i would like to introduce the sheriff of san joaquin valley -- county. thank you for coming. i would also like to acknowledge some members of the board and guardians of the city. mike anderson of the sheriff's department. dave everly from emergency management. jamie o'keefe, jan ford. did i miss anybody? where is mike? i mentioned jamie. she has her whole family here today. as we enter the solemn moments, i like to call joanne hayes- white up to lead us through.

>> thank you. you will hear more about the guardians of the city. it is a wonderful concept. welcome to station 10. this is our museum. it has beautiful pieces and parts of our city and history and department. as you can see, it has outgrown this place. the guardians of the city are working on a place where our departments' histories will all be housed together so that the public can come, visit, and do research. my hat is off to all of the volunteers putting this concept together. thank you for that. i would also like to acknowledge the presence of one of my predecessors, also a huge history buff who knows so much about the city and apartment,,

the former chief of the department ed phipps and his wife. [applause] thank you so much for being here. while we are acknowledging people, i would like to pay my utmost respect to our sheriff who will be retiring sen. he is a rich part of the city history. i think was entering high school when mike started as sheriff. it is a well-deserved retirement. [applause] >> she says she was still in high school when i became share. i keep reminding people they do not know how long it took her to get through high school. [laughter] >> we joke that he is retiring sen. when i reached the end of my career, i am going to take the show on the road. a light to pay-respect -- my

respect and thank you for your dedication to the city. we're here to learn more about the guardians of the city. it is all about what happened here at 5:00 04 on october 17, 1989. that was the loma prieta earthquake. 67 people lost their lives. there were countless others that were impacted and injured. i will echo our police chiefs and sheriffs. we are much better prepared today than we were in 1989. that does not mean our work is done. we can always improve our efforts. it is most important on days like today to continue to emphasize that message. as the public safety department, we will be there for you on any given day and at a difficult time. when there is a large disaster, that is when the community

apart comes in. we're very well-coordinated with the department of emergency management. we exercise and train together frequently. that is so we can respond effectively in moving to the recovery phase as quickly as possible. preparedness is the key message. mayor lee has always been a champion for public safety and prepared this report. this -- preparednes.. there is no reason not to be prepared. there many websites. we're very proud of our nert program. we recognize and thank the community that wanted to work with us shoulder to shoulder. the one thing that was missing was the training and education. in 1990, we went about creating and developing curriculum to teach the community. it is free. is about disaster preparedness,

how to keep your family safe, stay safe in your workplace, pets, it has a lot of ideas and concepts that should become natural. we're very seismically vulnerable. we need to be adequately prepared. the preparedness message is keeping the more of us that are prepared, the better off we will be when we come to respond in moving to the recovery phase. that is my message. i also want to thank supervisor farrell. we are delighted region were delighted to be able to extinguish the fires 22 years ago. -- we were delighted to be able to extinguish the fires 22 years ago in the marina district. thank you for being here today and supporting the concept of the guardians of the city.

i will hand it back over to the captain. thank you very much for coming. have a look around. [applause] >> i would like to introduce supervisor farrell. he is our shepherd through the legislative process. >> when the captain came to talk to me about the notion of the guardians of the city, when i first came into office, it was such a no-brainer. i stand before you today as a member of the board of supervisors representing district two and also as someone who feels a personal connection to what we're doing. i grew up in the marina district. i went through the 1989 earthquake in a personal way. my family home was severely damaged in the earthquake. we were forced out of our home for over a year while it was repaired. we spent the first three weeks

volunteering for the red cross shelter, seeing my neighbors getting tagged and told whether they could go back in or would never be able to go back into their homes. i witnessed firsthand what our public safety departments did. for that, we are forever grateful. it is a testament that we have mayor lee and the heads of all our public safety departments with us today. as a kid whose parents were founding members of nert, for me it is such a personal thing. it is something i am happy and proud to be part of. it is about preparing for the future. i am proud to serve on the disaster council with mayor lee.

we are doing so much with the department of emergency management and city hall to make sure we are prepared for the next big one. it is also really important to remember the past. it is really important to honor those who serve us, kept a safe, and will continue to do so. for me, guardians of the city is what it is about. it is honoring our public safety departments, those who put their lives on the line for us, and will be critical for us as citizens of san francisco in the future when the next one hits. we need to make sure that we continue to be prepared with them in the future and to honor their past to make sure it is safe for future generations of all san franciscans to make sure we remember. it is an honor to do that. i look forward to working with everyone here in making this museum a reality in the future. thank you very much. [applause] >> on going to ask the director

of the department of emergency management to come up. she will be followed by moments of silence, remember this, and observation that led by chief hayes-white. >> it is a pleasure to be here today among my distinguished colleagues. thank you so much. i think i am the luckiest person in san francisco to have the job as the director of the department of emergency management. i get to work with all these wonderful people. we enjoy the support of our legislative body and our executive body. i think that is very unusual. it is one of the reasons we have

been able to become so much better prepared this -- preparedness because our elected leaders understand how important it is that san francisco be able to recover and the resilience. when mayor lee was our city administrator, he undertook the whole effort for resiliency. this morning, we had a symposium that was very successful at city hall talking about the committee approach to disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. the fact that we cannot do it alone. police department, the fire department, the sheriff -- none of us has the capacity to be able to respond ourselves. we need to work as a community. you need to get to know your neighbors. you need to know what resources are in your neighborhood. all of that being said, we have many great schools we have come

up with. check out 72hours.org. you can find simple things you can do to make sure you are prepared at home. they also have " happens -- today also happens to be bosse'' day. i would like to give a big shot out to my boss, mayor lee. i will do a proclamation for you, mr. mayor. i want to thank you for all of your support. you have been wonderful. i know is coming up on 5:00 04 when we will do a moment of silence. i want to invite all of you to the reception after this on california and presidio. we hope you will all join us. thank you for being here today.

[applause] >> i would also like to acknowledge72 hours our fire commission since 1996. he is here today. he is been a great champion for the city and has served a countless number of years. he has been a great supporter of of thing san francisco, particularly the fire department. thank you for being here today. [applause] i also have two division chiefs. we have the division chiefs here representing the city. [applause] i am also joined by my deputy chief. i want to acknowledge him.

now here's retired captain jim lead to say a few things. >> i think we have a couple of minutes before we hit the timeline. i want to give the history on how we got started on this endeavor. we were discussing coming together in a joint organization called guardians of the city. there were two organizations that stepped up to move it forward. it was the police officers association, and the firefighters local 798. i would like to commend those two organizations for having the idea and making it happen. they have the seed money to get us started with guardians of the city to create a nonprofit public charity. i like to honor them.

tom o'connor is now the new president of local 798. thank you. >> i would like tom o'connor to come forward. chief white. >> i am told i have approximately two more minutes. we did become a paid professional department in 1867. we will see adjacent to station 10 -- i served my probation here. the firefighters would come over. it gives you a snapshot of the department history and how we advanced from the beginning in

1867 to where we are today in 2011. as we approach 5:04, we would like to have a solemn moment. the deputy chief will bring the department fell three times. we will observe a moment of silence and reflect back to october 17, 1989. 67 lives were lost. thousands were injured. much property was devastated. people's lives were greatly affected. i will ask you -- [bell ringing three times] ♪

>> please join me in welcoming our mayor, ed lee. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. i am very happy to join all of you here today. it is an exciting day to join our high school kids, our high school, here at john o'connor.

principal gomez, our deputy superintendent, our school board president, and our building trade, thank you for being here. the director of the joint power trended authority. we have the sfpuc, the school alliance, school district personnel. we are all here because we are excited about this wonderful announcement. we are here in a very green, multipurpose use building that has just been opened. this is going to be representing something that i am quite familiar with. i know mike and others closer to my age, we had a wood shop. we had metal shop in middle school. we had exposure to how to deal with graphs. more importantly, you are

talking to somebody who used to spend five years at the department of public works, as the director. we're having to pay attention to our infrastructure, one of the most important things any city can do. when we are trying to grow a new economy -- and as you know, i have gone around the city selling this idea about how the economy is about tech jobs, but we also have an important infrastructure to take care of. if we do not take care of the infrastructure, these other jobs will not be here. jobs at the transbay terminal, which we are already building, celebrating and historic project labor agreement. we also have a commitment to our growing kids, that we are going to get them there. they are not just going to school to get bored.

they have to have those jobs here, and we need them trained and ready for those jobs. so, in this new economy, when we are investing, like our city is, my commitment to the city is making sure we pay attention to infrastructure. we are going to do it right and make sure that our kids know, by fulfilling their educational goals, being exposed to a facility like this, where you are building our labor representatives with the curriculum that the school district has offered to work with the infrastructure agencies that we have just mentioned, we have a curriculum that will train them in the jobs to come. being able to pay attention to this overt -- capital structures of the city, our high school kids can be exposed and get the experience, whether it is automotive, engineering,

architectural design. they will get that exposure here in the center with all of the participants. so i am excited about this because it blends so much of what i believed in, what we have been doing in the city. all of our facilities that we are building in the city, whether you look at the mission bay, the building's at hunters point, treasure island, a partner said, all of these projects, or the hospital's going up, they will all meet plant engineers, in infrastructure commitments. for our high school kids, as you often heard, maybe not enough, i want to welcome you to the million-dollar club. that is the difference, what our school district is trying to teach all of you, to make sure that you know there is a difference between someone who just graduated from high school,

and someone who will go after their college education. it is a million-dollar difference. i want all of you to participate in that million dollar economy, because that will be the difference. and we will be working, not only through the school alliance, city colleges, local colleges to make sure we reinforce that. i am here to celebrate, participate, and the knowledge all of a great, wonderful entities that have come together to create this tech 21 center, where this exposure and experience will happen, with your leadership, printable gomez. these kids will be able to see they have a way forward in this challenging city, but one that will be there city, when they have all the skills. thank you very much for being here. [applause] >> thank you.

mr. mayor, we want to thank you on behalf of the 56,000 students in the san francisco unified school district, children of our community, for your tireless work on their behalf. we look forward to calling you a long-term partner. thank you. the mayor was gracious with his time. as you can imagine, he has a full schedule today and asked to be part of this ceremony today to show his appreciation for the work being done here. we want this to be a celebration and i would probably take until now until 3:00 to thank all of the dignitaries here, but i wanted to recognize some of our elected officials and dignitaries. of course, you met mayor lee, and we also have with us today two commissioners of our board of education.

commissioner sandra fuhr. we also have commissioner moss. [applause] we are very happy to with us also -- the mere mention her -- our transbay executive director maria ayerdi-kaplan. thank you for being here with us. and the executive vice president for the united educators of san francisco, linda, thank you. and our president of united educators of san francisco, denis kelly. thank you as well. whenever you go down this path, you are going to miss someone. with all due respect, as i see you, i will call you out as we go through the program. thank you for being here.

i serve as the separate -- deputy superintendent for social justice. what i would like to think about, as the good to this dedication ceremony, this is a tangible, real world artifacts of social justice. if we believe social justice is about kids having opportunities to explore career paths, opportunities to have jobs in the real world, if it was not for these types of opportunities, that is social justice. we are happy to have you here to be part of the celebration of social justice. on a personal level, i will say to you, this is so important to me, because i stand before you as the son of a dirty man she metalworker. local 353 in tucson, arizona. why is that important? it is important because mayor

lee mentioned, you cannot run a city, have infrastructure for a city, without the jobs. there is a connection between college and career and career and college. they are very much interconnected. as my father, who never graduated from high school, later earned a ged, the person who taught me geometry was not my geometry teacher, who had a master's degree. she was wonderful, but i was just one of those kids. i learned geometry with my father actually doing the work. when you are cutting out sheet metal, bending the angles, you have to make it fit and you have to measure. i learned about ankles and how geometry works by actually doing it. when i say that career tech education is about college readiness, it is about utilizing all of those skills that we send

kids to school every day to learn. this gives you a reason to read and write and do arithmetic, because you get to apply it. that is the duty of what is happening here today. happy to have you here. what a wonderful building. what do you think? do you like this building? [applause] this is our flexible use green building. we call it the text 21 building. we have not named it officially yet, but there is a naming opportunity for you, if you want to take advantage of that. just kidding. before we dive into the program, i would like to talk more about all the wonderful individuals that have made this a reality. this has truly been a collaborative effort on the part of our partners, union partners, labor partners, educators, former administrators. you will hear from the former

principal, dr. schultze, who was part of the original work. before we get to that, i want to introduce the current principal, martin gomez. this high school is named after one of san francisco's own labor champions, and john o'connell. i want to introduce to you the man leading the academic work in collaboration with all the wonderful teachers here at john o'connell high school. [applause] >> it is a lot more full than it was five minutes ago. as principal, i want to welcome everyone to this event. it is important, not only for o'connell students, but all of san francisco. the district is making a push to

include, improve, and pushed toward education. today, we are here to celebrate another reason of how o'connell is supporting and encouraging all students to be prepared for college and for a career. while some people are spending their time looking at what students are going to college, which are going to a career, with this new tech 21 program, the courses will support students to be prepared for a career, and for college. that is the difference between the programs of before and now. the new tech 21 courses will require students to be able to apply tougher math concepts. the program will recruit students that are college-bound and students that want to go straight into the workforce.

the whole purpose is to make sure that these students are prepared for the requirements that internships and jobs are asking for out of high school. we want to ensure all of the graduates are prepared for these requirements because we are promising them jobs and internships, which is huge for our students, and for san francisco. i want to thank mark, david, the entire ct department, all of the stakeholders, dr. schultze, the previous administration, for making this building, and the course of the reality, which is much needed in san francisco. it is an exciting time to be a high school student in san francisco, but particularly, that john o'connell,