Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson—yes, the former NBA-star KJ that Sonic fans loved to boo—visited Seattle's Franklin High School yesterday. He's still got his stuff. Johnson slammed dunked a student-focused, three-point speech that had the Franklin kids jumping to their feet and cheering.
I had the privilege of traveling around the city with Johnson starting with a lunch with community leaders at Island Soul in Columbia City. (The food was great!) At Franklin, Johnson told his personal story of doing well in high school only to find he was woefully unprepared for college at UC Berkeley. Raised by a single mom—his father drowned when Johnson was three—in a poor neighborhood of Sacramento, Johnson urged the students to (1) work hard, (2) climb the mountain to college and (3) help others. At one point in his presentation, Johnson pulled a $20 bill from his pocket and conducted a mini spelling bee. The challenge was to correctly spell euphemism, the word Johnson explained he didn't know in his first college class, the word that caused him to realize that he was unprepared for college level work.
Next, City Hall for a meeting with Mayor McGinn and the mayors of Tacoma, Federal Way and Burien. Our conversation focused on regional cooperation in education reform and the importance of aligning city services with school district needs. Johnson was recently elected chair of the U. S. Conference of Mayors education task force.
Our last two stops of the day were a private reception for Democrats for Education Reform and a rip-roaring speech to a packed Mt. Zion Baptist Church. It was a whirlwind day, for sure. I appreciated Johnson's passion for students, his desire to tell the truth about America's failure to prepare our children for college and globally-competitive career choices and our urgent need to reform public education so all kids receive the high quality educaiton they deserve. Johnson was right when he told the Mt. Zion audience that education should be the civil rights issue of the 21st century. And that got me thinking . . .
Over the past year, right here in Seattle, our community came together with one goal in mind—create a movement to demand reform in our public schools. And we did just that! Working together, Seattle school district officials and leaders of the teachers' union negotiated a new contract that puts kids at the center, introduces important reforms and, for the first time, links teacher performance evaluations with student academic growth. The new contract is not the end, it's a beginning. It's one step on a path to make sure all students in every school, in every neighborhood, successfully graduate from high school prepared for college. That's our vision. That's our hope for Seattle's children. Together, teachers, parents, school district leadership, union leaders, elected officials, the whole community can rally around this vision. It's the right thing to do.