pushover. this is rugby union football all-american football. a much better game. and i think that i'm bound in somewhere at the back. that's where i am. and it may be that, you know, some babe on board will take over from prime minister cameron, but it isn't going to be me. >> but you wouldn't turn it down. >> i said what i said about the bull. i've given a pretty fair commentary on the scrum versus bull at the moment.

>> in addition to being conyer's mayor, the mayor is the churchill factor. >> that's incredibly nice of you. >> what did you learn from winston churchill about what people want in their leader? >> well churchill, the guy made the most incredible series of mistakes. his early career was studied with disasters of one kind or another. but he always came back from them and he always stuck by what he believed. and actually, as you will discover in this book -- if you need to analyze all of his catastrophes, you can see how he was very often on to something. oftentimes he simply got it wrong. the big takeoff from churchill was he had the big colossal

moral strength and on a scale it's hard for any of us to imagine. yesterday i went to see the aerospace museum and we looked at that flyer built by orville and wilbur wright that flew 800 feet. it's incredible that only ten years after that flight winston churchill was getting up in contraptions of absolutely terrifying primitiveness made of basically canvas and wood and laundry baskets with, you know, lawn mower engines strapped to them. he was flying the whole time. he kept crashing and he kept getting up again. the only prime minister in british history to be in armed conflict. he probably, i'm afraid to say dispatched a number of people in

the conflict. he was unbelievably brave. and that bravery was in indispensible to civilization in 1940. the pressure on churchill and on the whole of the british government to make an accommodation with evil and to do a deal with hitler was overwhelming. and the press was in favor of it, the city was in favor of it large parts of the government with the halifax chamberlain, they were all saying why should we fight the first world war with the carnage that is being inflicted on both of our countries with only 22 years' distance? and they knew it was going to be bloody. but churchill decided to fight back. it was only him. if he hadn't decided to fight on, then there would have been no con quest there would have

been no reconquest of europe. hitler would have had absolutely carte blanche. he probably would have taken russia out earlier. i think america coming in later was vanishingly small. it would have been -- a disaster would have shamed our civilization, and he was gitthe guy who held out against it. it was bravery. that's what i take from him. >> in your book, the paragraph the 100-horsepower engine. and if you wouldn't mind would you read that? if you -- >> if you have a spare 15 minutes, go look at the sublime

outtakes of broadcasts from 1951. he sits there gazing at the camera with utter savagery while they make him repeat his script over and over again. finally he breaks off from being tormented by the producers and gives them what-for by reciting a long section by gibbon about the spread of christianity. he wasn't a great christian churchill. he wasn't a great christian. i think he believed in god but he once said he was a pillar of the church and he said he was more of a flying buttress with his position. i think -- i guess the passage he started quoting was the one about how the martial spirit was left in the cloister and the roman empire collapsed because of that kind of thing

christianity. that's what gibbon said, anyway. >> people want a leader who is relatable. they also want a leader with backbone, fortitude seriousness. how do you balance those? >> my approach to politics and life is to try to play what shorts i have -- to get back to another english sports metaphor -- what shorts i have i try to play as naturally as i possibly can. i love playing cricket. have you ever played cricket? >> no, sir. >> who played cricket? >> the basic thing about cricket is when the ball comes down you will have a -- you will tell yourself over and over again, i must not try and whack this

ball. what i must do is lift my bat properly bounce my foot properly, put the bat in the pad together and play it correctly. that's what you should do. but you'll find when the ball comes toward you and bounces there, and it seems to hang for a millisecond in front of you, tempting and beautiful, you will try and whack it. and that's what i try to do. and quite often i'm out. quite often i'm out. >> we'd love to bring you into the conversation if somebody has a question. we'll bring you a microphone right here, and please say who you are. >> i'm sorry. right here. >> my name is lindsay wright. i'm with peta u.s. i was curious.

one of britain's most revered designers helped make the queen guards their skin hats in faux fur. it's the last item of military gear with real fur on it, so i'm curious. you're a fashion-forward man. is this something you would support? >> yeah. i guess so. i'm also quite a traditionalist and i don't know -- i can't remember -- these are the baskins. they must be literally made out of bear, i suppose, which are an endangered species. if stell laa mccartney can help save a few bears by making false bugby bugbys, i'm with her. on the other hand, if it later transpires there is nothing the bear families like more than the

honor of having one of their members paraded around buckingham palace on the head of a guardsman. in bear culture, you know, it seems unlikely, but i'm willing to have further education on that subject. >> how are your relations with the royals? >> this is the most incredible thing. this is a single question that i'm asked more than any other. what happened in 1776, folks? i cannot believe how often -- the only thing people want to know is what did you last say to them? have you ever met the queen? what kind of sandwiches do they eat at buckingham palace? can you name the queen's corgis? it's unbelievable. those are good questions. what i can't get over is this is a great sovereign republic. and you took a big decision

there. it might lead to shame because it's led to the hideous duality of my tax arrangement and it would be sense cal and economic economical if we all remained part of the english-speaking people. that would be the way forward. but that clearly hasn't been -- >> i'm very struck by -- what it really showed me i cannot believe there are still people in my country who think that it would be sensical to have some sort of constitutional reform that abolished the corgis in the royal family. this is obviously a massive selling point for our country and long may it continue to be so. >> what will charles be like as king?

>> he will be great. he will. >> two quick questions. besides your book, what's the best churchill biography out there? and secondly, what can you do to make heathrow a better airport? >> right. the best -- roy jenkins on the politics and max hastings on the wall. i mean, mark and gilbert is fantastic. you have to read the whole thing, but if you want short reads, those are the two i would suggest. and heathrow, what we need to do there is absolutely clear. everywhere i go around the world, they're doing the same thing. they're deciding to go for the truly long-term sensible, environmentally friendly option of trying to run an airport as far away as they can from the great urban center and the trouble with heathrow is that it is right in the middle of the western suburbs of london. if you put in more runway

capacity, you'll be inflicting huge amounts of aircraft noise on not just west london but large parts of london that aren't yet exposed to it. the answer is to do what they've done in france and germany, holland and spain dubai, every big, ambitious country in the world is now building a multi-runway, 24-hour systems that enable them to compete and that's what we should be doing. we should be going for a 24-hour service in the east of london at the site where there are very, very few inhabitants to be disturbed. that investment would enable us to solve -- that would help us greatly to solve the number one issue brought by my city, the need to build new homes. you have huge potential on those brown field sites out towards where the old docks used to be.

>> the fashion-forward mayor yesterday learned a new tv term. tell us the term you learned yesterday. >> hard out. hard out is a -- do we have a hard outcominge ing coming up? >> we're just about there. we have one question here. red tie? >> but it's part of a great professionalism. what i love about him is the professionalism done. i would have to say you and i are both beneficiaries of the attentions of very professional makeup artists this morning, and both of us had some time, you know i consciously made an improvement. >> i tousled my hair. >> i've done that on every american show i've done with

makeup getting great attention. then you go to bbc. we believe in the round -- there's two ways of looking at it -- the round, unvarnished truth, i suppose -- that's us. it's round, unvarnished. >> what do you think of jon stewart? >> he's very funny. i'm very

he's one of our premiere exports to america and we're very proud of having -- >> you're not going to say piers morgan? >> i think piers morgan. >> come on. >> otherwise i see a risk he could be re-exported. i feel that's the solution. you asked the question about policing in bratton and stuff. i don't want to be evading any questions. we had a great time with bratton. the one thing that surprised me was the sheer number of gigeiger counters that are deployed by the nypd. they have thousands and thousands of radio detectors. i didn't know that the threat of a dirty bomb was so substantial. we're going to take that back and look at it. >> you're going to deploy more

geiger counters? >> i've been asked to do a risk assessment. the early indications are that we don't need t but it was very striking to hear it. >> super quick, argyle sweater. >> mr. mayor, thank you for joining us. about a month ago, bobby jindal, the louisiana governor, was in london, and he made some comments about no-go zones around britain. >> i was very surprised by those statements. you know with great respect to governor jindal and everybody else who has made this kind of comment, i think they're in need of some sort of gentle education on this point, and i would be more than happy personally to escort governor jindal around any area in london that he thinks is a no-go zone. i will show him what a happy thriving community it is with people jumbled up in all sorts of ways. it really isn't true. it's complete nonsense. london is very, very mixed up

across it. there are no no-go zones, nor will there be and i extend a warm invitation to all governors and american politicians and anybody else who wants to come and inspect for themselves. >> i will ask you what your conversation with the fascinator on the wind tour was like. >> brief. i'm told i got more words than most people. i think she said -- what did she say? she said i had personality. that was it. she didn't say that to me she said that to bbc. i can't remember what she said to me. she was very kind and she obviously is a landmark of our culture and doing a fantastic job for britain and new york. >> who is chattier her or the queen? >> the queen is unbelievable.

i would be exaggerating if i said i had many conversations with the queen. the one conversation i have had -- i've had several -- i would say the queen is marginally chatty, actually. >> really quick. super quick. >> my question is actually more thinking about what you said earlier about how you had changed your libertarian views being a mayor. >> yeah. >> what do you think about the preparation of being a governor or being a mayor brings to being a chief executive versus other experience, like just being in parliament? >> i think it's just the sheer weight of effort and the variety and the pace of the job probably is very useful. and, you know a city like london is huge. new york is huge. there are differences in the

confidences that we have. they do more in education than we do but the workload is pre predigious. it makes for a very exciting life, but it's a heavy education. >> there is one sport that people in this room can relate to tennis. one quick tennis tip. >> a tennis tip. >> while you're thinking. >> alex slater. mike talked about the qualities of leadership and i think it's safe to say that your view is as a global leader. so piggybacking on your book two questions. which trait do you believe is most lacking? which churchillian trait do you believe the global leaders have most lost? and my second most important question is, can you name the queen's corgis? >> yeah. wait a minute.

i had this the other day. they're something like bazzle -- it wasn't bazzle it was holly -- anyway, i think the great thing about the world today is perhaps it doesn't need people quite of churchillian stature. yes, we do face terrible terrible challenges, and yes we do need to solve the polling problems that humanity faces, but we don't in our country at the moment face the kind of life and death existential challenge that britain and europe faced in 1940. and the reason we don't is actually partly thanks to churchill himself, if you see what i mean. i think that there weren't many people like churchill or any people like churchill in his own equal parts let alone ours. on tennis i'll just give you

one tip. if you're playing with andy murray as i once was in a charity match with a wooden racket i served i think and then tim henman, who was the other guy, he whacked it back to andy murray. i was doing doubles and andy murray was behind me. i turned around to see what andy murray would do with the ball. and he hit it so fast with his backhand that the ball went straight into my open mouth like a sort of medieval banquet. one tennis tip i give you is don't look around when andy murray is doing a cross-court backhand return. >> corgis vacuum cleaners, hardouts. thanks for the conversation. we thank everyone for watching, twitter conversation. we thank the bank of america for making these conversations available. thank you very much, john.

and we thank the mayor's staff who made this possible. we're grateful to them. the amazing politico staff all of you for coming out here, and thank you, mr. mayor, for a great conversation. [applause] this morning liberia's assistant talks about the response to the ebola virus and the continuing health challenges. it will be live from the center for strategic & international studies here in washington. it will begin at 10:00 eastern. you'll be able to see it here on

c-span3. coming up next the conversation on school choice. looking at private and charter schools. senator tim scott from south carolina hosted this academic forum. let's see if we can emulate the center's example and keep this stuff as comprehensible and kind of useful as he just was that would be pretty terrific. we have an outstanding panel for the third panel of the day. we want to talk a little bit about the reality of school choice. how it works, what are some of the obstacles, how do the numbers work. sitting immediately next to me we have andy plessus state senator of louisiana. she partners with local and national policy leaders to promote educational options. she continues to work full-time while she does this as senior vice president for liberty bank & trust new orleans.

oh, she's also the chair of louisiana state board of supervisors. following hurricane katrina, it was ann who authored a bill to allow the state to take over a majority of schools in new orleans parish which leads to the thriving community you see today. kevin is a founding board member and counsel for the school for children. a noted author and a national education reform leader. he helped to shepherd the charter school movement into the nation's capitol is chair for the d.c. education committee, creating the most prolific school system in the country. next we have emily kim. she is a successor of charter schools which operates 32 charter schools in new york city. she also heads an investigation team that heads the charter

school movement in new york. before joining success academy she practiced litigation in new york city and taught high school english. and finally back with us you'll recognize from the second panel is bob enlo, good friend and president of the friedman foundation for educational choice. kevin, you've been doing this stuff in d.c. a long time. let me start with you. as you all were pushing to give kids the opportunity to attend charters in d.c., i'm wondering if there is one or two moments where the politics were especially tough, or where you were especially nervous about how this would work and how you guys addressed that. >> thank you, rick, and it's good to be here and i want to thank senator scott. let's give him another hand for putting this together. i'm just so impressed with him and his commitment to kids and the fact that young people asking questions is really

important. when we started the charter movement back in the late '90s here in d.c., that's when i learned firsthand that politics of education which i think is the biggest barrier to our children learning where i heard some of these great ideas for some innovative and creative schools like the people who came to me and said they wanted to start a residential school where kids could go and live, and some came from homes that didn't serve them well and i said that's a great idea. then some of the people who were part of the status quo said, no that's a bad idea because we're not controlling it. then folks came to me to talk about hospitality high school, a math and science school. donna hints came. all these folks came with these innovative ideas, and my thinking was why don't we give these new and innovative and creative ideas a chance to

succeed with succeed? but the politics of education has been the biggest barrier to what works for kids. so i adopted a simple strategy, rick and that is will this help a child learn? if the answer is yes, i'm for it. if the answer is no i'm against it. and i think that that is the yardstick, frankly, in which we should discharge our responsibilities as adults. if there are public officials or advocates, advocates or parents or policymakers we should embrace any and all things that would help a child learn. the politics of education, i think, has been a big barrier. one other thing that's been a big barrier which i think is equally as troubling as the politics, and that is the fact when you hear all this talk about -- even debates on standards, debates on early childhood education debates on

all these policy thrusts they're not grounded in the practical reality of parents today. when i had a debate with randy weingartner, i said, randy, what do you say so the folks who make $30,000 a year who the parent knows that their child is going to enter a middle school or high school next year where 85% or 90% of the kids are failing? what do you say to that parent who is waking up every day knowing they have limited options because of the zip code they have to send their kid to a certain school. what do you say to that parent who wants something different? the problem with that responsibility we have to our kids is there is no sense of urgency with the needs of that

parent. it's all like numbers on a page. but all these individual stories, these individual challenges the individual frustrations to these parents they matter. and for us to act like that is okay for us to plan the plan and study the study and debate the debate, that doesn't work for parents on a practical basis. so one thing that i think we should do, and the reason why education choices are so important, is it gives us an opportunity to meet parents where they are today, deal with the sense of urgency, the urgency of needs that parents have today as opposed to waiting for the system to right-side itself for everyone to get it, whenever that is supposed to happen. so i think the big obstacles i see are the politics of education and the fact that everything we do in terms of talking about education learning is with a long-range plan, and there is really nothing that deals with the immediacy of

parents' education needs, and that's why we need a choice. >> as you work on these issues in louisiana, some folks probably argue kevin's argument in the opposite form. they may say, look these are possibilities downstream but right now you're taking dollars from schools that are struggling with kids. how do you justify that and how do you make those numbers work? >> i'd also like to thank senator scott for putting this forum on. it truly is very important, and it's very important for us to hear not only the issues but also some solutions. so, you know it was really funny. when i became an elected official, i didn't think that it was my job to -- or my position to deal with the public school system and the things that were going on at the local level. i was a lawmaker.

i was a state senator and that was for the local government to deal with. it became evident to me rather quickly when my constituency told me loud and clear they didn't care if i was a state senator or the local you know, garbage collector. i was elected and i was elected to help them with the problem. and so when we looked at -- when i looked at the issues that our public school system was facing and then the challenges of -- you know of us taking money from the public school system, i realized very fast that it didn't matter that we were funding a bad thing. i tried to help folks understand

that throwing money at something that was hurting our kids and hurting our quality of life and talking about what this means as a quality of life issue was not a good thing. so i didn't care about a system i didn't care about funding something that wasn't working, but i cared about using the dollars that we had in a more efficient and more respecteffective manner. >> bob as we talk aboutie efficient and effective schools using the dollars they have, do they compare with private schools? >> we know a lot about traditional public schools or what i would call state-run schools. we publicly fund schools through taxation but they're run by the state, or by the local entities. they're essentially the same thing you would have if you would run a grocery shop with

state-run entities. what do we know when that happens? we know the costs are extremely high. remember, the revenue sources for traditional public schools come through three areas local dollars through taxation, federal dollars and state dollars. that's an average of 13 to $14,000 a year. in some states like new jersey or district of columbia, that's up in the $20,000 range for traditional public schools. so this is because there is a bureaucracy that has been built up around supporting a system not students. so the system has been made for the adults. the money has to flow that way. what school choice and charter schools have done -- let me reflect on that a second. what the ability of parents to choose a private school or charter school has started to see, what does it cost to

educate children? charter schools are doing it for 80% or less. charter schools and voucher programs are doing it for much less than that. so in my state of indiana a child who is poor gets $4800 to go to a private school. he can get $15,000 to go to a failing public school. sorry, state-run school. so what we do know -- we know that the current system is inefficient. we also know they just did another study. we looked at ten programs that have been enacted since 1996 to 2010. $1.7 billion in savings to the states. the sad thing is we can't tell you where that money went. we know the states have saved that money through school choice programs because it costs less to educate a child in a traditional private school or charter school. >> bob just to clarify on this so when you suggest that it costs 13 $14,000 to educate a kid in a traditional district school 80% of that on average

in charter and maybe less than that in a private school why is that? where do these savings come from? why is it cheaper in some schools than others? >> well, some of it is because they've been charging tuition they subsidize it. in the private sector you have multiple ways to bring revenue in. let's say you're a voucher-receiving school in the district of columbia or in indiana. you get the voucher. you can get parents who top up if they're able to. you can get the college credit. you can get the schools themselves do fundraising. you have multiple sources of revenue which allows for better price controls. >> does that mean they're not exactly running cheaper but they're cheaper to the families? >> the private schools and charter schools tend to not have the same debt and the same amount of bureaucracy. in economic terms, to be one of those suit pants again it's called the monopoly realm.

someone is taking a cut where the market is supposed to draw a line, sort of supply and demand, basic economics, right? this is what every student will know. it costs this for this to get this many. that's what public schools have traditionally done. >> emily success academy is a growing organization of charter schools in new york city. you guys have got real high performance. could you talk a little bit both about how much does it cost to run success academy schools compared to other new york schools, and what are some of the challenges of trying to grow and add new school sites and create more seats for kids? >> sure. thank you, rick. i'd like to add my thanks to senator scott and his staff for this extraordinary day as well. so success academy charter schools has about 32 schools in new york city. nearly 9500 scholars as we refer to them. the student population is about

90% minority and the 80% reduced lunch. it's in the top 5% in math and the top 3% in reading and lang language arts. [applause] >> we're very proud of the accomplishments of our scholars. just to add to what rob said there is a tremendous funding disparity between what funding charter schools receive and district school students. in new york it's about $6,000 between what they spend versus what they're receiving. to add to the disparity, we have a longer school year a longer school day and by the time our charters graduate from high school, we would have offered about four years' additional education compared to the district counter ksparts. so there is a profound disparity, and what we're doing differently is we're leaner on the bureaucracy as rob

mentioned. now, i will say that bureaucracy is as we get bigger is one of those dangerous things that just as the charter community in general, we have to be very cautious, but we're not allowing bureaucracy to overtake what it is we're doing. and it's harder as we grow. just counting up before i got here, i had my team count up the reports that our schools were required to prepare over the course of a year. it's something like 60 major reports that request demands for reporting that we get 25 of which from various sources: city state federal -- that require hundreds and hundreds of hours of personnel time thousands and thousands of pieces of paper and that we would argue first of all, i don't think anybody is really looking at and more importantly, it's not relevant to whether our schools are doing well. we think that the authorizer

should be the one that is holding charters accountable, and they should be holding them accountable at a very, very high level. if charters are not performing they should be closed. but with respect to the many reporting requirements and bureaucracy that is slowly entering into what charters do it is literally crippling, i think, the charter school movement. and i've said this before but i believe that bureaucracy creep could actually take the charter movement down. if i may add, a little bit tangentially tangentially, i do think our opponents and the teachers' union is very much aware of that, and what we find in the attacks we're getting, it's along the line of bureaucracy, just. just as a quick little example last year, there was an arcane real estate law that we heard was sort of passing through the legislature more quickly than usual. and we could have sort of -- it could have passed a notice but

what it was was a new procedure that charters would now have to undergo through real estate law in order to get your facilities. fortunately, folks noticed this and there was a little bit of an outcry. but what it was doing was adding tremendous layers of bureaucracy in order to try to stop us in our tracks. i think bureaucracy is definitely a danger for charters. >> ann this is something obviously, that you all have to wrestle with. because when people like bureaucracy, they say it's quality control. they say it's a way to make sure children aren't being done wrong, but how do we make sure that doesn't get in the way of educators being able to work with kids and make better decisions? >> i think one thing we are very much in favor of, and that's accountability. because that's what this is all about. how are we accountable to the quality outcomes that we're seeking? so what we have to do though is ensure that the measures and

the policies that we put in place, as we've all talked about, on a hindrance of that school to be unique. what i love about the charter school environment in louisiana is that our schools are allowed to be unique as it relates to operations and the methods by which they're educating our kids. one of the things that i wanted to piggyback on the savings. we have a thriving voucher movement as well as the movement toward tax rebates. we're finding in our state last year we actually saved over $24

million of taxpayer dollars in the moneys that would be originally provided to a failing school for a child that were given to a voucher school to help educate. >> when you say $24 million was saved, can you say another word in explaining that? >> absolutely. so in louisiana, the kids are funded through the minimum foundation formula which creates an amount that is allocated per child. in louisiana it's about $8600. so that $8600 traditionally would have gone to a failing public school or a public school. in retrospect if that child had a voucher, the average tuition at a private school or catholic school that is participating in our program is about 5,000, 4, bs 5 500 to 5,000.

when you look at the cost of a child, that is a huge savings to taxpayers. >> when you talk about this bureaucratic creep can you give a couple examples to folks who maybe don't do this stuff every day to what does it look like and where are these hundreds of hours going that aren't being spent with kids? >> sure, rick and i think you make a good point. every hour spent on reporting those are hours that are not spent on kids. and as -- since i see many charter school students here, and staff, i think you would agree with me that charters are staffing more leanly, so we don't have the traditional staff to spare to dedicate to these hundreds and hundreds of hours of projects. our local district asked us to have one person at each of our schools to operate the atf system which is this computer system that all public schools in new york city have to

operate, and it's this doc-based system with the green blinking thing -- from my understanding, you have to log in five different ways before you can get to the start screen, and then you have to enter screen by screen the information. if you make a mistake and have to go back, you may be 30 out of 500 students in. you have to then start all over. the reason why i say from my understanding is to the best we have been able to, we have now been able to resist using this atf -- i think it's called automate the schools, which is a bit ironic to us, but they wanted us to staff our schools to do nothing but enter student by student, our attendance data and things of this nature which we can't do. every single person in that school -- for those of you who are educators know that they're

striving to have that child perform at the highest possible level. that's the kind of thing we're faced with. the other thing i would add is that amongst the reporting, it's incredibly duplicative, and it would be okay if we could say let's take this report from our authorizer. the state wants it, too? here, let's pass it over and you can share. first of all they don't share and they don't talk to each other, but they all spent tremendous amounts of money to create their own computer systems, and it has to be entered in their own format, meaning you can't take the data you've produced elsewhere and share across the board. you have to enter student by student. we have developed sort of a what we call a bureaucracy busting arm in our organization where that is just as important to us to fight the bureaucracy creep as -- not quite as important as the education, but it's part and parcel of high-performing schools. >> kevin, this sounds

disconcerting to me, because it seems like the whole rationale of charters is so teachers can work with student and not filling out paper. how does that look to you? >> it reminds mye of the expression, and i've used this before, that we look in the mirror and we've become the very thing we're fighting. it happens. this overtendency to bur beaurocratize things. we have to remind ourselves of why we got in this movement. i'm concerned about the fact that we do replicate the monopoly we tend to fight. putting in rules and regulations that are unnecessary, putting in barriers for parents who want to engage in choice. and look the bottom line is as steve perry said earlier -- wasn't steve perry great? he just is terrific. and this is not a jobs program, this is about education and

learning. we have doubled education spending in this country over the last 30 years. in some states we tripled it. and you know this, rick. and yet the outputs are going down. we now, even when we have the autonomous school model working in a lot of school districts, we have principals who check the box that they want to rent out their gym okay? so there is this tendency for us to overbeaurocratize every aspect of education. i think the way we have to do it is have a little pivot in our approach. when i was in texas last week they asked me how will school choice affect the local district? if you think about the tone and tenor of most of these questions we get, they say, how will it affect the system or the local school district? the pivot is, how will this affect the kids if we don't change? see, we need to start looking at

how we staff schools how we fund schools how we engage in this whole notion of education and learning. not from the vantage point of the local school district or the system, but the kids. and so this is the way i would look at it and i know eva sub subscribes to this at harlem success, and howard foote-- harlem has a great example. suppose you have a child. call that child a student. you put him in a room. call it a classroom. then you have an adult in there. call him a teacher. you put other children in there. and everything you do should be tailored between funding that interaction between those students and that teacher so that child can learn. but what we do with the school bureaucracy in the district where only 60% of the dollars in some states 50% in some states go into the classroom is we

spend it on everything else. and i remember when i used to have those city council hearings and the superintendent will bring 50 people with him and say, we need this for the deputy assistant to the assistant, and it's important as essential personnel and we can't do without it. well, if you ratchet it down to that dynamic that's most important, the children and the teacher in the classroom there is no way, if you have a school district -- this is the first thing any superintendent should do -- where you have less than 90% of the dollars going into the classroom then you're not funding education, teaching and learning. you're funding a bureaucracy. so i think that's part of the way to get rid of bureaucracy creep or this notion that we end up, you know replicating the thing we're fighting is to make sure we keep tabs on how we're funding those extraneous jobs and services that really don't

have anything to do with that main dynamic of teaching and learning in the classroom. i think that's a discipline that politically is hard, because folks would have to change the way they [ applause ] >> kevin, i mean, you're right when you talk about changing the way we do business. but unfortunately, where we are today is this is big business. the education is big business. we are fighting money. we are fighting tradition. we are fighting people's jobs. and so, until, and unless we can get past the issues that this is some tradition that we must maintain. until we can have people understand that, we need to create new traditions.

until we can get past the jobs that we're talking about are not jobs we need to protect if those jobs aren't protecting our kids. we have to get past that. and unless we can get our elected officials to understand that, this will all be even more, continue to be more of a challenge. >> but this is why i totally agree with it. and this is why school choice and particularly vouchers are so important. in every single state more than at least half if not more than every single dollar goes to k-12 education in your state. it's a huge business. >> yes, it is. >> and we're talking about fighting the power of that business. and the problem is if you create this symbiotic relationship or this relationship where legislators and public school groups come to the. because who's the largest employer in the rural and suburban areas in most areas? the schools. >> that's right. >> they have the power and the legislative power, therefore they have the pacs and the money that goes to candidates. and there's this incredible

relationship between half your state budget and the same benefiting. it's this sort of, we would call that in other areas maybe corruption. right? if you think about it. so this is the reason why all the dollars have to follow the kids. why you have to have vouchers. until you allow and empower the consumers with total choice you're never going to change the structure of a monopoly. that has so much money. my fave it example on the regulatory creeping is who here knows what q-seattle letter is? our voucher program in indiana the required schools are required to have a hard cop pip of that letter. this is the 21st century so hard copies are required and they get kicked out of the program if they don't have a hard copy. that's the kind of regulatory environment you can get in. remember, this is a system that's built itself up over a long period of time. and it's not just the legislators. it's not just the public school bureaucrats. it's every single committee. it's every single school committee.

it's every single level of this government. so -- >> so, but just to stay with this. then, are you suggesting that this regulatory creep concern that emily flagged is not just charter schools, but private choice program? >> yeah, there's an absolute move from people in this country who oppose school choice to make all the private schools and charter schools receiving public money just like public schools. and by the way, i think it's we as reformers also are a little bit to blame for this. because we'll accept anything sometimes to get a bill passed. right? instead of saying this is a line in the sand. and when we say accountability, we mean accountability for results. so in our state of indiana, when you fail you're righted "d" or "f" as a private school that receives vouchers after two years you can get no more new money for new kids. right? the way to change that for us our accountability would be to starve the money out. right, but -- so we've accepted a bunch of other things like the

budget. and reporting all that stuff. it's the inanti-of the reporting. it's okay to report even if the private schools don't have the personnel to do it. >> emily i'll give you one second. while we're on this we have an audience question, at gray's christian academy in waldorf. wayne, are you here with us? there we go. and wayne asked how can private schools better demonstrate to the public sector especially the business sector the important role that they play? how can private schools demonstrate the important role that they play? >> there's a ton of ways they can do that. obviously, showing their graduation rates. but to me, i look at mine. i have two children, right? and they're 18 and soon to be 16 in about a week. really, i love them to death. i only care about one thing. are they going to become tax paying citizens? are they going to become people who have a job and pay taxes? and one of the best way private schools can show their value is to show how much money they bring back into the system. as a result of their education.

>> emily, you were talking before about some bureaucracy busting in order to let the educators focus on educating. what are some of the things you guys have done or folks can learn from y'all about how to make that happen? >> so, i think one of the things that we do actually, i can tell you've spoken a lot with eva. as you say. because our mantra and for folks who come in to our organization the first thing that we ask is, is it good for children? sort of rule be darned is it good for children? and if it's not, if it's going to take away from what we offer to kids, we are going to take a position to try to push back and to fight. so every single thing i think we've become so accustomed, and i just think this is sort of natural for most organizations, the regulators are coming. the various folks. the feds. the state city.

and they just want one little thing. it's just easier to kind of scribble it out or type it out or write it that the way that they want and just send it over. and before too long as kevin described it becomes a monolithic bureaucracy. and we resist every single point. not resist, but we look very carefully and ask and enter into a regular conversation with our authorizer and our regulators and to understand, do you actually have the time to look at this? do you have the staff? and what is it that you actually want to achieve? because maybe we can shortcut that for you and give you the information and the documents you need. and for the most part, those that are interested in focusing on children and outcomes, they're willing to have that conversation because they're not funded sufficiently to go through thousands and thousands of pieces of paper. it's a real danger because when people are afraid.

when people talk about accountability from charter schools, the answer, the easy, easy answer, especially when it comes to politics and the noise that charter schools face, the easy answer is to sort of slap additional paper on there and say, oh, we're actually checking for that. see, we asked for that information, and we've got it now. and it's very hard to disabuse people of that notion. i want to give one example of a piece of paper that we really, truly dislike. and it's every year there's a requirement that teachers that are not certified have to send home in the backpack folder for their scholars a piece of paper saying just wanted you to know, parents, i'm not highly qualified. so, yes, i've been teaching for five years and my scholars are in the top 1% of the state of new york, but i wanted you to know i didn't have that thing called highly qualified and somebody thought i should write you and tell you and let you know. it's to a level that's truly,

truly absurd. whereas we would want the teacher to write home and say, look, this is what we were doing to get your scholar to the highest potential. and i've been doing it for five years very successfully. this is what you need to do is bring your child to school on time, pick your child up from school on time get the homework done, and make sure that they are motivated at school. and that's what we'd like to do we have to do the other thing, instead. >> you know i want to respond to the question what can private schools do. i think that this is the essence of education of choice. i mean at the end of the day, if you run an elementary school, and the like of learning is still in the eyes of those particularly blacks and brown boys in fourth or fifth grade, then you know what? you're running a good school. because unfortunately we've got you know nearly 2,000 dropout

factories, and those are schools where we know 90% of the kids are going to drop out of school. and the light of learning is out of the eyes of those kids in fourth or fifth grade. and if parents want to go there because they know that that nurturing and learning is taking place, and you're demonstrating that you can teach these babies in a way that will meet them where they are, and accommodate their needs, and not force the circle in a square, then you're doing great work. going back to this bureaucracy thing, you know, i remember several years ago when i was in office here in d.c. and, you're right, eva and i used to talk a lot. was chair of the new york city council, education committee, at the same time in d.c. and we were both getting beat up, kicked around the house and everything, we used to talk all the time. but, you know, at the end of the day, d.c. had 146 schools, d.c.

public schools. they had nearly 2,000 people in central office. the archdiocese of d.c. had 110 schools. they had about ten people in central office. so -- and their outputs were better. so at the end of the day, we know that you don't need a large central office to run good schools. and i think that parents know that. so why not find ways to continue to give parents those opportunities as opposed to telling parents you have to do it this way because the system works this way. the focus on the way the system is used to operating, that's, an an okay ronism. that's old. that's gone. i mean, right now with this new

way of living, if you are a 5-year-old today, chances are, you will work in a job that doesn't exist today. so we've got this whole approach to school and learning to try to develop kids for careers that ain't going to exist. and now we've got systems in place to run school districts that are going to be outdated over the next 10 to 15 years. i think part of what we need to do is step back and say, you know, what, we've got all these different kids, no one, talking about choice. no one responds to the same learning modalities. so figure out just like that menu in the restaurant or the buffet line. i tell people all the time. chicken fried steak, i ain't eating. i don't like chicken fried

steak. but you have all these menu options for parents. and what the school district does is tell you no you can only have it this way and this is the only way you're going to get it. you're going to take algebra in ninth grade, even if you ain't ready for it or even if you should have taken it a couple years before that. because your grond momma took it in ninth grade. that's the way we do it. we don't change it. if you try to change it, there's something wrong with you. no, i think that private schools can continue to do what they do and feature that because parents are demanding something other than what they've been getting for far too many schools. >> so if you want to build on that, that's fine. but also, i'm curious, you know, you have done a lot of the work on the ground level in louisiana. curious, given the challenges and questions, how do you bring people together? how do you build that coalition where folks who maybe have different concerns can find enough common ground to pass choice legislation and make this happen for kids?

>> yeah, and that, you know, in early years of us in louisiana introducing choice and vouchers and expanding charter schools. again, we had to fight with the tradition of public schools. it was -- it was very hard and difficult at the time to convince my colleagues, especially my colleagues in the caucus in the black caucus that what it didn't matter that it was perceived that this whole movement was a movement of white republicans. but, you know, the thing i used to tell my colleagues was, that doesn't matter. at the end of the day, who's benefitting? our kids. just a couple of moments left in this discussion. we'll leave it at this point. you can see it in its entirety on our website c-span.org. go live to the center for

strategic and international studies where liberia's assistant minister of health will be speaking about his country's response to ebola, continuing challenges in the future. president obama announced that all but 100 u.s. troops stationed in liberia will withdraw by the end of april. live coverage on c-span3. >> we were traveling catherine, my colleagues catherine and i were traveling in january to liberia and sierra leone, and in the course of that, we met this remarkable person tolbert nyenswah who is an assistant minister of health, deputy chief medical officer and most importantly head of the incident management system in liberia which is the central and most important institution driving the response and control of

ebola in liberia. tom frieden when he has visited liberia at various points has declared that this is the most important in liberia. maybe that is arguable and in difference to the president and others. but one thing that became very clear was that toll bert was indefatigable indefatigable, he was a leader. he trained as a lawyer at the university of liberia. he went on to pursue his interests in humanitarian law at johns hopkins and emory and else where and in 2012 and '13 came to bloomberg school to complete a masters of public health there at that institution, and then, as he will describe as a ministerial official, he became at the center of the response directly empowered by the head of state

to really carry forward this. and it became terribly important as the crisis worsened in the august/september time frame as the mobilization took off in the mid fall and up to now, and as we entered this new phase. so, we are really honored to have tolbert with us. i learned also, in speaking with him, that he's a malaria expert. he drafted -- he was responsible for drafting the first national plan under the president's mill area initiative. the plan for liberia. so he can speak to many different issues in the course of this. what we've asked tolbert to do is to speak for 15 or 20 minutes and take us through the story of the outbreak and the response and the different phases. tell us a bit about the way the government organized itself, his own role tell us a bit about

the u.s. entry and the entry of others. tell us a bit about where we are now in this current phase of attempting to get to zero in monrovia and elsewhere within liberia. it's a complicated story. we had the chance to go over this when we were together in january, and it was the most lucid, and cogent and insightful summary of the story. so when we learned that tolbert would be here in this period, we asked him if he would come and do a public presentation along these lines. there's plenty of seats up front. i also want to welcome the 75 or so people who are here online. and the audience from c-span. so tolbert we're very grateful and honored to have you here today. if you could carry us through that then we'll do a bit of back and forth and then we will move rapidly to the audience to get comments and questions from all of you.

so welcome. we're thrilled to have you here and the floor is yours. >> thank you. thank you, stephen for the time. it is my pleasure to be here. it is very, very important institution the center for strategic and international studies, and it's a pleasure to be in washington, d.c. and privileged to talk to you all and thanks for coming out to hear the story about the ebola response in liberia. horrible story. about what we did as a country. how we came together as a state

and to the very quickly to respond to one of the major threat, major global public health threat to our existing man kind. we we as a country was like recovering from massive civil conflict for two years or civil conflict rebuilding our lives as a country, as a people under the extraordinary leadership, incredible leadership of africa's female president, president first african female president, president ellen johnson-sirleaf who democratically led the people of liberia turn around very quickly, and brought the

situation after the war years the desperation, high hope of our people, we were on the trajectory, very good trajectory of recovery. after the civil conflict rebuilding, rebuilding the education system trying to rebuild some -- reconstruct our infrastructure bridges and reeds. and then we got some of the important steps that a government made to the photograph rt of the president for us to really increase the government overall budgetary support to the assistance. we've gone 19% of the budget contributed to the health system. as compared to the 2015 target

of 15%, the abuja target for 15% contribution to the health sector liberia has gone 19%, even before 2015. in africa, there was the number one country that met npg-4 before the target on the mortality reduction, by two tiers by this year but liberia led the target in 2012. reduction on the mortality. and we're making progress. we've got mortality reduction strengthening, and before the gdp growth has reached 8.7% before the ebola crisis in 2014. and so 2014 has become a very,

very difficult year in liberia and the entire region, the entire west african region. and my description of that is that ebola was not just something only intended for liberia and the region but we were really dealing with a disease that had serious implications on the entire world. it shows how interconnected we are as a people because the fact that ebola can cross the border. it was even possible to enter into the united states. ebola needed no passport to enter european countries. we saw that. and so those of us in west africa that are on the front lines of fighting this disease are sacrificing for the rest of the world. and this is the kind of feelings

that we got as people, as a country, we came together. to fight this disease. and so on -- when the disease struck in guinea in december 2013, very close to the liberian border we were the proximity of the border, the poorer nation we knew very well that liberia wasn't safe, especially in the north, the most populous became the epicenter of the disease. we knew very well that we were in a terrible situation. and so by march precisely, march 22nd, ebola struck our country. we had a case of the disease

and imagine the entire region, guinea liberia and sierra leone, there was no -- in liberia. so we needed to take the specimen across the border to have it tested and know whether or not we're dealing with ebola virus disease. and before that, liberia was also battling the endemic of fever. the signs of ebola are related to some of the common diseases that we were seeing in our health system like fever headaches, vomiting bleeding from all of the orifice, from your nose, from your ears, from your eyes, those are signs and symptoms of lhasa fever so we

could not really distinguish between whether or not it was ebola or lhasa fever. so the first case was that our minister of health pronounced to the world that ebola outbreak was in liberia, we notified the world organization that we had a disease in the region. it was the first time that ebola had leapt since the history of ebola since 1976. ebola had been in east african area. we have no knowledge in west africa of such disease and this was the first time. so the health system was not that equipped to the extent to deal with issue of isolation, testing of people and disease and all that. so we had to deal with the situation, and to do that we are organized as a government, the ministry of health, created

aation nal coordination unit meeting every day, discussing how to deal with the situation. yet people were getting infected, so we had the first wave of the outbreak between march and april. the first wave of the outbreak had only six confirmed faces, with six confirmed deaths. so it was 100% case fatality rate of the first wave. there was a situation, currently the first wave gone at least 60 days without a new case of the disease, but in guinea and then sierra leone got hit in may. guinea and sierra leone was still reporting the virus so we could not declare the virus over as a country, because liberian

guinean, sierra leonean we have intermarriages, we have cross border issue, farming, you can walk across the border close to 100 border crossing points, and so we could not declare we were out of the woods as a country. then we had a second wave of the outbreak. that's a major major and terrible part. lofa county again became the epicenter. we have a number of cases all for the first time the capital city of monrovia got hit with the disease. we had a case 14-year-old girl that traveled from sierra leone and settled down with her family in monrovia.

monrovia had a third of the country's population 1.5 million people and people started getting infected from the disease, we have three counties got infection had become the epicenter. by the time we got to july, june monrovia got infected in june, by june, july, others, the situation had gotten beyond our control. we were report inging 60 to 70 confirmed cases a day. in august, was terrible. panic here. despair, frustration. the government had to put in place a system to deal with the situation, so my role from the very beginning of the outbreak, i was chairing one of the

groups the social mobilization of the outbreak. my job was to go to all of the radio station in liberia after putting in place -- i would go to the radio station and announce that we have the number of cases in the country, we had a number of deaths, so i was giving the daily situation report, and explaining to the liberian population what ebola was, the sign and symptoms of ebola, how you can prevent yourself from the disease. the disease has no cure, no vaccine. so it just the public information. campaign i was talking to international press, the cdc cnn, also calling on the attention of the world. at the time, the world health organization country offices our development partners at usaid, these organizations were focused on development work.

so the measure of this to give that emergency support to look at this as a threat to humanity, had not come, we did not receive the international support by march, april, may, june, july. and so we were calling the world attention that this was a global public health problem. that needed the international community's support. so the world health organization general did announce margaret chen, that own la in the region was to be elevated to extreme of disease dynamic global international public health problem. then my very, very good friend tom frieden who i must congratulate here, the head of the centers for disease control

sent in some very strong epidemiologists and the rest of the cdc folks to visit liberia, and then we sat down and established the incident management system in august which the president of liberia asked me to lead. and so i chaired the management system put in place, call it incident management structure. with key key areas. those structures did exist even before the incident management system. the coordination meeting was established. but you had to make it strong with -- combined with international partners and experts so with that we -- the imf, incident management system because if you look at the center for disease control if there's an incident they have the incident management system to support that. so it's like a replica of the

cdc's incident management system that i chair in liberia with about five areas. number one, in august september, the outbreak was very big. 100 confirmed cases per day, people dying in the streets. no treatment bags to put people. there was fear, desperation, and agitation in the community. and so we have to put in place a case management team that's responsible building ebola treatment units. we put in place social mobilization with community engagement. we put epidemiology, with contact raising as part and

social support. so those areas were set up and what we did under the mandate of the president, it was like, look this is a liberian problem. we're facing a situation. we have to find solution for this. and so the intervention had to be led by liberians. so i'm in charge as the commander in chief of this country, and the incident manager was led by liberians. so the management system all of the areas were chaired by liberian. but what we did was with our international partners we cooperated in and each area chaired by a liberian, before chaired by an organization, like cdc would co-chair, w.h.o. would

co-chair the management team, management would be co-chaired by unicef, social support would be co-chaired, and so we organized this national, multinational response to deal with the outbreak. but before we have all of the sophistication, the liberian people themselves took charge of the disease and then the social mobilization component the committed engagement component, and the ownership of the people changed their behaviors over time. by september we started seeing the -- they've got this expert measure protection that 1.4 million people are going to die if nothing is done. cdc came out with the report

that 20,000 people w.h.o. said, 20,000 people will die on a weekly basis, so the liberian people got the message and said, look, we have to change our behavior. so simple messages were thrown out fp. number one the disease has no cure. the disease has no vaccine. the disease had a very high case fatality rate of close to 25% to 90%. but it is preventable. so what you need to do is if somebody is sick, make sure that you don't touch sick people. make sure that you don't bury the dead call the health team. ensure that you wash hands 24 hours with soap and water so everywhere you went in monrovia or everywhere you go right now there are hand washing corners of shops of homes, and marketplaces, supermarkets,

anywhere there's hand washing corner and people washing their hands. no touching of dead bodies. so the behavior changed alone play a very, very critical role in combination with the huge, huge international support. the international community came very late, but came very weak. and we are very much grateful when i told you we met in the office, that under the leadership of president obama, and the people of the united states of america, we saw when president obama announced on the request of my president, president ellen johnson-sirleaf and president obama announced that this was a serious problem and we would come. we started seeing the chinese the europeans, the americans and the entire world came to the

aid by august, september we started to construct september 29 ebola treatment units under the help of the u.s. government who were working with the u.n. military, the department of defense, 101st airborne division major general william working to the, and dar es salim, and then major general we flew on a helicopter so many times to go and construct etus, go and visit the labs. the country did not have laboratory system. we had nine ebola labs that were installed. we have community centers, over 15 of them were constructed. community center was where you move people to get to the point

where they have to be until you prevent secondary infection. we trained contact, because for you to get ahead of the disease as we did, every infected person that contacts must be traced for 21 days. that's very, very much morning. it's easier to back the back of the disease, break the chain of transition if all of your contact s contacts are on the contact list. if a person is infected and they are on a contact list you with monitor them, put them in an etu, ebola treatment unit and monitor. we started seeing the trend of the disease come down between october, september, october, and november. and today the exponential projection increase of number of people that were going to die

from ebola, we didn't have that number of person, we had about 3,000 confirmed deaths, over 3,000. we have health care workers. the human story to this this disease is associated with affection. caring for your loved ones. so the most affected people were close family members and health care workers. because health care workers are those that give care to patients, so most of them got infected. we have 300 health care workers that got infection. and 179 of them died from the virus. so this really really struck our human resource development in the health care sector. and i remember as a person in

october, i had to lead a team myself. to bury four died from ebola who were looking for place to bury those people there was resistance in the community because the community people rejected that ebola people should not be buried in the community. so we had the government pick out a piece of property that from -- from 12:00 in the afternoon, up to 2:00 a.m. in the morning were trying to bury these people through a military deploy because there was agitation, the government had to deploy the military to help me protect the team and myself in the field. we saw stories where mother died from the virus and the little kids would go to suck the mother's breast. this happened. we saw stories where relatives

would look on the brothers and sisters, in the body bags and cremated, burning because of we have to make sure that people are safe and dignified burial. so the combination of all of these got us to where we are today in liberia. we have 14 of our 15 counties that are free of ebola. for the past 21 days, some have gone 42 days. some have gone 60 days. some have gone 90 days. some counties have gone more than 95 days without a single ebola case. and this morning i read a report that's also that way that 14 counties are still free from the ebola virus disease. we have transmission still taking place on a weekly basis. sometimes three cases or two

cases. but what is important is one single case of ebola is an outbreak. so the fact that monrovia is still reporting one or two cases we are not out of the wood yet. the fact also that guinea, sierra leone are still reporting cases, we hope the three countries can get to zero at the same time and then we can celebrate and say, okay, ebola is over. after ebola the rebuilding of the health care system why ebola in the first place is because of a weak health care system it's because of inadequate resources to support the health care system. and so we need to build a health care system, not pre-ebola then we can build a resilient health

care system that we can stop not only ebola but other epidemics in the future. so this is the role that we play now we are into phase two of the ebola outbreak and phase two have four strategies. number one strategy for phase two is continue the community engagement, social mobilization campaign. number two strategy for phase two is the rapid isolation treatment of ebola. that is the right strategy. what we do if there's a hot spot we move the cases and put them in an etu and give the care and put that hot spot under control. number four, is realtime contact contact -- making sure that every single case the contacts are 100% under contact. making sure that getting all of

the contacts to treatment early and caught the secondary infection. and number four to get us to zero is the cross-border initiative with liberia and sara lee yoen where we can have synergies in our interventions and have the disease under control. but i think to the international world, and of great help we've got for our international partners under the leadership the united states government the major tragedy that will happen in guinea liberia and sierra leone is for our international partners by this time this thing is over, to jump on an airplane and move to their capitals in geneva, in washington in new york, and lead those health system and help us to build it. that would be the worst mistake

that would make. ebola as i said earlier is not the only west african problem. it could have the same kind of effect on other part of the world and so we should take that very, see seriously. as i listen to the news headlines, the cnn the bbc and other news headlines when you hear about nowadays, after what you hear about these days is the syrian war, terrorism and we hear about ebola in august september, october, november and that has also an effect. because it grabs where the international support should go. so we should maintain our focus in the region and ensure that the great help that we got from the international word to getting to zero in these countries should be maintained so that we help to help the national government to budgetary

support, make sure the health care systems, make sure that the agriculture sector that our government major priority mamger priorities of president ellen johnson-sirleaf a software company is agriculture, education, health care and better for the people of liberia. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. this week we had discussed earlier, this week the president, president obama spoeb publicly i believe it was wednesday afternoon to announce that the u.s. response was entering a new phase that our military would be phasing down to a residual presence of about 100 troops.

it had been at its peak at 2800 i believe is the number. but reafirming a couple of things, very very strongly by the president directly, and the messages were that this was succeeding and we were in this new phase that you were in. that we were in on the long haul but shifting to a predominantly and overwhelmingly civilian agency nongovernmental partnerships, with your government in moving ahead. and obviously taking a region-wide approach. it's interesting to remind everyone here the u.s. response was driven by the tapping into the disaster assistance accounts of which by the time we got to the end of the year we had expended somewhere in the order of $900 million. or made that commitment. actually how much was expended by the end of the year is

another question. but a massive commitment on the military side there was an initial reprogramming of up to $750 million. the accounting on those expenditures is still not completed. but you see the vastness of the the -- of the response, and it was predominantly focused upon liberia. and then in december congress came forward, and made a emergency appropriations of $5.4 billion, of which $3.7 is outside our borders and arguably 60% or 70% of those funds are going in to west africa in this phase. and there is a focused on building capacity, building health security capacity helping in the recovery strategies. so at least for the next two-year period, there is from the u.s. standpoint, there's ample resources. spending those really smartly and wisely in support of good

costed plans is going to be one of the challenges, i think, that we face in this period. but we are in, i think a fortunate position here. there's always in these emergencies the danger of a sharp -- of a cliff, of the emergency fades, the threat fades, and the interest fades and there's not that commitment over the transition period and into the longer-term. and so how do you hear? and reminding us of this is very important. i think some of the pathways have been laid down in terms of the appropriations, and the way that those are oriented. if you could say a few words in reflection, specifically about the military engagement, and what was the significance in your mind, of having the commitment on september 16th by the president up to 3,000, and then having the deployment that followed soon thereafter? if you could say a few words about that. >> thank you.

i think my reaction to that is i think the military met their goal. they met their goal. the way they partner very well the u.s. military were able to partner very well with our armed forces of liberia. gave them capacity building that partnership to build more than 17 ebola treatment units in all of our counties. and the military did also help with the laboratory testing that got a very fast turning around time of testing the ebola virus disease in less than four hours, the results are veilable. and logistics, also moving around with logistics through the peak of the outbreak, and so i think the military met that goal. so scaling down from april i

think is a very good timing of time. but we have to. and what i do also know is that even if there is a case, which we don't pray for, to have more opportunities, there is an opportunity to get that kind of support back. but i think the requirement, they met their goal worked to the very closely, to get ebola treatment units built, get logistics out there. make sure that the laboratory system is strengthened, the capacity of our liberian military guys to do a job. >> so you feel confident that today you have, through the incident with the oversight of the incident management system, you have access to sufficient ambulances and laboratories? you have the isolation and containment. you have the case investigation contact tracing teams, and the

data coordination that that infrastructure is in place. it needs to be sustained and strengthened and as you say, within liberia itself, the biggest immediate challenge is montserrat county and monrovia proper, right? >> that's correct. the capacity is there. our response has reached optimum that we can respond effectively at any time. we can, every county has a well-built isolation unit with the u.s. general and myself were in the last etu second to the last etu where the results are. every county is having its own ebola treatment unit. that's the case management components out of it. so if there were any resurgence or increasing in the number of cases in any given county you

have at least 50 to 100 beds, isolation unit available. the way to better preposition our labs at a regional level there were nine labs that were taken to liberia. four of them have been placed in to regions so that we can have our testing capacity it does not affect the contract tracers, because the contact tracers are volunteers, some of them active case finders moving house to house looking for the contacts. social mobilization also continuing. the only thing is that how we leverage the resources that went in the ebola response to build our normal health care system. is what we need to do now with right now the processes that are going on with building the resilient health care system.

with costing a detailed plan. with prevention and control look now at our health care facilities and how you leverage your resources and support the health care system. million to long-term raising the kind of resources yesterday trying to talk to our colleagues there to have some resources that we can raise for our health care system. liberia has that we are so looking up to finding additional resources in there to support our health centers. human resource will help. it's a critical challenge. we lost a lot of our health work ers ers. the confidence in the health care system has to be built so that people can have the confidence to utilize the health care system by doing that.

you have to train more physicians, you have to train more physician assistance. you have to train nurses, midwife wives. we still have not got to the level yet where somebody can walk less than one hour to get to a health care facility. with that kind of system you need your community health workers to provide services for preventable diseases, improve your organization system, improve your human resource for health capacity. strengthen strengthen infrastructure, supply chain and these services. but how do you leverage now these resources for ebola to get the health care system? and the united nations has also been very very much helpful in the system with the organization, and for the first time the united nations established the united nations mission on ebola response for the first time for the u.n.

security council to approve establishing a separate mission for ebola. we think that was very very much useful. this multinational partnership was critical in the response. >> can you say a word about two issues, and then i'd like to open to the floor? first is the regional context. there's a lot of diplomatic activity at a very high level. trying to figure out how to coordinate and knit together across the county prefecture, districts, on these large border areas where there's huge vulnerability of importation or just not knowing what's going on. so as you move towards zero within liberia the bigger regional context becomes ever more important in understanding and beginning to get a better understanding and better control over that, and i know your president has been in the lead in trying to stir action in that

area. where is that leading, in your view? >> that's a critical point from day one has been on the minds of the president of liberia. she's directed us as a team to give support to the rest of the two countries. so, i remember we took some ppes that the personal protective equipment for ebola, the space suit that people were provided some for sierra leone, we took some of our equipment and lab services provided the facility our health care workers, who have been mobilizing to also support sierra leone so we could get to zero at the same time likewise in guinea. we have one that has gone 62

days without ebola but across the border with guinea you have a town called lola that was very active, huge transition, they were reporting 50 cases per day. and so, if somebody left from lola, travel because we have parents in nima so travel from guinea, and got nima infected, and similarly, in the -- in the area, people would leave and so right now we are very much concerned about how have gone more than 90 days without a single case. so the cross border i mention is very, very, very much critical. we have to work together as a team so to address that we're working at three-pronged approach. the technical team working together as one prong. the community engagement working

together. and at a political level, the president, president sirleaf, president conte and working very closely together having summits to give all the support of technical people to move across border, move interventions across the three border areas, because if you see right now liberia, all of the counties along the border area with guinea, and sierra leone for liberia, there is no ebola transmission taking place from the liberia side of the border. but across in guinea there's active transmissions still going on and areas like our last counties near the border that god transmission of the disease

grankamar has gone 25 days without transmission. so the concentration is how can you is how can you go close to the kenyan border and if there are cases in guinea you can bring them across liberia, give them treatment in our treatment unit ss make our active case community health volunteer, community engagement, that kind of collaboration with guinea liberia, and have sierra leone. so we're working on that very closely. >> could you just say a quick word about the field trials that are beginning on the vaccines in particular but there's also a lot of work on therapeutics, rapid tests. but the vaccines piece is --

it's historic. it's moving ahead at a very rapid pace. there's a lot of questions around this. can you say a few words about that? >> in liberia -- it's good you put me in this seat. because back home i'm always also in a hot seat about a vaccine trial, trying to give explanation to the public about what it's all about, what we need to do about that why did we at this time carry on vaccine trial. but physically we are going to make history as a country to find a solution for ebola in the world. and this is not the first time liberia making history in the global public health community in liberia we were able to carry on research for river blindness.

today we got 19 countries using the treatment for that in the region and we have the highest rating of ebola and so it's very much important for us as a country to finalize a solution and the lasting solution from my public health background is immunization and prevention. immunization has made us in the world to eradicate smallpox. my professor and myself were in close discussion. he led the global efforts to eradicate smallpox in the world heading the ing theing the who global effort at hopkins and he was one of my professors at the johns hopkins university. this is another one sitting

right there. and we eradicated smallpox in the world because of vaccination. today polio is also on the verge of eradication. we have three countries in the world that still have an active polio transmission. nigeria is one of those but nigeria is doing very well now with polio. pakistan somalia india they worked a few yearsing too eradicate polio and this is because of vaccination. in our program on immunization we have nine different antigens and the reason i'm giving this history is for us to have the confidence for the randomized clinical trial for ebola vaccine on the way right now in liberia

to go ahead and for us to be hopeful that we can have a vaccine this year a promising van vaccine for ebola. so we have a site at one of our hospitals that's ongoing. before i left liberia on sunday we had about 80% already in the trial. it's expected by the first of march we have the first 600 enrolled in this vaccine trial and monitor the situation before we can enroll 27,000 people as the protocol calls for. and this is under the leadership of the liberian government, the minister of health, the partnership with the u.s. government, national institute of health and the liberian government liberia institute of biomedical research carry on this partnership. we are hopeful that if this

vaccine works we can have a lasting solution for the rest of the world for ebola. >> thank you. let's move to our audience. >> and therapeutic trials are also started with the zmapp. so we hope concomitantly they can go along and we can have therapies and vaccine ss if they can work by the end of the year, if we can have a vaccine for ebola then i think we've made significant progress as a global public health community. >> thank you. we're going to take a number of comments and bundle them together so please be patient. we'll do three or four come back and then do another round. we have about 35 minutes. we also have a number of people here who have been working very actively in liberia and i would like to hear from them.

could you bring the microphone down, please? just introduce yourself and be very suckcinct in your comment or question, please. yes? >> okay thank you and good morning. thank you both for the comments that have been made. >> please introduce yourself. >> i'm jacob hughs i'm with hdi. hdi works in the ministry of health. we manage the pool fund the honorable minister mentioned and our program manager serves as a deputy to the minister on the management system. the presentation was very enlightening about the very difficult experiences that the liberian people have endured. as you move post-ebola and you look to strengthen and rebuild the health systems i wonder if you could share with us what you think are two or three of the key lessons that must be incorporated into this strengthening of the health systems to help prevent this in the future. >> thank you.

dr. lacey can we get any thought? i know you need to leave. okay, sir, and then behind you. >> thank you. i also work with the president and i just want to thank you for your great work and i think your success was shown by the fact that the burial team people are wondering what they're going do when there's nobody to bury. so i think that speaks pretty well of your success and you did a great job. thank you. >> thank you. great to see you. yes? >> good morning, my name is dan lucy i'm a physician at georgetown university and i had the honor to be able to work in monrovia at an ebola hospital from october 3 to november 14 and part of that in sierra leone

in august. i'd like to thank the minister from coming here to work on the vaccine trials. i really appreciate also you mentioned the shocking number of health care workers in liberia infected with the ebola virus and those who have died. in fact, who this week put out their weekly update and i think it's around 830 health care workers in west africa all together who have been infected with the virus and almost 500 who have died. so i wonder if you could offer suggestions or ideas for how perhaps the region and the world could have helped more in terms of providing health care providers to take care of so many patients in liberia and in the region. particularly as you mentioned during the terribly dark days of july and august and september. >> thank you. down in front here we have a person who -- right here, yes.

>> that was such a dynamic recount of the ebola outbreak in liberia and the multinational approach by the people of liberia to get us to zero and so i commend you and your team on the work that has been done there. i'm faith cooper i'm actually an independent consultant but as of a couple of months ago i was with a d.o.d. health center that implemented the u.s.-africa disaster preparedness program so i was in liberia in april of 2014 and back there in july of 2014, not necessarily related to ebola but we were working with the government coincidentally, we were working with the government to help in the development of the national pandemic preparedness plan which was supported by u.s. africa disaster preparedness program. so my question is one, my observation at the time while i was on the ground was just the behavior of our people, the liberian people.

i'm a liberian native. they didn't believe that ebola was real. and that caused a spike in the disease. so i'm interested in hearing about their approach now moving forward. i'm also glad you touched on the regional capacity building. because ultimately that's absolutely important for the region. but my specific question is the economic community of west african states mandates that all of its a member nations at some point must have a disaster management organization that overseas disaster management for the country. we were moving towards that progress in liberia. how will this experience in liberia contribute to the establishment of that entity that have will take responsibility for disasters in the country. >> let's take one other additional ghe the back there. we'll come back to you in a moment. yes, sir? >> hi name is charles