's a kind of a simple concept.

the idea is that we work hard to work with employers to identify job vacancies as they exist, and then we work hard to find out who needs a job. and we try to make through guarantees, um, a commitment to employers to work with them. we, the one city, one hire team which is a whole group of people who work in our employment services department, they establish one one-on-one relationships with the employers, they work with them l to build a customized staffing plan with them, a service plan that includes recruiting, screening of candidates, and then the third step, employers then get people who have been prescreened that are available to be hired by them. we offer a host of incentives, but in three and a half months, i guess it's three and a half months we've had this program

underway, we have already signed on i think it's now 363 companies who are working with us in the district of columbia. we have placed 1500 people who were unemployed prior to becoming a part of this effort into employment. and we have another 314 who are in the queue. so over the next several weeks we could be approaching 2,000 people who were unemployed who now will be employed in the district of columbia. what kind of companies? bb&t bank, 7-eleven, some of our construction firms, marriott, cvs, bed, bath and beyond, some of the security firms, safeway and, of course, our own metro system. in fact, one of the things we found out is our metro system which serves the city principally, only 14% of the people who work for metro actually live in the district of columbia. so we have now work with the the metro system, they have 360

vacancies a year in the bus system, so we now have entered into an agreement with them to help recruit and train bus drivers so that we can increase our market share of people who are employed with metro who live in the district of columbia. and 70 % of the people we've worked with who we refer to employers have been hired by those employers which is a good success rate thus far. um, we also are working to we've worked to reestablish our work force investment council which really was, essentially, dormant when i got here. it was nonfunctional, completely. and we've worked hard to recruit people from the business and labor communities in order to be able to provide the leadership. we now have around 30, 35 people who are on the work force investment council. mike harold who is senior vice president with pnc bank is leading it, brings an enormous amount of energy and expertise

and intellect to that position and is working with alice in order to make in the centerpiece of our efforts to get people back working again. we also, and you'll see a graphic of this, have put together a number of agencies in the city who should be working in a linked way with our, with our work force efforts to bring them closer together. and what you see there is a photograph. that is ross dress valess. they came to the district of columbia a few months ago. we were able to talk them into working with us, and they gave us the responsibility for recruiting, screening and pretraining some people, they hired 65 people to open that store, all of whom are district residents, and i think 40 or 45 of them were unemployed at the time that they were hired. we also are focusing a lot on expanding our economy.

we are principally an economy that is focused on, um, tourism and government. at one time, several decades ago, government in the district of columbia represented 60% of the employment. believe it or not, it is down to 12% at this stage, and i suppose with the prospect of sequestration, that probably bodes well for those of us who live in this area. um, but one of the things we are doing is creating a work force intermediary which for those who have a copy of this is on the previous page. the work force interimmediate yea which we worked with our city council to create would actually establish a permanent way of connecting people who need jobs with employers, and it will be a separate entity altogether that will have its own staff that will be coordinated as part of our work force development efforts. one of the areas that we're focusing on in this particular is technology, and we have really worked assiduously. i want to single out david

skipper who has worked so hard in that area. these are some of the firms, living social, which is becoming the fastest growing employer in the district of columbia. belief it or not, they hire an average of three people a day in the district of columbia. they were about to move out of the city, and we worked with them so they would stay. we are work being with them to find -- working with them to find permanent quarters. and the one down in the lower right-hand corner, the fort. david and i were just talking about them. they were in sterling, virginia. they were about to sign a lease in early december to locate in arlington, virginia, and we were able to work with them to get them to come to the district of columbia. we gave them $100,000 in incentives, they have now located in the district of columbia. they are an accelerator. they are an incubator of technology firms. they now have, i think, about ten, they've already signed on. they are located in the city, they have found their

headquarters and, by the way, this is about as good as it gets. you see where the word "the fort" is on there? in that o is a district of columbia flag. so that is about as good as it gets. if we could get the rest of the folks to do the same kind of thing, we'll really be golden. the last one i'll mention is new brand analytics. new brand analytics was on its way to california. they are a firm that has some very interesting apps that they are engaged in. we worked with them, they're going to stay in the district of columbia, they are expanding, and our goal, frankly, is to build upon what is a fledgling technology arena and bring more jobs here. we have about 20,000 jobs now. we don't have a numerical goal, but i'd love to see that doubled over the next four to five years. this gives you an idea of how we're working with the work force investment council to focus on these issues that i've talked about. the seven agencies that are listed there, we moved the work

force investment council into the deputy mayor's office in order to elevate the effort. and the rest of those are the community college. um, we actually have a state agency for education in the city. our juvenile justice issue now as a big grant to try to take some of the older youth in the juvenile justice system and through the charter school that we operate within our juvenile justice facility, they're trying to prepare young people there for jobs. the next one is the disability agency in the district of columbia that works with a whole range of disabilities. the department of human services where we are focusing spencively -- intensively on tan i have and, of course, our -- tanf. and so that having been said, we think that the one city, one hire program is beginning to show some real results. you know, when you can get close to 2,000 people in three and a half months, we believe that has some real potential, and it's a

very, very simple concept. i think it could be used almost anywhere in the country. we know where the unemployment areas, where they're largely concentrated in the city, especially around areas of high poverty, high unemployment and very low economic development. didn't get a chance to talk about economic development much in this presentation, but we now have launched 14 projects in the last 12 months, um, ranging from some very small ones to something like city center. if you happen to be in the downtown area of 9th and 8th street, you will go past this project that is a crater at this stage, a six-story hole in the ground that, ultimately, will be about a billion dollars of development. in fact, the state of ca qatar -- qatar, however you want to pronounce it, is a huge investor in that project. that will result in, what, david, several thousand construction, 3700 construction jobs and maybe 5200 permanent jobs when it is finished in

three years. and so that will be a big part of our strategy as well. is and so in a bad economy, we're making the best of it. and i think we're beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. as well. again, we're focusing on the short-term strategies as well as the longer term ones. the longer term ones focus on two areas; reorganizing our whole work force development system and using economic development especially through technology and working with our education system to prepare our young people for jobs. there was a slide up there, by the way, and i'll stop after this, there was a slide up there that i should have -- that is a brand new high school that we just opened in the district of columbia in ward 7 which is an area of high poverty concentration. it is a s.t.e.m. school, science, technology, engineering and math. we put $120 million into building that school. it opened in august of 2011, and it will be a focal point of the efforts that we make to train

kids for jobs, especially in technology. thank you all very much, and i look forward to any questions when we get to that point. [applause] >> our next speaker is madison mayor paul suggestman who was reelected on april 5, 2011, after a 14-year absence. he began his third tenure of this city's chief executive. the mayor has worked diligently over his terms as mayor to achieve considerable success in managing the city's resources, encouraging responsible growth and economic development and investing in neighborhoods. his success as mayor is based on a combination of strong leadership and deep respect for his management team and public employees. he told me the -- a minute ago, he believes in the tom sawyer

school of management, make everybody else do the work and take the credit. [laughter] so i think that's brilliant. [laughter] an innovator in government management and administration, he has lectured on his experiences in total quality management the city's strategic planning and management systems and other city initiatives. we are delighted to have him join us today. mayor, thank you for being here. [applause] >> thank you, mayor. and thank you all for sharing an interest in what is such an important topic throughout this country. let me tell you what i'm not going to talk about. i'm not going to address what needs to be done in terms of engaging the private sector. that point's been covered by others and will be cover inside more detail later. what i am going to talk about is my response to the question,

what is your vision for madison. and the last election a woman came up to me, her son was graduating high school, and she said she had one simple request: that her son go on to have a successful post-high school education and be able to get a job in madison, the city where he was raised, and to be able to afford to live in the community. not all that glorious. very simple mother's request. a very reasonable one and, unfortunately, one in this day and age is not necessarily attainable. several years ago when i was in the private sector, a friend and i were deeply concerned about the problems we saw in regards to employment and training and the fact that we didn't seem to be getting much traction even

though the city and the county and the state have made a commitment over decades to the whole area of job development, of job training. so we picked an area of madison on the south side, we call it the park street t. park street f be you go tour, goes into the lake. but as you go out park street, you pass a couple of hospitals leaving the university, and you head into an area before you get to the belt line -- not the beltway, but the belt line -- which all the demographics people ask about can be found. where's the area with the census tracks with the highest unemployment, where are the areas that have the highest population of blacks, latinos. where do we have the most number of households that are below the poverty line.

the area is well served. there are commitments from the private sector, from the hospitals, there are more nonprofits than you can shake a stick at. probably in the tradition of madison where, you know, every member -- every resident of the community believes that they're a member of the city council. [laughter] we've got, we've -- and mayor. [laughter] but we've ls -- also got enough nonprofits to go around. and so the question is how are these folks doing? the government, the private sector, the nonprofits in terms of their commitment to a common goal. and i'm not going to bore you with some of the details peculiar to madison. the report is on your table, but i want to take you through it and highlight some of the areas

and keep in mind, um, i'll share with you that i am a big believer in public investment in two areas. one is infrastructure, and the other is human capacity. i believe that history has shown us both internationally and in the course of this country's development since the civil war that investment in those two areas pay off big time and a lot of us knowingly realize, you know, the sage wisdom from a great baseball movie of 20 years ago, build it and they will come. we think about that mostly in terms of the infrastructure part. whether it is sporting facilities, convention centers, roads, airports whatever leads to high-speed connectivity, it's

also important to think about it in terms of human capacity. and if there's anything to characterize our commitment within the city management this next term, it is this: every single individual is a resource, is a nugget. every single individual regardless of their age, their background, their resident status is a tremendous asset. and our mission is to create the best trained work force. because one thing we know about employers, they are looking for that trained work force. you heard that earlier today. now, i'm not going to be so cavalier as to suggest it's

irrelevant what areas that training and education come, but i want to be able to say to any employer whatever your needs, we have it. and while i won't turn my back on some company that is interested in leaving one of your communities and moving to madison -- [laughter] i'm really not interested in making a career of that. because one of the things that we've learned over the decades is that your best shot is developing the company locally and growing it locally. that's where the real opportunity is, and it's there within our own communities. why waste it? why waste that opportunity for that small entrepreneur? give them a start, give them an

opportunity to develop in the garage, in the basement. i mean, it's not just rock bands that start out in basement and garages. some of the best high-tech companies in this country started out in those lofty environs. so what is it that we learned in our study? well, if you've got a copy of the report, first thing i do is suggest you look at page 9. we saw some limitations in the current system, some very disturbing ones. that, for example, the employers and the training service providers did not have strong linkage. that was of deep concern to usment -- us. in addition, we found that those who did these services -- particularly employment training -- weren't talking to one another. we saw that the relationship

between funders whether it was those in the government area or those who were giving grants and the training providers, we were being polite. i said in the report, it was not optimal. we found an undercapitalization in both human and material terms which resulted in deficits in the service system. and, and this was alluded to earlier, laurie from dallas mentioned this, um, there are several areas that must receive our attention. we can't do the employment and training in a vacuum. and those are quality child care. we have the same terminology that you used, it's not just child care, it is quality child care. transportation, and i'll come back to that in a moment. one that surprised me but is

very critical is financial literaciment we found too many instances where people were successfully placed in positions where suddenly buying the pickup truck of their dreams, the used pickup truck and paying 17% interest and not understanding the difference between 17% and 7% on a car loan, or were going in with that $300 that they have saved after several months of employment to buy a television set and walking out with a contract for $2,000 worth of electronics and then several months later not understanding why they were working, saying i was better off when i didn't have a job. financial literacy is key in this day and age. appropriate housing. yes, there are people that we help get employment that we're

working with that we put through training programs who do not have adequate housing. and just as we know that children do not do very well in our schools if they are homeless, the same thing is true for working, the working poor. and, of course, then there comes health care. health care and access to health care for the entire family is critical if we're going to make these investments in employment and training. coming back to the transportation for a moment. those of us in the cities are in a great place. we always have been, others didn't know it. but one of the things that we're seeing right now is that the corporations that moved out into the suburbs, out into the rural areas looking for cheap land and a labor force where there was not a lot of competition or the presence of labor unions are discovering that as they're ready to expand as the economy

starts to recover, they cannot get trained workers. the whole spatial problem in terms of the cost of housing and the cost of transportation is coming home to roost. and what is happening now is folks are looking very carefully at the cost of transportation as they calculate what they're going to do in terms of employment. in the cities where we've got housing, where we've got the retail as well as the jobs, this is the time for us to strike. if you turn to page 10, there's some realities that we have to address. particularly if we're going to talk seriously about the hiring of veterans. whether we're talking vietnam-era veterans or veterans who are in their 20s. there are problems of untreated mental health and substance

abuse issues. this falls under the larger category of health care. untreated medical conditions. the channels of being a single parent. let me just tell ya, sarah and i raised three daughters. we're still raising them. [laughter] um, i just don't see in this day and age between after school programs, parent/teacher conferences, making sure there's a working computer and the printer is hooked up, i do not understand how a single parent does it, especially if they do not have a car. transportation, homelessness, family/extended family support. and i'll come back to that point in a moment.

criminal history. i want to spend a moment on this one. there are too many people with a criminal history who are not given an opportunity, particularly by some of the most important national employers. i can understand, and we as the city as an employer look carefully at criminal history. but if that crime is not job related and if that individual has the skill, the talent, the opportunity needs to be given. there is where you'll find some of your best nuggets. undocumented workers, one way or another this country has to come to grips with this issue. and there are too many tragic stories about hard working

people, particularly those in their late teens and their early 20s. who are trying to be part of our economy, who contribute to their community and are not given the chance. if you turn to page 16, i want to mention one of the tensions among allies, and this was very surprise anything our report -- surprising in our report both that it came up, and also the candid nature of the nonprofits who addressed the subject that is the competition between them. funders are demanding more and more accountability. they are looking to statistical reports, demonstration of progress. it's not good enough anymore to simply say here's our application for another grant

cycle. there has to be proven results. now, i am not for a moment suggesting that we turn our backs and do not insist on accountability. but we have to deal with some of the ramifications and consequences of the competition as we are finding that funders -- excuse me, we are finding that agencies in the competition for funding are turning inward and are not partnering with other agencies where they should be on the same page. they do not want to share the success. if i share my success with you, you in turn will be able to use that and utilize it as we compete for the same funding dollars. i don't have a solution to that. this is something relatively new

that we've found, and it's something we need to address. but it is out there. if you turn to page 18 in the report, you'll see a reference here to case managers and job coaches. this was addressed earlier, but i want to make one important point here, and think about the experience of the college-bound student. the college-bound student probably had a cadre of peers in high school that were college-bound. that college-bound student had parents who were committed to that education. that kid got to school and went into a housing situation where everybody was in college. there were probably more academic and advising deans than you could shake a stick at, and so everybody is aligned in

providing a support network for that kid. and yet almost one-third of our enrollees for college flunk out. so then we take a kid who comes out of an environment that is not that supportive, and we put that kid into a job training program, we put that kid into a two-year college program. and then when the kid flunks out, we suggest he or she is ungrateful and not appreciative of what the community has done. that kid needs a support system. that kid needs a support system whether that kid is 19 years old or 39 years old. the last thing i want to share with you is some of the findings that you'll find on pages 23 and onwards, and i want to get to this final thought about the

connection, um, in terms of transportation that i mentioned earlier. this is where we are focusing right now. we are looking at where we can go in terms of working with employers, looking at the population we're trying to serve and get everyone connected. this seems to be a very difficult and challenging job, but at the same time at least in urban areas with public transit we have an opportunity to capitalize on that infrastructure and address that particularly important element that the individual, that the family needs. so thank you very much and -- >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you. our last speaker is bill ca

manila, federal corporate policy lead for microsoft work force readiness and immigration-related issues. before joining microsoft, bill worked for over 30 years in the district on a variety of public policy jobs including ten years as staff on the house and senate education labor committee. he also spent seven years in the clinton administration at the department of labor where he led the department's legislative efforts on the work force reinvestment act. welfare to work and unemployment insurance reform among others. we're delighted to have him with us, thank you for coming, bill. [applause] >> thank you, mr. mayor, for that introduction. before i start my formal presentation, i have to give a shout out to my major, i'm a longtime, proud ward 4 resident. and also very proud to be working with your dc doe f team and your d.c. economic develop team supporting one

city, one hire with the digital literacy curriculum we hope to announce in the very real future with you. been a real pleasure, and the mayor's team is very open and friendly to business, to be sure, and we appreciate that understood opportunity. i also have to shout out to my board chair, lawyer ri moran, or else i probably wouldn't get to come to the next board meeting. thank you, laurie, a pleasure to work with you every day. i'm here to talk to you about two initiatives, and i messed up, did not bring enough handouts, so kathy's been generous enough to say we will send you all soft copies of these things. one is around our efforts in employing vels, and the other is called save the future. the vets piece is a green sheet. as you know, we're a little software company out of redmond washington. [laughter] thank you, seattle. but more importantly, we've got

150,000 partners around the united states. almost all of those partners are 50 employees or less. if that ecosystem isn't working for us, then microsoft is not going to survive. and nor will all of the companies that work in the i.t. sector because they're all in a similar boat. so right now we've got as a company 4,000 job openings and are hiring like crazy. we need more s.t.e.m. grads, we need more computer science folks, we need a whole range of folks. so, please, check our web site out. we'd love to have some more applicants. but more importantly, when we look around at what we can do to be helpful as we see government move to a new mode, as we see federal resources shrinking, as we see state and local resources shrinking, what are going to be the appropriate roles for the private sector in working with the public sector moving forward? where can we help? where can we help bring things to scale? where can we bring our private sector expertise? we are open for business. we want to try to be helpful

because, again, this isn't about microsoft per se, but it is about the future of this country, it is about where we're going as the leader in innovation, and if we don't grow and maintain these jobs in the u.s., we are going to have a very difficult quality of life to maintain over the next 20, 30 years. that's why we're in this game. we've been in this work force game for a long time. quite frankly, it's what got me out of government, leaving someone i loved in senator patty murray to come to this company because we do, in fact, make investments in work force development and in education, and we love partnering with all of you on an everyday basis. so let me just tell you about why we got into working with vets. very simple. we have got a million young men and women coming back over the next three years from conflicts abroad. many of those are, in fact, much younger men and women. many of them have not had sustained attachments to the work force. many of them do not have the educational attainment levels we would all like to have, yet they are all workers we want to have.

so what we need to do is, obviously, help them transition from their military careers into civilian employment. finish sounds easy, right? well, if you're a sharpshooter, what am i going to translate that into? or if you're an infantry person or lots of other occupations that are part of the dod classifications. not such an easy thing to do. lots of folks need to sit down with counselors, they need lots of different types of help support services, as do their spouses. so we're working around the country in six communities, san diego, panama city, worcester, the bronx, new york, charlotte and bellevue, washington, to try to, in fact, provide those transitional skills to these young men and women so they, in fact, can be part of our civilian labor force moving forward. we know that's absolutely critical. recently, in fact, we just announced an expansion with president obama where we're going to give out 10,000 additional free vouchers for online training in a variety of tech fields so you can become

certified whatever you want to be. because we know that there are jobs to be had in these communities around the country, and we know that they don't start at minimum wage, quite frankly, ladies and gentlemen. those 4,000 jobs i mentioned, the average starting point for those jobs are $100,000 at our company. so, again, if we're looking to see where the jobs are of the future, we think these are the highest-paying jobs and the ones most available across a broad spectrum of communities around our country. the other thing we've developed is something called an mos decoder. i talked to you about the sharpshooter earlier. how does a sharpshooter figure out what job he or she may be qualified for in the civilian sector? we've developed a decoder so that sharpshooter puts their military classification into a field on the computer, and we will tell them what jobs they are qualified for at microsoft. and we want to bring that to the federal government, we think we can bring it to state and local

governments, and we want to share it with other companies because it really is a series of ways that we can make the transition easier for these men and women moving forward because we know, and if you've ever had the pleasure of talking to any of these men and women, they will impact you. the challenges they've overcome, these have been different kinds of wars and, again, these are younger kids. they really, really have been through a heck of a lot, to put it bluntly. and, again, if you've ever had the honor of having a conversation, you really do realize not only do we owe these people, folks a debt of gratitude, but we know they will be super work withers moving -- workers moving forward. they're dedicated, they're on time, they understand chain of command, they understand a lot of things employers are looking for every day. so that's why we are thrilled to be undergoing a huge recruiting effort, in the hundreds, trying to bring in additional folks from washington state where we have a lot of military bases and deployments leaving from. we hope other companies will follow suit for a lot of the

same reasons that you know these folks are just incredible workers. the second program i want to briefly talk to you about is something called shape the future. quite frankly, we really believe in this country there's an opportunity to divide. on one side of the divide, people have access to the internet, to broadband, to quality education and to jobs and quality training opportunities. and those communities are doing well or have an opportunity to do well. on the other side of that divide is quite a different story, unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen. we know that if you don't have access to the internet, your community's economic development prospects dip precipitously. you will have higher unemployment, you will have lower tax bases, you will have education which is often, obviously, funded by your tax base which is not of the quality we would all like it to be. and then, of course, you'll have much higher rates of unemployment and jobs that aren't going to be family wage jobs with career ladders.

and the only way we're really going to, we think, and we've done a fair amount of research on, tackle this opportunity to divide is to try to figure out how we can work with cities and communities and states around the country to allow for young students to have access to the internet. to have fully-loaded devices. to have access 24/7 in their communities to broadband. so that, in fact, they can keep up with the jones in the suburbs and in other places around the country where that access is more readily available. so we are committed over the next three years to reaching a million kids. but we'd love to do more. it's all about city leadership, it's all about bringing stakeholders together in a community, about the internet service providers. the schools, the libraries, the hospitals so we can create wireless meshes so kids don't have to pay 20 or 30 or 40 bucks a month, they can pick up the internet and wi-fi for free if they've got a device. so, in fact, then they can

become, maybe, gamers or developers or small entrepreneurs. and we'll encourage that and give them the tools to do that. but unless we let these kids get in the game, unless we bring their parents into the game, that economic and opportunity divide will only grow larger as we see that more and more jobs in this country require a fundamental underpinning of digital literacy skills. we know the percentages right now are in the 50s and 60s percent of jobs that need those skills. if you look five years, ten years from now, if you look at the futurists and what they predict, 70-75% of these jobs at the end of the decade will require college. without that education, without that skills training these young people are relegated to second class citizenry. and that's just not something we should stand for. but we do need it to be a community effort, we do need everyone to pull together as stakeholders, and we all have a stake in this because this is the future of our communities together. we're here to say we're ready to

work with you. we know the total cost of digital inclusion in this country is over a trillion dollars a year, a trillion. that's in, you know, lower taxes, higher prison costs, health care costs, other social-related costs, a trillion dollars, ladies and gentlemen. not an insignificant amount of money. so here's the cities we're going to try to start work anything first, and anybody else, come one, come all. we're ready to take you on as long as you're ready to to work with us, partner with us, we will help bring private sector partners to the table. atlanta, baltimore, boston, birmingham, charlotte, chicago, detroit, houston, kansas city, los angeles, milwaukee, new orleans, new york, norfolk, oakland, philly, portland, raleigh, san diego, san francisco, san jose, seattle, st. louis, tampa, tulsa and, of course, washington d.c. [laughter] so that's my message, ladies and gentlemen. we need to help our vets, and we know how we can do that.

look forward to partnering with you. we'll partner with you, we'll bring solutions to your digital literacy problems in your cities and communities and, secondly, let's think about how we bring access and how we try to level the playing field so that this digital guide isn't something we talk about five years from now and saying we've got to overcome it. look forward to working with you, thanks for the opportunity. [applause] >> three great perspectives on dealing with hard-to-serve work force and preparing them. questions? thoughts? the number you gave, that trillion -- whatever? that was because we're not wired? >> that's right. >> say that again. >> yep. it's a trillion dollars in -- >> if we did what, we would save a trillion dollars. >> nationwide. >> what would we need to do? >> we would need to make sure that kids have access to the internet and folks have access to the broadband at home n their communities 24/7. >> gotcha.

gotcha. other questions, thoughts? well,ing thank you very much to this panel, and -- whoa, there's a question. please. >> i can make it later, but you're not a provider of internet. how do i get the providers onboard because their looking at giving their product away for free if you and i had our way. >> one of the things we are, um, very fortunate in that we work with a lot of providers. some will may, some won't. that's okay. we'll play with the ones who want to play with us. we are confident. we've already talked to a number of smaller providers. we've got nbc and comcast already partnering with us in a big way, and i think you'll hear about a number of other players we're partnering with the clinton global initiative on this piece. so absolutely, you are not an isp provider, nor do we lay pipe, but we believe we've got enough work relationships that if we find a city or community that wants to work, we will work

damn hard to pull all the partners together with your leadership. >> all right, thank you. and i didn't see dallas on the list, so put it on there, okay? [laughter] i know, i know. i want to be on every list. [laughter] all right, thank you very much. could i ask our fourth panel -- let's give them a big hand. [applause] appreciate it. so our fourth panel is serving at-risk youth. and on that panel will be baltimore mayor stephanie rawlings blake, hartford major pedro seger rah, and capital work force partners work force investment board chair charles smith to speak to us. so we are, we're running about ten minutes behind, but we will try to keep us crisp because i want to get as many thoughts out

here as possible. our first speaker is my namesake, mayor rawlings blake was sworn in as baltimore's 49th mayor on february 4, 2010. she was first elected to baltimore city council in 1995 at the old anal of 25. old age of 25, the youngest person who was ever elected to city council. in 2000 -- if we can just be, guys, guys, guys? thank you. thank you. appreciate it. let's give our folks up here the respect. in 2007 she created the city council's education committee dedicated exclusively to addressing the challenges facing the baltimore city's public school system and exploring innovative solutions to address those needs. she is dedicated to serving at-risk youth, and continuing her nationally-recognized summer youth program to provide young people with valuable work skills

that the secretary of labor spoke about today at lunch. we look forward to her remarks. thank you for being here, mayor rawlings blake. [applause] >> thank you. >> food afternoon, everyone -- good afternoon, everyone. it is -- oh, here's the clicker. thanks. i appreciate the invitation to speak to you this afternoon. thank you, u.s. conference of mayors, for putting this panel together. i'm especially pleased to have an opportunity to share a strategy we've been using in baltimore city that's been helping us capture the valuable talent and human resources we believe all young people can bring to our economy. as president obama stated in his call to action announcement a couple weeks ago, we cannot turn our backs on young people who are disconnected from school and

work because they are not contributing to our economy. rather, we should see them as an opportunity, as opportunity youth because of their untapped work force potential. in baltimore we've been doing exactly that for over ten years, for more than ten years by engaging thousands of young people in our youth opportunity or yo baltimore program. since we launched the program in 2000 through a significant department of labor grant, we've learned a lot about disconnected youth, at-risk youth population, particularly what they think about their futures. we know that for most of these young people they do not believe that they can get a good job, earn a good salary or contribute in positive ways to their community. that is a significant hurdle to overcome. if you are dealing with a population who doesn't even see a path to the future, we know

that we have a lot of work to do, work that should not be overlooked. the mission of our youth opportunity program is to change their minds and by doing so, change the trajectory of their lives. in the time i have this afternoon, i'll highlight the essential elements of yo baltimore, and if there's anybody that's here from baltimore, i'm tempted to always say, yo, baltimore, because that's how we would say it at home. [laughter] to talk about the funding sustainability and share what we have learned about the strategy connecting our most vulnerable young people with our work force. like most urban areas, baltimore faces challenging school dropout rates, youth unemployment rates and particularly in our high poverty neighborhoods. the census data tell us us that there are about 20,000 young adults who drop out of school, who are unemployed or underemployed and are unable to earn a living because of the lack of educational credentials

or career skills to support themselves and their families. 20,000 young people. colorado baltimore -- yo baltimore which is operated by my office of employment development, you can wave your hand, karen. she's my director, as well as my clicker operator -- [applause] and uscm award winner, so thank you very much. she's in our local work force investment board. it's designed to address the needs of this population focusing on young adults between the ages of 16 and 22 years old who are most in need of academic and employment support. a picture of our yo baltimore participants at the time of their initial registration looks like this. as i mentioned, 26 to 16 years of age. 86% of these young people are unemployed, 28% with a history of connection with the juvenile justice system, 28% -- excuse

me, 25% teen parents, 20% foster care, 7% unable -- unstable housing or homeless, and this is a big population that we've been dealing with, this is a topic for another day. but teen homelessness is a big problem, it's an underreported problem. i know it's a big problem in our city, and i'm sure we're not alone. so many of our young people are doing what they're calling couch surfing, going from friends' houses or relatives' houses and in doing so, are putting themselves in some pretty vulnerable situations, so that's something i know -- i hope if you're dealing with this issue and you have some things that you'd hike to share with me, please, let me know because this is something we're tackling in baltimore. and you can see about the reading and math levels. we know that these are kids with some real challenges. our department of labor grant was one of 36 youth opportunity awards made to cities across the

country. it enabled us to build a system that would respond to the multiple issues that face these young people. over the past 11 years, we have learned many lessons, many lessons of what works for this population, and we have identified six key components that have proven to be essential to the program. we've created youth-friendly, safe spaces. this was very important. disconnected, disenfranchised, at-risk young people do not feel comfortable in a standard environment. if we want to create an environment that is welcoming, something that hay will want -- they will want to come to and stay, we can't ignore that. so we created these youth-friendly spaces. we have two large centers, um, in neighborhoods that are familiar to these at-risk youth, one on the east side of town, one on the west side of town. they're comfortable, they're family-style environments.

l we have -- and you can see all the computer labs, classrooms, meeting rooms, private counseling offices, very important youth lounges. we want our young people to have safe places to socialize with their friends. the more we can do to create a positive socialization, the better they will do not just in the school environment, but also in the work environment. wal have a fitness center and a recording studio at the west side center. we've incorporated consistent youth development philosophy. you know, this is important. you have to have a framework that believes that these young people want and want to and can succeed. we talked about at one of our previous sessions many of us are dealing with negotiations with our public unions, and i talked about it when i spoke as having that framework. if you have the framework particularly when i'd been dealing with the teachers'

union, that they want to, they have the same goals and objectives that we have and that is a child-focused goal, you can get a lot of places. but you have to believe that the people that you're dealing with want this for themselves. it changes the whole way you deal with the issue, you deal with the population. um, we know that it is important to meet the young people where they are and develop personal success plans based on their strengths,ish hsu -- issues, interests and aptitudes. another thing is to make sure the program is stacked up with caring adults. i can't stress this enough. you need to make sure that the staff members are trained and that they want to work with young people. you know, i was -- all of us were teenagers, we know -- i mean, i can speak for myself, i know how difficult i was to deal with as a teen, and i was not an at-risk young person. so if you're dealing with this

population, you have to have staff members that are trained and can that want to deal with this population. because believe you me, if you have staff people that just want the job and don't care about kids, the kids will feel it. and that will impact your success. we also, um, make sure that we understand that all good jobs require these two years of post-high school education and training, so we focus on comprehensive academics, a mandatory academic component for every participant, on-site classes, pre-ged assistance for graduates to connect with college. this is important as we are transitioning these -- transitioning these young people into careers so they can support themselves. another component is a work-based learning and career preparation. it's essential to building the work force. this is about training our next generation work force. so we have resources that we are leveraging from, you know, every

resource that we have available to us. we're talking about important things; job shadowing, internship,er summer jobs and customized skill training. this is very important because all of us know how our eyes are opened when we have new experiences. and when you match these young people with jobs and they get to see what the possibilities are, you know, it is hard for me to get through one of the end-of end-of-the-year wrap-ups when we do our summer program at the end of the year when we thank all of the participants, the students as well as the employers, it's hard for me to get through it without tears coming to my eyes because you see young people who, as i said, some of them didn't believe that there was a way for the forward for them. and now that they're -- because of their experience, because of a job shadowing where they got to, they got to shadow a caring adult, because they got to see a new experience they see a future for themselves.

so this is very important. finish and, um, so i appreciate all of the resources and the partners that we have that makes this possible. another important thing, life skill and counseling are required to help these young adults cope with obstacles that keep them or take them off track. um, and wrap around support to help them address and resolve issues, personal challenges, self-awareness, personal responsibility, problem solving, communication skills, anger management, health and fitness and financial literacy. again, at one of the yo events, yo baltimore events we heard from a young woman who was able to get her own apartment, get her own car, get to and from work, and it was clear that chef so proud because she knew how far she'd come, and it was also clear that it was because of this close partnership, this close relationship with the staff that she was able to make those things happen for herself. and i was sure, as everyone else was sure, that this was not her

end, this was just the beginning of a career for her. i'd also like to report that one of the newest elected councilmen to the baltimore city council is also a yo graduate. so, you know, the possibilities are endless with, if that's considered. i don't know if that's an upgrade or not -- [laughter] i like that. but it shows us the caliber of the kids that are coming out of this program. so how much does something hike this cost? we've received an initial grant from the department of hay boar that provided the seed money to set up and equip the youth centers with state of the art technology. so that's the significant grand that i mentioned, 44 million. it allowed us to develop a regular rouse staff training and fully operate for six years. baltimore city recognized the pomps of the service to the importance that we were, the service was providing to out of school youth. so we've been supporting the program with an average annual

general fund allocation of $2.5 million since 2007. ..

this civic justice court for your indulgence have recently been under the care of the juvenile justice system and funded by an almost one-and-a-half million dollar grant from the federal department of labor. of course call when you're looking at any of these things you have to ask, does this work. as we approach the final year of the department of labor grant we conducted an evaluation to help answer this question did we compared the two participated to similar youths who were not engaged in a program and look for their work force readiness, employment, academic attainment values, pregnancy, as well as crime. you can see, we have a lot of success. our participants are earning 35% more than the comparison group and had a 34% higher increase in the labour market attachment : 90% of employers reported that they would recommend hiring

another, which is, to me, one of the best -- one of the best references are recommendations that you can get. participants obtain their ged at a rate double that of use to did not participate. female participants were 25 percent less likely to become pregnant than the other comparison group, and there were 33 percent less likely to be engaged in criminal activity. all positive numbers. most of the impressive results, and you can see why we decided that this city should continue to provide funding to baltimore. the details can be found in our changing minds. many individual successes, we have success stories online. please take a look. after the department of labor grant expired we continue to check the positive outcomes of young people. your happy to report that 7500 out of school young people have been connected to posit

pathways. 3200 successfully connected to work within 12 months of program and participation. 1100 high-school dropouts have earned their diplomas with many obtaining post secondary education. we have very proud in baltimore. we are proud of what is doing in our cellist communities, and, as you can see, it has been learned, and much has been accomplished with this program. still much more to do to ensure we capture the potential of our use. we are not done. we always work to refine so that we can address the changing needs of this population. i am sure that we will continue to be successful. we agree with president obama of the call to action to create more work and learning experience for our most larval populations are most vulnerable youth is very important. the time is now, and we cannot wait or afford to have a

generation of batteries used fall through the cracks. we need the competitive advantage to have everyone on board with making america, putting american on top. >> thank you. our next speaker is our hartford mayor, june, to attend. coming into office. the mayor has put a strong emphasis on creating jobs, pursuing excellence in the city's schools club in promoting economic development and the focus on small business and reducing crime by providing pauses alternatives we are honored to have them here. with another look ahead even how we can make them work for us.

>> good afternoon, and for those of you are mindful of time, i am going to dispense with my 20 minutes live presentation that i didn't prepare, and i will substitute that for two minutes. >> there we go. >> i think the great thing about this country is that you get enough virginity to learn from other cities and share success stories and also try to find some common ground in terms of some of the challenges that we have that constantly make it very difficult for us to engage all of our population is with high debt levels of employment. i have seen a federal jobs bill that could really put some might into our ability to hire and put people back to work. many people left to their own

limited resources to pretty much try to do away with what has been decades of cyclical poverty and unemployment in this city of hartford, our media income is less than half of this day be in income. connecticut enjoys one of the highest per-capita incomes. the city is that many challenges . it's only about 124,000. the incredible number of street gangs cal 139-1 her and 40 street gang to approximately 6,000, 234 people with some no gang affiliation. so it is very pervasive situation that led to itself to having a very large number of

the populations with criminal backgrounds and criminal records that and that -- prevents employability. we had a very large portion of people above 200601 per year from correctional institutions. although we of the capitol city we have become pretty much what many have turned to the dumping ground for many of the state's population. not uncommon to have daily stops at different videos of our city with people who have just left the connecticut prison system. we also have over representation of the region's homeless as well as very poor performance. we have, over the past four years, made incredible gains. they give you some of the negatives, but one of the things that i've come to realize as mayor is that no one thing is really going to push it forward.

we live in this city in which half or more than half of our 51 percent of our property is tax-exempt. the real estate tax is the primary pretty much this all means by which we raise revenue. right there where transferring half of the burden of transportation to this population that i just described as a low per capita in come. what had tried to do is rattle the cage for different sides. as the capitol city have always felt this to be the center for arts, culture, historical tourism, and some bonuses. four of the best parts in the nation. the purse public park. the second-largest rose garden. 600 acres that was designed by frederick homestead and are a candid for the first in the state national park as the center where innovation and manufacturing took root in this

country and spread across the entire line, not to mention the fact that we of the hall for the first constitution. for the rest of you who enjoy democracy around the nation in the world, you're welcome.

the need to work with the private sector. i had 75 of the biggest corporations including the two major hospitals connected to a doubling the number of these participants this summer. we're trying to do a better job at aligning these with our school reform efforts. we had -- one of the problems that was happening, the reason

we had a low high-school graduation rates is we had three high-school is had a couple of houses to use each. we have broken down the schools and turn them into smaller categories and the process we have developed what is called capstan experiences and develop ties schools. one of the things we're doing is leveraging the summer program to facilitate the suggestions can have a meaningful work a experience. we work. we will share some of the more programmatic activities, but one of the things we need to do is also work with our own department and children and families so that we can coordinate this effort to make sure we're following the results to make sure that our investments is getting results. measurement is key. we want to continue to raise the number of people employed. reno the importance of this, not only in terms of creating

capacity in the future, but also in our kids being safe and out of trouble. i am going to end. thank you so much. thank you. >> we will not throw you out. come on up. >> the work force partner board since it doesn't three and has been chairman of the board since 2010. he has had 30 years of experience in management and individual code team. give us -- oh, we have all the spot. good to see. >> i, like the mayor, don't have annette's, but i do have the best ever. okay. does anyone rescue nuys this brand of luggage? no. american tourists are.

they have these commercials they bounce this around and describe indestructible. this is 37 years old. is gone through quite a number of planned trips. i have to say it is held up pretty well. the point is that this was my first job, a summer job. when i applied their i want up having to ride my bike -- by the way, kids are watching mtv. ride my bike uphill both ways 5 miles syrian-backed. but on my application i wrote down, i'm very proud to say and going on to study accounting. take that and let's find him an office job. well, they put me in the repair department. just about the lowest of the low, and i had the best summer ever. in the repair department i have

access to most of the factory, about 500 people. my boss used to complain to me because one of the things that i had to do was deliver the luggage down to the shipping department at the other end of the factory of five football fields down from my department. it used to take me 45 minutes to make that trip. now, most people it would take ten. he chastised me, but what i was doing was early networking. i wound up beating most of the people in that factory. that is one of the things i do of harvard. it seems to me and picked up some of my later in life skills. i have some prepared remarks that i see of gave to me. i think would bore you to tears, so i want to leave you with some teams. as the mayor said, and by the way, one of the things i will say is that the increase in the city was about one of the first

things that he did as mayor. very proud of that. capital work force partners saw a number of people. as the mayor mentioned to my bin of the sport for a years, and it is taken that long to get through all the acronyms. and so i think one of the best things that we do, we do a lot of good things, this idea of a career competencies' in the summer youth program. because of all the things the we do, and i've met a number of these and people, and there are just astounded. this is, as the title of this presentation says to my take, the game genie. in my mind we have an opportunity to create future taxpayers as well as prison, but the eddy of getting these kids off the path to your on in this

city of hartford, but a 50 percent unemployment rate. as the mayor said, we have one of largest concentrations of gains in the united states. we come from the richest state, one of the richest states, and yet we have some of the poorest cities. the opportunity of this program to really alter nearly won the war where right now we are just fighting battles is astounding. so i want to give you a couple of websites. capital work force is one website that you can go to, and that think what you will see their is a signing -- stunning transformation of governance. we have been through a journey in the tell you offline about that. the other one is career competencies'. as skillets and right now, but we have installed this. in about a month there will be a lot of robust content.

we installed career competencies'. working on new britain. and it is getting some traction. the idea is that we went to employers and said when you're hiring graduates what other things that they're missing? and here are the things that are missing. basic skills, customer service, computer literacy, problem-solving, decision making, personal ploy is to my job seeking skills. and we just added literacy. reelecting with travelers in dps to create posters. the ada is to change the culture of schools. there are 40 years, and we hit children between the ages of 14 and 24, and i have had the pleasure of meeting half of these answers, one of which we were at the new governor in the state of illinois. so i went to present some

things. i was standing in line. right behind me was this 17-year-old baby bed been through our four tiers. let me tell you something. she was the definition of a disadvantaged youth. broken family, sister who is a drug addict. family is scattered. just, you know, on the path that we so often see of never going anywhere. this young lady was going places. she looked me in the eye, shook my hand, very self confident. i said over the course of my 5920 manager action, she was going places. that is what this is all about. so i think that's pretty much what i want to cover. we're not the only ones doing this. getting down into the high-school level.

about 100 or 150 were unsubsidized. we need to work on that. two dozen people. we actually turned away another thousands. well, all these kids are exploding gains. i don't know what the actual number was, but, you know, we are attempting to win the war with this. it is the game changer. with that i will see my time. >> thank you. appreciated. >> one more presenter, but i think our youth in this country is so critical that i want to stop. if there is anyone that has these questions all we will talk about youth in the second. any questions?

potts? your program sounds kind of rage. i mean, that is a big commitment what did not get funded because you did this? i mean, that choice the we'll have to make. >> i guess it would depend on the new york talking to. every agency, i'm sorry. it depends on who you would ask. i'm sure every agency that did not get funded can look at this and any other appropriation to see that is where the money went at the end of the day we have to invest in the future of our country. i am doing in baltimore. we all have to do it in our own respective cities. we have to make that investment. it is too important. this is a population that far too often is underserved. you know, we cannot turn our

back on them, particularly when i have seen the my own eyes, our own experiences, that these and people want to contribute to society. they want to be felt sufficient. they want to live within the law if they could just see away, a pathway to get there. luckily when you spend money on youth programs you don't get a lot of flak. but it is with anything, you have to make clear what the priorities are. >> they cute. yes, sir. >> the mayor's program. in many ways. all those things. >> and we have seen no other results.

when you looked at how we get to those numbers is no one thing, it's a common is a lot of things. >> thank you very much. you want to come on up? >> our final presenter on the whole map of the free conference session, louisville mayor, greg fisher who will speak about his 55,000 degrees program commitment established in the city to prepare the future work force through educational. he entered the office of mayor with a breath of business knowledge and experience under his belt in 1980. he co-founded and helped lead

the growth of this country into world wide corporations. he also founded as per ventures, a private investment firm in 1999 and helped create over a thousand jobs. he has been an active investor and board member in numerous companies and numerous industries. once is public-private partnership in october of 2010 with the mission of adding 40,000 buses degrees in 50,000 assisted degrees. tell us more? >> appreciated. >> thank you. good afternoon in thank you for the opporunity to presents and bring greetings from the great city of louisville. want to give you a few facts. we raised our city and county government about nine years ago. the last big city to do that. 750,000 citizens caught 385 square miles. our public school system, but

the billion dollar operation, 100,000 students. but eight and a half percent. and we have got for economic clusters that we either are the best in the world that are feel we can be the best in the world that and focus our economic development efforts on those. one is lifelong wellness. the second is advanced manufacturing per we have a project working with our sister city of lexington. we are developing a regional economic development strategy with the help of the brookings institution and the city of louisville is using some of our money that we received to help with that as well. the lodge's restaurant company in the world. mayor rawlings was a little bit about the former ceo of pizza have read here. pizza hut. pete's that taught talk about, kfc. and we have one of the best local food movements going on in the country as well.

there really tell a fitting petechia as well. it comes from kentucky. ups cool air hub is based in blue bell. i keys revolve around lifelong learning. obviously employee education to that. innovation and jobs. coming back to the learning that everyone is born with. the second is out to be an even healthier city, not just physical health, but a national tour of the zero, an environmental as well. the third is, some political advisers, our third key is, how can we be an even more

compassion city. yet on the victim passion that people love their heads. the true values inside of everybody. so before i start my presentation, just a final shot up on compassion. a very important birthday. a celebration this weekend, and actual birthday today. that is one of our most famous. give it up for the champ. think about all the kids you

might have in your community that are running around and have all little bit of a lid on them and might have a little bit of an attitude. he was born in 1942, but here is a kid that was now off in high school. i am the greatest. faugh who i will be the greatest. mantises portion of the century, one of the great humanitarian is of the century. the debt of inspiration and motivation that we as adults can provide. happy birthday to mohammad.

we will talk a little better education today. the work force through educational attainment. and let me to start with the basics. everyone in this room knows this. let's talk about lifelong learning education, jobs, higher quality of life. just a high-school degree. it is to the point to my folks, where if you have a high-school degree you might be able to survive. if you don't come and 30 percent of kids will graduate from high school and our country. that is average.

they will make enough money to make in needs. the times said chased in terms of the income mobility of students now . income mobility, social mobility is more limited in america and in europe, canada, and many other parts of the world. education is the key. we worked with morris case to take stock of how we were before merger and how we were before our city / county evolved after merger. does it make any sense? we wanted to have the data to prove that it was a was not. we had identified three drivers to change. you will probably have the same three in your city. education.

let's get real deep on that. jobs, and quality of life. we set a goal to move the% of college adults. that is what this 505,000-degree program is all about. 55,000 more college degrees than normally would happen by the year 2020. we go back to some numbers and try to understand what that is all about. when we start this program year ago we had 116000- degrees in the community or about 30 percent of working age adults. we need another 40,000 degrees to reach our 40% goal. 48,000 assisted degrees or 7 percent, so shooting for 15,000 more goals. forty and ten. working age adults will have college degrees and a steady. basically we will go from 155,000 degrees right now to 210,000 in aggregate out of the

population of seven battered and 50,000 total citizens. just about into the program. all about the mayor's education roundtable bringing everybody in the community that can influence education together to be heard in then to act as one. as a relatively new mayor, you look what's going on in the community and see all these different activities going on, but they are not aligned nearly as much as they should be. one of the jobs as mayor is to allow maximum effectiveness. we'll have an of this or that. well, once we get better what we do have maybe when we complain about what we don't have we will be more effective. but this education round table

naturally includes the university and community technical college, eight major universities in our city. twenty-three people total on this, including the school superintendent, but the public school system and our private schools. top civic leaders, leaders of large movements and a workforce preparation business, use development to make sentra. one of the advantages of this board is not just to define what our problems are and where we will go, but developing a common language and around the communities so that we talk to a 55,000 degrees or 15,000 degrees people understand what that is. this is the evocation of a cultural change this large a leap, this is the type of thing that when you're going to a cocktail party somebody will come up and ask what your company is doing with the

505,000-degree program, and you know. we are constantly reinforce in the language in all the common elements that going to that. the festivities are going on. i spoke until i was blue in the face. you cannot speak enough. ultimately this because a very personal question for people. ..

people know they need to go but may not be ready to go. we want to use the business community's unique point of leverage to accelerate. if you have 90,000 folks in the work force and college, a couple dozen that work for you. what is your personal mission to get those folks get their college degree? we prepared students for success and college career citizenship and life. all these skills we have been talking about today but also making sure these folks are ready to go to college at the same time. we got to make post secondary information both successful and affordable. you all know lots of times people say college is out of my reach. if they come from a family culture that doesn't value or does not have a tradition of

collegegoing they don't think they can go. the fact are the data show -- this came from the work of the gates foundation. by the time the child is ten years old they will have in their mind is that they're going to go to college or it is not for them. when i am with 9-year-old 11-year-old did i ask where are you going to go to college? the darndest things come out of their mouth. they say i am going to, to harvard and be a doctor or go to howard and be a social worker and another kid will look at you with a blank look on her face and you really understand the data is that no one talked to them about that. no one has painted that picture for them. so your role as an elected official or someone on staff in terms of encouraging, say you can do whatever you want. you see people's eyes light up and see their mom with them saying thank you for saying that. we will get on it.

don't underestimate how you can intervene in people's lives and convince them they too can go to college and the fifth is to increase educational persistence, performance and progress. when people start they finish. where did degrees come from? we talked about encouraging adults with college credit hours to complete their degrees. 90,000 adults, 750,000 citizens. you do the math. no doubt you have a big number as well. increasingly graduation rate of college students who graduate. eight universities in the city. most well-known is lewd university of louisville. made tremendous strides in their six your graduation rate. and all those types of programs they put in place from having a more attractive campus life to relieve focusing on retention for that freshman and sophomore

year. inspiring more high school students to attend college. we have close the deal. we identified six high schools where they have a higher percentage of that risk kids. when we started this program, 18% of those high school seniors were applying to go to college. after four years that number's up to 85% and that's simply -- that deserves a love. [applause] that is because the city has gone in with a lot of partners and painted a picture for them. number one that it is college or military and if you are not doing it here is what your life is going to look like a. if you are here is what is the possibility. how many of you want to have kids are asked a crowd, almost everybody wants to have a family. bottom line if you are not beyond high school you won't afford to have kids. then they talk to each other

little bit. i don't care if you don't love yourself but if you want to love some children go to college. at a minimum get a two year degree. minimum get a certificate. we go from 18% to 85% by presenting the facts. it is telling these kids that you can do it. you can do it and we added an additional high school counselor to most of these high schools as well so they're getting that one to one support they need to navigate their way from a family that has had a college graduate before to them being the first college graduate and painting the picture for them of the leaders that they are and will become when they get that college degree and the influence they have on their little brothers or little sisters or nieces and nephews and neighbors for them to show the way so we had great success with more and more kids going to school would close the deal. and attracting more college graduates to louisville where

great entrepreneur real city and a lot of activity in that area but rapidly growing international population. 20 years ago there were 5,000 internationals in louisville. now there is close to 80,000 and by international somebody not born in louisville could be refugee or ph.d.. we find our international population actually has more college degrees than people born in our country at this point in time. what are the challenges? one is this culture change i talked about. this big number we see in government. ours is 50,000. how we get 55,000 degrees? one at a time. this is a contact sport. this is not something where you are just listening to a nice talk and say i won't do anything. what are you going to do about it? having a continued sense of urgency about a goal like this especially when the end zone is

2020, supercritical for the community to said the emergency. we are making good progress but we are just in year one and have a long way to go. we have to better prepare our students. i talked about local readiness for high school seniors and national problems, high rates students take remedial courses and development courses are too high. we are working on that in mainly a public school issue. not a private school issue and support for returning students. when i ask people in churches and businesses how they can help this is one area. could be your kids, 90 hours of college or more. can you babysit for your grandchildren. might be a neighbor next door. little things you might not think are a big deal but put in the kind of support for this person that is trying to go back and get your degree most everyone wants to get their degree but what happens? life got in the way. could be a kid or holding down

two jobs or don't have an extra hour or an automobile. something that might be a little thing or some of us is a big thing for somebody trying to go back and get that degree. everybody can help out. whenever you set a big goal, we have a data-board we put together for the city. one is college culture. we measure that from high school graduation rates and transition to college and what college is going to. second is business leverage. participation in degrees that work. degrees that work is where we work with businesses that say can you identify who in your company would like to go to college but currently is not in college and do you have a tuition reimbursement plan or development plan? what kind of support can you give your existing employees to

go to college? out of 50,000 degrees we're hoping to get 15 from people in the workplace. third is preparing college readiness. how do we improve our act scores and benchmarks and students that are college ready and one remediation do we need working on those? accessibility, we attack that for scholarships and what the net cost is going to college and asking college access centers so people understand what the college journey is all about. last as i mentioned before on persistence or graduation or performance is the schools themselves working within their organization to make sure their kids are getting through. how are we going to get there? one degree at a time. people are tired of me saying that. they will hear a lot more of it because that is what is at stake. at an end of these goals it is a deeply personal journey where you are supporting that degree.

we're trying to boil this down from 50,000 to a smaller manageable number that each institution can handle. each of our major universities has pledged to increase the number of students they graduate and come up with a number and come up with a specific plan behind that number. they made those commitments. we are asking businesses to provide tuition assistance and flexible work schedules as well with the process kicking that off in year two of the program. school time providers, council of students creating a college going culture as well. we're talking about college outside school and out of school time as well. non-profit organizations pledging to provide scholarships and mentors as well. we all know the importance of mentors which is somebody saying i believe in you and i will help you on this journey over the next five or ten years or whatever it will be. those are very successful. i want to spend a little time on

this, addressing minority college attainment through the 15,000 degree initiative. when you compare ourselves to 16 cities like nashville and indianapolis and birmingham and jacksonville etc. we are lagging in our minority attainment of college degrees. we're going for 15,000. we are spending a lot of time in our churches and community centers understanding what types of support systems are needed, what the goals are, how we need to communicate as a specific area of focus especially with african-american leaders in town. they were the first group that stepped up and said we are going to take 15 of 50,000 degrees. we are seeing more groups the public that every day. we have lots of sub programs within the 55,000 degrees. the city has to step up and do its part as well.

we have 6,000 employees approximately. right now we have about 39 of our 6,000 employees getting a college degree every year. we have analyzed what we can do and will increase that to 47 per year through some programs that we are putting in place as a city and we are helping in other ways in terms of community support, community action partnerships with our housing authority and education and employment part missions, close the deal initiative talking about community schools and metropolitan college is a unique program the state and the city at ups developed as their global hubbub. they need people working between 10:00 and 4:00. they were having horrible turn over, 300%. we developed a program at the university of louisville where you can go to the university of louisville tuition free and work at ups's air hub from 10:00 to 4:00 and pay your way through college that way.

900 students a year go through that. supporting out of school time programming as well. so the goal, the vision when you come to the kentucky derby this next may or some may subsequent to that you will drive around town go by the union and they will have a number on the front of the headquarters that will save 562 and you go by a church. on the front of the church it will save 22. you go by another place it will save three. you are saying one of these numbers? those are the commitments that those organizations have made to get to the 55,000 degree program. it is that type of commitment that is going to be required to reach a culture changing goal like this. we are seeing good progress and the excitement in the community. when it points out today is the

power of the community using data to set a goal and bring everybody together. non-profit foundation business and education and government to go to work on something like this. appreciate the opportunity to present 55,000 degrees and i am happy to take questions. [applause] >> we have any questions of the mayor? >> i will give you one. how do you raise money for all of this? >> about $900,000 year program. we got some money from the luminesce foundation. jim worthington is chairing the work force development, 5,000 degree board with michael. $900,000 a year. is not a big money program. we have a couple foundations in the business community as well. we funded the first three years of the program and we are getting ready to start this next year to move down the road. this is more using the mayor's

bully pulpit to convene and bring people together and online efforts to take hold and keep people accountable. >> thoughts? questions? thank you very much. >> thank you. [phosphor [applause] >> i will get you out of here now. i hope you have gotten some best practices for your city but before we close i thought i would summarize if you put that slide up. what i learned from this afternoon. go-ahead. put the next slide up. what is that? i got to do it. sorry. there we go. go back one? right there. we heard from the secretary of labor about working collectively to get federal grants and all these grands she sent to as. make sure you work in your

cities to these folks to breakdown the silos and work together and get the grants. on the business development side people said that employers are the number one customers. take care of them and make it as easy as possible. on the sector strategy, workforce development must be seamless with economic development. not two different organizations. they must be together and this on site career coaching that helps the work force with great learning. we got from that. and we heard from d.c. that we need to restart and reorganize from time to time the work force system. is not working. it started up again and we talked about this in madison. the importance of support systems must be dealt with to have a great work force. can't focus on training. support systems have got to be there.

also from microsoft i thought the great insight was to tap into a national ecosystem to fill the jobs they need to fill. understand what the big national providers are that are there locally for you. on the use side the cultural work starts at a very early age and that is what baltimore is doing to train people. we heard in harvard the importance of safety and education is the foundation and i love the notion that summertime can be a game change. at three months out of the year could change people's lives and change your economic situation. so those are the learnings that i got. hopefully you got them too. we need to work with capital on capitol hill to make sure we are getting the support we need frankly. we think the federal programs

are too complicated and too diverse. we have to simplify and talk to them and make sure it is easy for us to digest it and make it happen and for them to feel they have some accountability. we have work to do in that regard. this has been very helpful to me. thank you to all the presenters. thank you to our sponsors and have a great dinner and spend some money in d.c.. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we will have more of the u.s. conference of mayors winter meeting tomorrow afternoon but the speech by los angeles mayor anthony dellaraigosa bonner are companion network c-span3. [inaudible conversations] >> c-span's road to the white house coverage takes you to the candidate events all this week. >> we need to eliminate the entitlement programs. we need to cap them, cut them,

send them back to the states, remove federal oversight and let the states have the flexibility to deliver these programs. >> we have brought to the forefront. others have totally talked about it and they do nothing about it, that right now it is this liberty movement which is seen as a patriotic movement and individual liberty movement that is saying to the country and to the world we have had enough of sending our kids and money around the world to be the policeman of the world. time to bring them home. >> as candidates get their message out meeting voters. >> pleasure to shake your hand. we are so happy. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. >> actually not. >> we feel very good about that. we feel the conservatives are coalescing around our campaign and that will be good for us not

just in south carolina but as we go forward. >> find more video from the trail at c-span.org/campaign2012. >> the house is back from its holiday break today. they are organizing for the second session of the 112th congress including electing a new sergeant at arms. tomorrow the house will vote on president obama's request to raise the debt limit by $1.2 trillion. you can see live coverage and our companion network c-span. legislative business resumes in the senate next week. tonight politico chief white house correspondent mike allen interviews nancy pelosi on extending protects cuts and the 2012 election. he predicts democrats will gain seats and across this take back control of the u.s. house. the event is part of politico's playback breakfast series. you can see it tonight starting

at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. we go now to the brookings institution in washington for a discussion on a roll of technology and innovation and job creation. we will hear from the chairman of bloomberg news, a professional basketball player and a hockey team owner and former adviser to president bill clinton. [inaudible conversations] >> okay. thank you very much. i am harold wilson, director of the center for technology innovation here at brookings. the members of this panel occupied what has to be the most dangerous position of the day. we are the last session between you and lunge -- lunch. just consider as your

intellectual appetizer by coming up. one of the themes of today has been innovation and we are pleased to have three individuals with tremendous expertise in this area. peter brouwer to my immediate right is the chairman of bloomberg l.p.. he joined the bloomberg board in 1996 and was named chairman of the board in 2001 succeeding michael bloomberg. he joined the firm as a full-time executive in 2002. since then he has led the company's growth as one of the most influential forces of business, government and financial news. pressure that he was managing director of donaldson and managing director of senior partner at credit suisse first boston. next to him is ted leonsays, ceo of monumental sports and entertainment. cheese major owner of the washington capitals hockey team and the washington wizards basketball team.

believe me when we are discussing innovation in the nation's capital we could use a few more wizards. he also operates the drive-in center in downtown b.c.. d.c.. he was vice chairman at american -- america online. he is active in many areas. he was the founder and chairman of snag film which produces and distributes documentary films. huge success in that area. he serves as vice chairman of groupon and on the board of directors of american express and other companies. he is a well-known blog called ted's take which always has lots of interesting material. i was looking at it yesterday and it featured a quote from winston churchill which one of the season ticketholders had for him and it said when you were going through hell, keep going. that sounded like good advice.

bill boston holds the chair in government studies at brookings. he is the author of numerous books and articles on institution reform, government performance and various public policymaking. he is putting out a paper entitled political dysfunction and economic decline. we will spend a little time talking to that. the paper looks at the growing political polarization between our parties and diminished capacity of congress to address important issues. bill is ready -- honest about many things. partly because he served as a sergeant in the u.s. marine corps which is as important part of his biography. we would like to start with peter. we have seen the virtual revolution taking place in the media industry. how is