Governor Visits Fresno High School
GOVERNOR: Good morning, everybody. Good morning. I'm very excited to be here today at the Washington Union High School, simply because this school runs really well, as I said earlier, and they are doing a remarkable job with education of the children; not only academic education, but vocational education. It's really extraordinary the kind of shops that they have here where the youngsters can really train to do the welding and working with wood and getting training in medical, for medical skills and so on, to prepare them for being nurses or medical technicians or doctors. They're doing an outstanding job with the computer training, with math, with English. The test scores are great here.
Video of the GovernorAnd it's all because everyone works together, the whole community, the teachers, the school principal, the school superintendent. Everyone here works together, and there is this great partnership here. And it just shows that when a school is fiscally responsible, when a school really makes the children be the priority rather than the adult, that the children are the priority, then everything falls into place and things are happening.
They have a great program here where several of the schools -- I think it's seven schools -- come together and do a bussing program. That has cut down the costs, and they are able to then also provide buses that are clean, use clean gas and so on, which really protects the kids so they won't get the lung diseases and all those things that usually kids get from bad air.
Images of the GovernorSo all of this is working here, and so I just wanted to come here to put the spotlight on this school. And I hope that all of you are reporting the great news, because we hear so many times the bad news about education. And yes, there is a lot of bad news about education in California. But in the middle of all that there is also great news, like the school that I went to the other day in San Diego that became a charter school, that turned around, where people got together and rallied together to protect the children and their education. And this school here is the same thing.
And so I want to just again say to one of our great leaders, Dr. Mehas -- who has done such an outstanding job, is a believer in children and has been working with me for many years, if it's the After School Programs or education in general -- so I just want to congratulate him, the school principal, and everyone here in this school, for doing such an outstanding job.
If you have any questions, please feel free.
Q: Here in the Central Valley there are a lot of schools where the children perform below average. What's being done about them, and how to help them achieve better test scores and better education?
GOVERNOR: We are trying to bring accountability to education. And I think Dr. Mehas can speak about that, because this school is a perfect example. If every school would operate like this school here, like the Washington Union High School, then we would have a lot of very successful schools. And what we are trying to do is make all schools have the same principles, where schools work together and where the ultimate goal is to make the children smart and to get them ready for the future rather than always fighting over things that are good for the adults. We've got to fight over things that are good for our children. Dr. Mehas --
MALE VOICE 1: One of the things that Washington Union does, you have three hours academic solid, right? And then you have another block that you do your other areas, so --
MALE VOICE 2: In general, a lot of resources into academic areas, but we're still cognizant of the fact that students need the vocational and elective opportunities to stay connected.
MALE VOICE 1: They have standards, they have accountability, and they're working towards that, and they've shown great improvements. They have the same challenges as the rest of the schools in the Valley in terms of limited English speaking students, poverty, and all that. But these people don't let that stand in their way. No excuses. Their folks -- and these kids are showing tremendous growth and improvement.
GOVERNOR: So the key thing is that we all work together to make this happen. As I've said many times, I'm an education governor. I will fight for education; I will fight for the children. As I've said in there, I have been involved with children's issues all my life. I believe in children. I know what a great education has done for me and how it made me successful. This is why, as governor, we have increased education funding this year by 3 billion dollars, the highest increase ever. We are now spending 50 billion dollars on education, which is an extraordinary amount of money. The key thing now is that we continue funding education, but at the same time that we make sure that the school system is accountable, and that it makes children be number 1. That's what we are fighting for here. And to support the teachers, because as I said, if the children are our future then the teachers are the architects of the future. So this is why in my budget we put recognition pay for excellent teachers. We want to also put in extra pay for teachers and school principals that are willing to work in low performing schools. All of those issues are extremely important in order to straighten out the mess that we have, and that I have inherited when I came into office.
FEMALE VOICE: Last question, please.
Q: You mentioned clean air. There's a vote today on whether people ought to use winter blend gases a couple months early. How do you feel about that?
GOVERNOR: I think that under the circumstances right now I think it's probably a good idea to change the plan, just because we are short on fuel. And as you know, when you have a shortage of fuel and there's more demand than there is supply, then the prices rise. What we want to do is, we want to do everything we can to protect the consumers, to protect the people from high gas prices. So we are struggling with all that, we are fighting, and we are trying to do as much as we can in order to get that under control.
Thank you very much. Thank you for being here, okay? Thank you.
MALE VOICE: Thanks, Governor. Appreciate it.
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