welcome, i'm damian trujillo and we're talking education, the director of the silicon valley education society is here to get the school year started on your comunidad del valle. ♪ >> we begin today with an urgent crisis and that is foster care, too many children are in it, not enough adults are participating in it. with me here on comunidad del valle, a former foster child and foster parent. she's come full circle and a

supervising social worker. we'll start with you. we'll transition but tell me first what i read kind of sort of your biobut what it was like to transition because you went in an in older age to transition into foster care. >> it was pretty difficult. i had both my family -- i was a baby and i was with them until i was 13. i was used to being with them every day and then all of a sudden one day i couldn't be with them anymore. i wasn't allowed to see them or hardly talk to them or anything. i didn't know where they were or what was going on. it was really hard on me. >> traumatic. >> i mean, i'm going to read numbers off and you can talk about those gilbert, but you can understand why these numbers are the way they are. that's the only 5% of children between ages of 15 and 18 are actually adopted in this county. 60% of all foster children are

hispanic. in this county. as here is the alarming part, 75% perform below grade level. give us your analysis. >> partially it is -- we are essentially in a crisis where we really need foster parents within our community in santa clara county to come and join our forces and at the end have a successful story to tell like jasmine, which she'll talk about a little later. but yes, children in foster care due to the number of moves that have to present and many different reasons have to transition from home to home. we're looking for foster parents who can come and dedicate the time to be able to work with our children. we do -- we are trying our best to be able to keep children in their local schools or at least with the trauma and experience

they can at least have a similarity with their teachers and friends and with the hope that they continue their education. did something happen? are these numbers worse than they were before or have they remained steady? >> i believe the numbers remain a little steady but within part of what's happened recently with the whole passage of ab 12, children can remain in foster care to the age of 20, up to the age of 21, hopefully that we'll be experiencing better statistics in the next few years. it's too soon to tell what that's going to bring to our children now but hopefully we get stability, we're hoping that they will be able to finish school, go on to higher education, just like jasmine did. but again, we are really encouraging our communities to step forward and help us give this stability to our children. >> let me read a couple more numbers. they are startling.

75% perform below grade level. 46% do not complete high school. 51% are unemployed. you were lucky, jasmine, that you went into a home that was caring and nurturing and kept you away from these statistics. how vital was it? >> i had anything i had when i went into the home. i had somebody believed in me and loved me and cared about me. it was pretty new to me to actually have someone be that loving. and she's not judgmental at all, neither were, they loved me and took me in for what i was and what i had been through and accepted me. >> you have now taken in a nephew or niece? >> nephew. >> you are a foster parent. >> yes. >> what made you make that -- it's a huge responsibility. you're 21 years old and want to be an rn, in college for that. that's a big responsibility. >> yes, it is.

i don't know, he -- i didn't want him to go through the same struggles i did. and he's so young. he has so much life in him, so much opportunity, i couldn't see him go through what i did. >> all right. we'll talk in our next segment more about how maybe you can become a foster parent. here are a couple of items of information you can keep. there's a number to call, 299-kids, area code 408 and log onto the website and find out how you can help and provide foster care for some of these children. stay with us.

. how fulfilling has it been for you to give your nephew that opportunity by being his sponsor parent? >> it's been overwhelming and amazing. he's such a different kid now.

he's so happy and excited every day. he loves living with me. he's talking about being a firefighter and doctor and just these great dreams he has. it's amazing. i don't know if he would have had if it would have turned out like this. >> we talk about the responsibility, gilbert. how important is it that we have responsible foster parents out there and for those folks who might be interested. it's not an easy test. might be that's why we don't have that much foster parents because it's not easy yet so rewarding at the same time. >> it's not an easy task. but here we have jazzmin, when she found the connection with her foster parent is an older age, that made a world of difference to her, being able to find a responsible person, who was not judging her for who he was and what she was going through. she opened her heart and everything to her to provide jazzmin what she needed to be successful in life. so definitely we need people

responsible to care for these kids as if they were their own. we talked about the education piece and how important that is. we do want our community to step forward and help us essentially for some -- raise our children and become a permanent home to them when they are not able to return to the parents. but it is a big responsibility with sometimes the community in the whole, thinks that's too much responsibility. when you talk to foster parents, one of the things they say, how rewarding it was to make a difference in a child's life. >> absolutely. in your bioyou mentioned that you want the best for your nephew and in paren thes sis, with your foster child, your nephew. >> i had been there since day one when he was born. we have an automatic connection already. i've always been in his life. and i mean, he's so young so he

knows where mommy is and what's going on but he knows that i'm also the person taking care of him and he calls -- i'm his aunt but almost every day it's less auntie and more mommy, it's so fulfilling. >> how is it at 21 you can inspire a lot of people to better themselves? >> simply because i'm 21 and nobody expects me to do this. and i wish there would be more people who would do this when they were 21 or 30 or any age. kids need love and kids need family. that's what it was. >> talk about your as spiration for yourself and your son? >> well, i want to be a nurse. and having him give me the more drive than i've ever had knowing i need to take care of him and want him to see that going to school is worth it, being somebody is worth it and making something of yourself and

knowing right from wrong and doing everything just to fulfill your dreams. >> here's what i've seen in the few minutes, gilbert, that she's successful, because of the foster parents she was paired with. but she has a lot of determination and will that helped her survive what was a very tu multious situation. we have teenagers in need of homes. part of it people don't want to bother with teenagers, they are going to be a headache. again in jazzmin's situation, she it to give somebody when she finally was placed at her last foster parent, something clicked with her and said, god, this is my home. so i'm sure her attitude and many of the hers changed. there's highs and lows but part of her success was that she realized i have somebody who loves me and cares for me and that's the people that we're

inviting to call and become foster parents because we definitely need more people in the community to be foster parents to preteens and teen as well. >> you saw -- you heard the ugly numbers that i was reading. can you understand how easy it could be for a child to fall into that cycle, of dropping out and committing crimes and what not? >> yes, there's -- i've seen many kids come and go in foster care. a lot of them leave for the fact that they have been hurt so much that they don't think anybody will ever love them. and it's not true. somebody will love them and they will be somebody. >> do you consider yourself lucky or fortunate or -- the success, the way you were kinds of skyrocketing here is pretty incredible given you had everything stacked against you and you overcame that. >> i don't know if it's luck or just me wanting to really be somebody that the rest of my family wasn't, wanting to go out and be the outcast of anybody. >> camera three is yours.

look there and talk to the folks out there and see if you can convince them to roll up their sleeves and become foster parents as well. >> it's really rewarding. it's not an easy job but at the end when you see the happiness that the kids have and all of the joy in their eyes it's worth it in the end to teach them. >> thank you so much. it's a pleasure to meet you. >> pleasure to meet you too. >> thank you. again, help in santa clara county, we need more foster parents, latinos are in great need as well. there's the number to call and logonto the website and you'll get more than you can probably bargain for. thanks for what you're doing and good luck. >> up next on comunidad delvalle, the silicon valley education foundation.

what is the state of the educational system, the ceo, director, of the silicon valley education foundation. mohammed, parents are getting ready to send the kids off to school. any tip or advice on how to prepare. it can be traumatic in a certain extent to some of the kids but we want to make sure by the end

of the school year they've accomplished the goals that they were set to accomplish. any advice you can give parents out there? >> the best advice i can give is supplement their education, for instance, in japan they go to school for 241 days a year -- in europe they go for 211 days. we go for 180 days. we get less time in schools. so if they can help supplement, there's lots and lots of online tools they can use to help supplement the education, particularly in math or science. but the best thing you can do if they are younger like our twins, for each of them. >> put the wii down or the video games down and read to them and maybe play some games on the ipad, some educational games on the ipad. >> absolutely, there's lots of educational games online now that actually help. so that will help them learn as

well as have some fun as well. >> you and i have talked about stem over the last three or four years and importance of it. it's good to see we're taking that challenge head on in the silicon valley. give us kind of an update on where we are from three years or four years ago compared to now. i know we're still lagging behind but where are we? >> silicon valley is the economic engine that's the envy of the world. people come here to make phones and search engine, don't come here for education. the good news is in the last four or five years, if we look at the one metric was al gebra. if you want to graduate in four years or less, can indicate a lot. if you like at algebra, students in santa clara have taken and passed algebra, 200 more kids

taking and passing it. where we need help and try harder is if you break that number down and focus on hispanic population. now there's -- it's called an achievement gap. it's a 30 percentage gap. we need to close that. we need to work harder to make sure that doesn't exist. that's the fastest growing population. >> is parental involvement part of the problem? i would imagine it's a problem because sometimes you have pa s parents working two jobs or what not. what is -- what do you think is the end all to this? how can we solve? >> some people have two answers to this. one is their parents don't care or our schools don't care. i don't think it's either. i've yet to meet a parent who doesn't care about their child's education, no matter how much money they make or race they

are. but i think it's providing more time, providing more context. if you've never been to the beach and you're stories are about the beach, you're not going to be able to relate to it. and providing them the additional time it takes to be successful also in our education system with our school district, providing our teachers more professional development around this, raising the issue, measuring the issue. we're making improvements but we need to move that faster. >> are you encouraged by what you're seeing so far? >> i am, i think we have lots of great -- 13,000 great teachers in santa clara. we need to make sure we provide the support that's needed. what's coming now is this new standard called the common core standards in math and english. this is going to be a game changer. we're going to redefine the fundamentally teach, multitim choice will go away and we'll

ask why -- >> and describe what you're doing and as we do that, as we provide them context, the texts are going to get harder and students going to learn deeper and better. and as we transition towards that, it will be online for technology, we'll need more professional developments for teachers but parents need to keep an eye on this. deeper learning in this new -- continue to in last place still in the way we fund education, but i can imagine we're slowly bringing on the results, how kids are doing in school, we're not 50 out of 50 i would imagine anymore. >> we're slowly improving and the administration is making a big effort. one is that the local control funding formula is fundamentally changing how we fund schools.

our schools will get more money as simple as that. and as well, the budget -- this coming year, they'll be $200 for student to prepare schools for the common core formula. we are investing more and i think that's a big change in the recession we've been in where we're cutting. we've got a long ways to go to catch up. to give you an example, in new jersey, they spend double of what we spend per student in california. we have a long way to go if we're going to take this seriously and make sure our future workforce is here. >> you're making a lot of trips to sacramento, i would imagine. muhammad is with the silicon valley education foundation. the web address and phone number is there. we'll talk about what they do at the foundation, you have been on summer break, if you're a student, not muhammad, getting kids ready for school stay with us.

we're here with muhammad, doing great work with the school childr children. this step up to algebra program, give us a feeling where we are with that. >> it takes students who otherwise would not be able to take al ge bra in the eighth grade and most kids take out the garbage than work on math. >> these kids in the summer, instead of being on the wii or at the pool, coming to class and learning math. it's a brilliant program, 18 school districts participate. over 1200 students that go through this. and we're seeing tremendous

results. these students are mastering to be able to take and pass algebra and visit a university campus and get a feel for it. thirdly the parents come one night as well to talk about their future education, what classes should they be enrolled in the following year and how will the trajectory work for them to be ready for college and careers. >> these are students who are on the path to maybe not that they are not going to make it but not have the needed course requirements to go where they need to go. >> absolutely. silicon valley education foundation, we're obsessed with the students for college and careers. in order to do that, we know you have to take algebra in the eighth great or else the sequences of classes you have to take doesn't work. they are a little behind otherwise they wouldn't be enrolled and now they are able to take it and get to algebra ii, the odds of graduating from

college in two years, increases. we're focused in on this and these students a lot of times the fear of math. a lot of us have fear of math. and just koeovercoming that. we have a student in high school who took stepping up to algebra years now running a -- at ucla. >> fear is the enemy at this point? >> absolutely. >> and your job is to flip the switch so the light comes on and say, it's not as scary as i thought it was. >> absolutely. absolutely. we do that in various ways, including having them overcome misconceptions. working on technology to see -- to have them advance at their own pace, a blended learning model approach, not just a teaching teaching the whole time. going at their own pace and

catching up and overcoming fears so they are ready and have the confidence to master them. your website has a lot of useful tools for parents and families to -- >> the website and our facebook page, we give out tools and tips every week on how students can master and take charge of their education and be ready for college and careers. >> silicon valley education foundation, the website -- that the correct website? i logged on to -- >> that's the correct one. >> that's a lot easier. there's also the phone number you can call for more information. >> silicon valley is going to need lots and lots more folks locally who can take on the jobs who run the next facebook and flextronics and apple computers. i think they are in class right now in our education system and we need help to make sure we're ready for them. >> we keep asking for h1b veisa

and that means we have to import people to do jobs we should be doing locally. >> absolutely. >> thanks so much for the work you're doing with the kids. it is pretty incredible. it's good luck to you for what you're doing. >> thank you very much. >> here's what's happening in your comunidad.

>> for those celebrating their special day this weekend. and here is our e-mail address if you have something for next week, also you can follow us on twitter. you can also pick up a copy of the newspaper and support your bilingual weeklies all across the area. thank you for sharing a part of your sunday with us. next week valdez has a new place on the valley of hearts delight, the old silicon valley when this

was nothing but orchard fields e next week on "comunidad del valle." [ wind howling ]

[ female announcer ] it balances you... [ water crashing ] ...it fills you with energy... and it gives you what you are looking for to live a more natural life. in a convenient two bar pack. this is nature valley... delicious granola bars made with the best ingredients in nature. nature valley. nature at its most delicious.

hi, everybody. welcome to "on the money." i'm maria bartiromo. the money's taken august's breather. is this a summer swoon or time to get in? why one top strategist says get ready for a 15-year bull run. the man who created amazon.com buys a newspaper. and he plays a technology superstar in the move e but is he that different in real life? my conversation with ashton kutcher. "on the money" begins right now. this is america's number one financial news program. "on the money." now, maria bartiromo. here's what's making news as we head into a new week "on the money." president obama took his economic show on the road this week pitching