Time: 9 a.m.
Date: Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Event: Career Technical Education Summit, South Building
ACE Clearwater Enterprises, 19815 Magellan Drive, Torrance, CA
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
Well, thank you very much, Lieutenant Governor Garamendi, for the wonderful introduction, and I want to thank all of you for being here today. And obviously, as someone that is a big believer in career tech education, I'm very excited about having this summit.
First of all, I would like to thank, of course, the people that are responsible for organizing this and having us here. And I'm not going to mention everybody; I know I'm going to leave out some people, but let me just give it a shot. First of all, today's sponsor, the Urban Foundation, I want to thank them, and our host, Ace Clearwater Enterprises and its CEO, Kellie Johnson. And we want to thank also John Garamendi, our Lieutenant Governor, who has been a great leader and believes in children and in education. Then Jack O'Connell, our State Superintendent of Education, we want to thank him also for being here with us.
And then Mark Drummond, who is the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, Senator Mark Wyland, Assemblymember Martin Garrick, and also Laura Richardson. We also have three of our Cabinet Secretaries here, and they have been doing a great, great job; Vicky Bradshaw, Scott Himelstein, and Dale Bonner. I want to thank them also for being here and for their great leadership.
And then, of course, the students -- the students that are working here very hard today. They are from Skills USA, and you can see them around, running around with their red jackets. And then we also have students here from LA Trade Tech College. They're doing the catering, so if you eat any delicious foods today you know where it's coming from, and who taught them how to cook so well.
I'm also glad that we have so many leaders here today around this table. If it is labor leaders, school district leaders, business leaders, education leaders, we have everyone here, all in order to really help and support our students.
I also want to say thank you very much to Ted Mitchell, the Chairman of my Committee on Education Excellence. Where is Ted? Ted is right over there. Thank you very much, not only for being such a great education leader, but also for being the moderator here today. And you're responsible to make this a spicy conversation, so the pressure is on you on that one.
And basically, as I said earlier, I am very, very happy about having this summit, and it's a summit that is way overdue. I think it is very important that we today talk frankly and get the best ideas together so we can continue to expand career tech education here in California. I've always been a big supporter of career tech education, from the time I came into this office, and of course my whole life, because I myself am a product of career tech education and I'm going to talk a little bit later about that. But I have to say that finally we're putting the spotlight on this issue, and finally we are really addressing the needs, and making it expand.
California is a global center of innovation, and if we were a country we would be the 6th largest economy in the world. But in order for us to really keep that competitive edge, we have to do much more when it comes to investing in career tech education. I mean, if you think about countries like India, China, or the European Union, these are all economic powers and they strategically are investing in career tech education, not just now, but they have been in the past, for the last 50 years, and they will in the future. So for us to be competitive, we have to do the same thing, because they are preparing a workforce to succeed in the global market.
We have, at the same time as they are building their career tech education, we see students dropping out -- in some schools up to 50 percent of the high school students are drooping out -- so that just shows you the difference. And I think that it's very clear that a lot of students are dropping out because we don't offer them alternatives. We only offer them one thing, and that is a four-year college, but there is nothing else for them to shoot towards.
So what we want to do is, career tech education, we know, addresses two very important issues; it fulfills the needs of the workforce and also it fulfills the needs of the students by giving them multiple pathways to success. A lot of students, it's very clear, have said that they are dropping out because they don't find anything interesting in school, or they have no interest in going to a four-year college. So, because they don't have an alternative, they are discouraged and they drop out. By expanding career tech education we are giving them options, options to become mechanics, or become nurses, or carpenters, electricians, to become welders, or chefs, or lab technicians, computer technicians, and the list goes on and on and on. Those are all very important professions.
Now, just to give you an idea -- and I think a lot of you have those statistics -- you know we are a very fast expanding economy, and that means that in 10 years from now, or in 5 years from now, there is a certain amount of workforce that we'll need. Like for instance, by the year 2014 California will need 132,000 nurses. We will need 73,000 carpenters, 25,000 electricians, almost 12,000 welders, and our booming nanotechnology sector will need 250,000 production workers in the next 10 years alone. So those are really good and high paying jobs, as we have heard. Some of these people are making 60,000, 70,000 dollars coming out of career tech education schools, and that is really extraordinary. This is good for California's economic future, and it is really very important to let our children share in the California Dream.
I myself, as I have said earlier, am a product of career tech education. Between the time I was 15 and 18 I went to school in Austria to learn how to be a salesman. Now, I learned about selling, marketing products, publicizing, how to elevate your products and make them shine compared to others, and how to do inventory, how to do bookkeeping, accounting, writing business letters, how to deal with customers, math, language skills, and on and on and on. Little did I know then that I would be using this kind of information and knowledge that I've gained the rest of my life. I was able to use those skills in selling bodybuilding, I was able to use those skills in marketing my movies. And now as governor I'm very happy that I had this training, to go out and to sell California products worldwide on our trade missions and in other ways. So selling, marketing, has always come in handy. So to me it is very important that we also let our students know that what they are learning, they can use that for the rest of their lives, and that is why, basically, I'm very passionate about this subject.
And that's why I feel very strongly, for instance, to let President Bush know that you should not cut the funds for career tech education programs in the state of California, or in other states all over the United States. It's a big, big mistake, and it's shortsightedness. So I'm urging him, and I've already urged him strongly, to go and reconsider that proposal and to put it back in the budget, that this will be very important, this is funding that will help American workers to compete in the global marketplace.
So I'm proud that California actually has taken the leadership in that in the United States, that we are not waiting for the federal government, although we would like to get their help. But we are the leaders again, we are moving forward, we are expanding very quickly, and we must build facilities. We must build facilities, and this is why it was very important that last year when we negotiated our infrastructure bonds and we talked about building more schools, there was not much mentioning about building career tech facilities. But we started really hammering away, and even though there was some resistance there, we said that has part to be part of the negotiations, and it has to be part of building facilities for education. And we got it, and I'm very happy that Proposition 1B passed last November 7th, and the people approved it, and now we have included 500 million dollars to build career tech facilities across the state.
Also, my proposed budget includes 52 million dollars for career tech education. So as you can see, one can dialogue a lot about this subject, but if you don't put the money there for building facilities, or put it in the budget to actually have the programs and to create the changes and expand, you don't have much. So we do that. This money will expand programs in middle schools, high schools, and in community colleges, build stronger partnerships between businesses and schools, expand student internships, create career-themed high schools, and streamline the process for becoming career tech teachers, which of course is very important, to streamline the process. My plan will put more career tech teachers into the classroom by reforming the way that we handle credentialing. Currently, California has around 175 different credentials for career tech teachers. That is way too many. What we want to do is reduce it down, the number, to 15, and just simplify it.
This summit is, of course, the beginning. This is a summit that will open up the dialogue. I'm looking forward to hearing all the different proposals so we can create a long-term blueprint, and really move forward and expand career tech education. I'm very adamant that we should do here the same thing as other countries are doing, as India, China, or the European countries are doing, where career tech education is looked upon as equal to a four-year college. We cannot look at that as a second-rate education, and the other one as a 'higher education', as we call it. This should be treated equally, and that's what our motivation should be, and our goal should be.
With that, I would like to hand it over to our MC, or the man that is going to handle and move the conversation around, Ted Mitchell, our great education leader. Thank you very much.
CSA's Press Release (PDF, 176 kb)
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