[cheers and applause] this store is opening tomorrow and it is going to be beautiful. They did a great job. I want to give special thanks to the honorable mayor breed. Thank you so much for being here [cheers and applause] to the honorable willie brown. [cheers and applause] supervisor peskin, we moved from your district to your district. [laughter] i want to thank the p. U. C. , because without the p. U. C. , we would never have gotten into the building on time. Thank you to the p. U. C. [applause] i also want to thank, i will call her shelley b. B. Who is the former president of the planning commission, and aaron peskin introduced me to her and she came up to me and she said, mr. Rogers, so nice to meet you. I am 100 against your project but i have a open mind. [laughter] i said all right. And we spent three hours together. After that three hour period, she looked at me she says, i hate you and i said wise that . And she said because i am 100 for your project. [applause] i also want
Good morning, everyone. I am william rogers, i am the president and c. E. O. Of goodwill San Francisco san mateo. [cheers and applause] [laughter] i want to welcome all of you, our friends, our supporters, our partners. We are here today to celebrate together the grand opening of goodwills stateoftheart training and career center. [cheers and applause] i wanted to take a moment to do a couple of things. Lets show a little bit of love to the retail team. [cheers and applause] this store is opening tomorrow and it is going to be beautiful. They did a great job. I want to give special thanks to the honorable mayor breed. Thank you so much for being here [cheers and applause] to the honorable willie brown. [cheers and applause] supervisor peskin, we moved from your district to your district. [laughter] i want to thank the p. U. C. , because without the p. U. C. , we would never have gotten into the building on time. Thank you to the p. U. C. [applause] i also want to thank, i will call her
I personally love the mega jobs. I think theyre a lot of fun. I like being part of a build that is bigger than myself and outlast me and make a mark on a landscape or industry. We do a lot of the big sexy jobs, the stacked towers, Transit Center, a lot of the note worthy projects. Im Second Generation construction. My dad was in it and for me it just felt right. I was about 16 when i first started drafting home plans for people and working my way through college. In college i became a project engineer on the job, replacing others who were there previously and took over for them. The Transit Center project is about a million square feet. The entire floor is for commuter buses to come in and drop off, there will be five and a half acre city park accessible to everyone. It has an amputheater and water marsh that will filter it through to use it for landscaping. Bay area council is big here in the area, and they have a gender equity group. I love going to the workshops. Its where i met jes
Employee, raise your hand so i can thank you. [ applause ]. Ill tell you, these results, its really working. We monitor if were doing the right things. We see these incredible results for San Francisco and oakland. For fulltime teachers for math and technology. A surge of kids who are enrolled in stem and Computer Science. More young women and more students of color. Higher attendance rates. Higher math scores. Higher grades. You guys all have to get higher grades now, isnt that good news . Thats what were expecting you to be in school more and have higher grades because of this. This year were going to give another 17. 2 million to San Francisco and oakland Public Schools. Incredible. [ applause ]. Im excited that weve given more than 67 million to these local schools. Congratulations to you. We are well on our way to giving 100 million to local San Francisco and oakland Public Schools. I hope that is just the beginning. [ applause ]. You know, i mentioned mayor lee and mayor lee is n
I dont thank you do overstate. I love the way you framed it from a moral perspective in terms of who we are as a society and what we represent, how to define community and a commonwealth when so many people that appear to be doing well are actually struggling, and so many people that clearly are struggling are also struggling in historic numbers. So this issue it has been with us for decades. I was a former supervisor here 20 plus years ago. This was the issue. It hasnt gone away. It is just more acute than ever. And the nature of the change has now been fasttrack. I am even feeling it as a fifthgeneration san franciscan with family here and businesses here. I am acting like that old san franciscan, i remember the days, and this place im starting to act like that. I know where those impulses come from because they are warning. Im also concerned about that. I am concerned broadly about the state. Rather than complain about it and lament about it, we are trying to do something about it.