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tv   [untitled]    December 20, 2011 4:31am-5:01am PST

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>> 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
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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,
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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 these 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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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it is an exciting time to be a high school student in san francisco, but particularly, that john o'connell, and if you are excited about these tech 21 classis, please stay in touch with us as we figure out ways to continue supporting students. thank you for your time, thank you for coming out, and let's move this forward. [applause]
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>> good evening, everyone. my name is filled in the third, the director of your parks department. my job can be challenging at times, but on and that light tonight, i feel like the luckiest guy in the world to be here, to support families in the event like this is truly fantastic. this is the greatest city in the world, the greatest parks department. thank you for joining us. 82 years ago, uncle john mclaren, our first park superintendent started the tradition of minding a mile- long of live trees at, to where
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he lived at the time. behind you is the official entry of san francisco, and it is called uncle john's tree. it is a monterey cypress that is 131 years old. it is over 100 feet tall. it has over 700 lights. it took 8 rec and park tree toppers to light this up. let's give a big round of applause honoring john mclaren, who would be 160 today. 82 years later, our staff has continued the tradition, and i want to thank all of the park staff, recreation staff, tree
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toppers, electricians, structural maintenance crew. everyone had a plan in -- hand in planning this tonight. i want to make sure that everyone is applauded for the great job that they had done. [applause] i also want to thank the city family who is here tonight. mayor ed lee. we will hear from him in a second. members of the board of supervisors, including supervisor farrell, supervisor elsbernd, supervisor wiener, i think supervisor mar is trying to park. supervisor mirkarimi is supposed to be here. i want to thank our fire chief joanne hayes white for being here today. i want to thank our police chief. our treasurer, jose cisneros
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our rec and park commissioners. [applause] ana and reid, fiona ma. i also want to thank quickly our entertainers for the evening. we have had some incredible entertainment. the golden gate band. the hoover middle school jazz band. the birchen high-school drum corps. the young people music theater company. the george washington high school marching band. the brunos.
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press, circus -- presscot circus. i also want to thank our co-host for the evening, the newly formed parks alliance. the parks department cannot do it alone. the alliance has really become our best friend. i want to recognize their board chair. our executive director matt o'grady will come up to say a few words. >> thank you so much. the parks alliance is the new kid on the block. a brand-new organization, and yet, a very familiar organization, because we come from the san francisco parks trust and from the neighborhood
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council. these two organizations got together and realize they can do so much more by combining forces to make this park system the best open space system in the world for san francisco. i wanted to give you a couple of samples of some of the great partnerships we have built to make these parks so fabulous and gray in san francisco. the first partnership is with none other than the parks and recreation department. it is called the gear up program, where we have been tried to buy resources for our part centers citywide. that program has raised, from your generosity, more than $300,000 or reparations centers across the city. bravo and thank you for your generosity. i want to mention another partnership we have had running through the san francisco parks
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alliance. take another look at this enormous, beautiful tree. trees like this do not get that way on their own. it started from a tiny seed, and it grew to this beautiful majesty because of the love, care, and feeding and care that was provided to victory over the last 130 years by our gardeners and arborists. every tree in every part in san francisco, every plant, the landscaping that makes our parks so beautiful, they are that beautiful because of the gardeners, landscape architects, and other professionals of the park staff that care for them every day and night, 365 days a year. where do our gardeners come from? i see a lot of young people
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here. some of you might be interested in learning how we can nurture them to make them so beautiful for us. we have a partnership with union local 261, who developed an apprenticeship program to teach young people how to be the best gardeners in the world so they could join the staff of the recreation and parks department and provide a future for parks and gardeners here in the city. thank you to you, 261, and the other partners that have been so great with us. i want to form another new partnership here with all of you. you may not know this, but today is a very special person's birthday today. some of you may not know this, but i got my start as a musician, as a conductor. i have not done it in quite
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awhile, but i will conduct all of you to sing happy birthday to none other than our own phil ginsburg, who is 45 today. please join me. >> ♪ happy birthday to you have a birthday to you happy birthday, dear phil happy birthday to you ♪ [applause] >> thank you. all i want for my birthday is 50 more gardeners. all right. let's bring up our parks champion. he is everywhere in the parks system. he is playing ping pong in the square, playing ball, in golden gate park, he is everywhere.
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ladies and gentlemen, our mayor, ed lee. >> thank you. i thought all you want it was her two front teeth? thank you very much for coming. it is wonderful to see so many families here together. this is the season where we celebrate with our family and kids. i cannot think of any place more wonderful to be than this 130- year cyprus to share with you the lighting of this wonderful tree. i want to thank our department representatives, city official family, elected officials. i also want to let you know, i came here last year. we saw painted on the side of this train, the world series chickenshit emblem. this year, we have our san
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francisco fire engine. -- championship emblem. a wonderful tribute to our fire department. i want to thank the chief for coming here tonight, for helping us with the toy drive, and for bringing a special guest. santa is here tonight, a special guest from our fire department. he is coming. i also want to let you know, in addition to tonight, on the weekend of december 17, 18, rec and park, city hall, all of our city officials, want to welcome you to the civic center. we are going to have a snow
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village, snow for all of you to play in. come in on saturday and sunday, the 17th and 18th. then on the 18th, we will open city hall, and you can take pictures with your family. city hall will be open from 11:00 until 4:00 p.m. that afternoon. please come in to join us for the holiday season. thank you. with that, are we ready? everybody stand up. how about a countdown beginning with 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
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[applause] happy holidays, everybody. >> if you listen very carefully, you are going to hear coming down the streets -- i think santa is coming, mr. mayor. i think he is coming. there is a lot of traffic out there, but he is on the way.
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>> hello. 9 judge terri l. jackson. the court is now recruiting prospective civil grand jurors. our goal is to develop a pool of candidates that is inclusive of all segments of our city's population. >> the jury conducts investigations and publishes findings and recommendations. these reports them become a key part of the civic dialog on how we can make san francisco a better place to live and work.
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>> i want to encourage anyone that is on the fence, is considering participating as a grand jury member, to do so. >> so if you are interested in our local city government and would like to work with 18 other enthusiastic citizens committed to improving its operations, i encourage you to consider applying for service on the civil grand jury. >> for more information, visit the civil grand jury website at sfgov.org/courts or call
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