The Time to Succeed Coalition brings together an unprecedented group of leaders from education and business, communities and academia to say that it is time to strike the shackles of an outdated school calendar from our disadvantaged schools.
In 2009, during my inaugural address, I expressed the importance of unprecedented partnerships. Since then, Utah's government, business, and education leaders in communities statewide have worked together more frequently and with better results than ever before.
Our message to leaders from every continent was simple: California has succeeded on climate and clean energy because we've emphasized local, human values and built a coalition that includes community and environmental leaders, working families, and communities of color - as well as unions and progressive business.
Schools serving disadvantaged students need more time to help these students catch up and gain the core academic skills they will need to succeed in our economy and society.
We need to lengthen the school day. We need to lengthen the school year. Our calendar is based upon the agrarian economy. Children in India and China are going to school 25, 30, 35 more days a year. They're just working harder than us. So, we need more time, particularly for disadvantaged children, who aren't getting those supports at home.
It's really important to say this. Often the faith schools were founded before the state provided education. I want good education in this country so I'm not going to slag off faith schools. I think that it's important that people of different backgrounds and different faiths go to school together and many faith schools do that.
It is not time to tell the leaders to realize how important education is - they already know it - their own children are in good schools. Now it is time to call them to take action.
Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, it's time for us to take a hard look at the separate and unequal conditions that still exist in our schools and our communities and rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the promise of equal opportunity for all.
Your calendar never lies. All we have is our time. The way we spend our
time is our priorities, is our strategy. Your calendar knows what you
really care about. Do you?
We don't have time to waste. Our communities are crumbling; our children are under siege. Failing schools and a for-profit prison-industrial complex are sucking the life out of black homes and communities. We are not going down like this!
But in our time women are no longer subject to the will of men. Quite the contrary. They have been given every opportunity to win their independence and if, after all this time, they still have not liberated themselves and thrown off their shackles, we can only arrive at one conclusion: there are no shackles to throw off.
We need to reject not only outdated fossil-fuel technology, but also an outdated economic system and an outdated corporatist political system. The progressive view is that we are smart enough and ethical enough to not have to be subservient to corporations. We can create our own resilient, localized communities.
And when it comes to developing the high standards we need, it's time to stop working against our teachers and start working with them. Teachers don't go in to education to get rich. They don't go in to education because they don't believe in their children. They want their children to succeed, but we've got to give them the tools. Invest in early childhood education. Invest in our teachers and our children will succeed.
My vision is that schools need to be community centers. Schools need to be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day six, seven days a week, 12 months out of the year, with a whole host of activities, particularly in disadvantaged communities.
In order to succeed in business a man does not need a degree from a school of business administration. These schools train the subalterns for routine jobs. They certainly do not train entrepreneurs.
Ultimately, for our family, the opportunity to spend increased time together, balanced with a return to academia, was one we could not pass up.
It is time to stop waiting for someone to save us. It is time to face the truth of our situation - that we're all in this together, that we all have a voice - and figure out how to mobilize the hearts and minds of everyone in our workplaces and communities.