[inaudible] affair and it has been transformed into this great coming together by the military and the first responders, the great coming together of our uniformed personnel and a great [speaker not understood] of San Francisco. This amazing transformation in the last few years was due primarily to the vision and the dedication of three people, george and Charlotte Schultz and mike myers. Id like to pause to thank all three of them for this work. applause and in april of 1996, my last year as secretary of defense, i met one morning intelligence briefing at 7 oclock along with general charlie. The previous day general hughes had briefed us that the Chinese Military were to begin extensive military maneuvers in the taiwan strait. This morning we were stunned to learn that they had fired two missiles that landed just 10 miles off the coast of taiwan. The taiwanese had a president ial election underway, and the chinese were using a not too subtle way of explaining to them what they wanted
The asia pacific region. Secondly, that we would maintain freedom of access throughout that region. In particular, we would maintain the sea lanes in that area, whatever the challenge might be. Even as we reduce our defense budget, therefore we must maintain and would maintain a powerful navy, and that that navy would be charged with maintaining the freedom of those sea lanes. We had, of course, to be concerned as to whether there would be a challenge for that. We observed that the rise and shine has more energy needs for more energy than they can produce themselves, and to maintain the Economic Growth which they believe is essential. We observed that the South China Sea is a potential source of Energy Supplies for china and that there is a contention among the nations in that region as to where the ownership and rights of access are to the South China Sea. And this is conceivable that china might seek to reestablish its claim there by military coercion and that could lead them into a
Program of exercise we conducted. The exercises were not only conducted on military scenarios, but we had an extensive set of exercises involved in humanitarian response. During the time i was secretary, we had a Disaster Response very similar to the one theyre doing here in San Francisco today. We bought naval forces from the United States, from russia and japan all to honolulu where we had simulated a tsunami disaster. And these three great nations brought their fleets to honolulu exercising how to respond and alleviate that disaster. Well, that was then. How about now . Last year the United States released a new Security Strategy. Most of you probably have not even heard of that, but i have to tell you this was a big deal. It was one of the fifth American Security strategies that we have issued since the civil war. Among the highlights of that Security Strategy was a strong statement that the United States had the highest economic and security interests in the asia pacific region. N
For just over ten years and the three third, twothirds go to the School District, onethird goes to the preschool for all, the First Five Commission. And just the theme, just to restate, has been transformative. It was hard to know at that point what was going to happen to Public Education in the state and including in our city. A few years after peef resources started to ramp up, but the thought back then was we needed to do more to support and really invest in education of the students in the public schools. And little did we know how critical that those investments would become, especially in light of the gold recession that took place in 2008 that were still recovering from. These are some of the achievements that have happened through peef. These are such a partial list. There are so many critical things that have happened through these investments over the last ten years. Ill just go through these very quickly. So, heres a visual of what one of our School Libraries looked like bef
Have been partners with me to achieve this. So, i also think it would be great to include 3 and 4 year olds in preschool. We know that children with 2 years of high quality preschool exponentially better than those that have one. Again, we cannot accomplish this with the current allocation so im glad to hear that were going to have more funding available. [speaker not understood] subsidized children to have access but we have to continue to invest in highquality improvement efforts and professional development. I wasnt going to say this. Forgive me, barbara. I love that were investing in our Young Children and in child care and [speaker not understood] care, but if we wanted to be an even greater city, we would need a targeted universal Home Visiting program, targeted universal health and developmental screening program, additional implemental subsidies that include middle lowincome and middle income families and equality Improvement Initiative that build on the lessons we learn from p