Transcripts For CSPAN2 Anne Holton Discusses Public Educatio

The women in Leadership Program provides a unique opportunity for personal growth and renewal with likeminded women. I am pleased to serve as the faculty chair of this committee and moderator for tonights forum. It is with great pleasure that i welcome to psalm and introduced to others, and colton. She has devoted her entire career to serving as an advocate for virginias families and children. She currently serves as a board member of the virginia board of education. From 2014 until 2016, she served as secretary of education for the commonwealth of virginia. She resigned in july 2016 when her husband, United States senator and former governor tim kaine was asked to be Hillary Clintons running mate. Since the summer and fall of 2016 traveling the country in support of the clinton campaign. She served as first lady of virginia from 2016 until 2010. She launched programs to help virginia find and strengthen permanent families, particularly for older children in foster care or at risk of entering care. These efforts resulted in a dramatic increase and successful placement of keeping at risk children and permanent families. In 2013, she served as director of the Great Expectations program, an initiative that helped young people exiting foster care pursue Higher Education through the Virginia Community system and has served as a law clerk for the United States District Court judge robert. Attorney for the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society and judge and chief judge on the juvenile and Domestic Relations Court for the city of virginia. I will talk to you about that in a minute. She resigned from the bench following her husbands election as governor. She has received many awards for her work throughout the years. She graduated from princeton university. I know we have alum in our womens group. It was the Woodrow Wilson school of public affair. She earned her jd from harvard law where she met her future husband, tim kaine. They live in my hometown and they have three wonderful children who are all products of Public Schools. Without further ado, let me bring to the floor the phenomenal woman she is, and colton. [applause] thank you. What a treat to be with you. Im sure when we get to the conversation part, we will share more about the opportunities weve had to Work Together over the years but she is such a champion, particularly of high quality urban education and was such a gift for the richmond Public Schools where she was a very strong superintendent for many years, and those are jobs people dont stay in them as long as we need them to. The stability she gave the system was really valuable. we are going to start with the story and then some free lessons or thoughts that the story had for me. My story starts with this weekend, i was in farmville, virginia. Some of you have heard of that. You might have a connection to virginia or the history of the schools integration. Farmville is the center Prince Edward county. It is now the home of a museum built on the site and out of the buildings of molten high school which is one of the schools that contributed to brown versus board of education. I will start with that. Im not good with technology but they said it was so easy. I will start with my story. Thats a story about barbara johns. Who knows who she is . Educator, dont be shy. Good, then he should know who she is. This young lady at age 16, went to molten high school and Prince Edward county. It was the black high school, there is a fancy new white school in town and some people say she was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement because she was the First Student led case that became part of brown versus education. She went to the school serving 400 students when it was built for 200. It was obsolete almost before it was built. They added on tarpaper shacks. Almost chicken coops covered with tarpaper to be able to expand the school. They were working with used textbooks and handmedown science equipment, and handmedown school buses. She said at age 16, we are not ready for that. Ill put this down. Barbara said at age 16, she said, we need to do something about this, we students need to do something. Its time that negroes, she called them are entitled to a decent schools. We students need to step up to the plate to make a difference. So she organized a secret walkout and one of the key facts that made her get to the point of getting to where she was willing to cross over and take risks, was several of her friends died in a Tragic School bus accidents in the spring of 1951. They had an old handmedown school bus that stalled on the train tracks. Got hit, a family of five kids was killed, one was her best friend knows march of 1951. In april 1951, this young lady letter walkout. She and her very small Co Conspirators had planned out, in infinite detail, including had written a note and had somebody call the principal to say theres a disturbance downtown. Some of your boys are at the train station making trouble and you need to get there. Good principle, small town, headed out the door. His initials happen to be the same as barbara johns, bj. So she then had distributed to all of the teachers in the building a note signed bj same bring all of your students to the auditorium for an assembly right away. So the teachers led all of them to the assembly and barbara came out on stage and aspired the students to walkout. We are not going to take it anymore. Were not going to live in the second class citizen status. Were going to change things. They walked out. They proceeded to have a School Strike that lasted a little over one month, where parents another adults talk them into going back into the schools. Meanwhile, they came into contact with lawyers who help them become part of brown versus board of education case that change the separate but equal ruling. Barbara was not fighting for integration of schools, barbara was fighting for the equal parts of the equation. She was not even focused on addressing the separate part, she was focused on, if were going to be in the school we need equal facilities. She was focus particularly and i want to point this out, she was focus particularly on equal facility. Thats why told you this story, she was worried about the bus. She was worried about the leaking buckets they had to have because of the leaks in the roof in the middle of the classroom. She was worried about science labs she was not complaining about teachers, they had extraordinary teachers, one of the ironies really is that before the days of desegregation africanamerican leaders and Women Leaders were able to get jobs and africanamerican schools for people who may not have been able to get jobs anywhere else. Was at this event in farmville this weekend celebrating this museum and some relatives of teachers who would have to barbara when she was there in the late 40s and 50s, one of the teachers who is there in a hidden figures. Have you seen that . One of the ladies was the supervisor in the west competing in it. There are some liberties taken as to time, but its based on a true character, who was a mathematician, guess what her job was before she went there . She was a math teacher at the school. She also taught and i was with the family members who have been taught by her. She taught choir and let a magnificent choir at the school. She also taught character, what her colleagues and students said, as teachers did them, and as teachers do now, all the time, everywhere. So, barbara was fighting for equal and she let the walkout and one of the points i want to tell you that she had it all planned up to the point where she came out from behind the stage and made the speech to her colleagues and let all 400 out to go home and tell their parents. She had all planned out, but she didnt really have a plan for after that. She did not know she was going to become part of this lawsuit. She did not know a number of the consequences that would happen as a result. She did not know that after the Supreme Court rule, after all deliberate speed ruling that slowed down the effect of that, she did not know that Prince Edward county would lead the nation in a dubious honor of closing the entire School System for five years, to avoid having white children and black children go to school together. Prince Edward County still to this day suffers from that at this event i was at this weekend we had a number of people, 20 or 30 people in the audience stood up when they asked folks who had been affected by that fiveyear gap in their schooling. There are 20 or 30 people in the audience who remember that. Kids got sent to live with relatives in other states. Barbara got sent to live with relatives for the south for her own safety. She did not know the consequences. But she knew she had to stand up, and she did. Thats my story. There several lessons or thoughts i would share with you based on barbara story. The first is, that im hinting at already, sometimes we have to act even when we cannot really see the outcomes. And sometimes we have to act when those outcomes might include setbacks. Barbara did not mean to close schools, she just did not want leaky roofs. Sometimes we have to act not knowing exactly whats going to happen. As things rollout, we get to the point where we must act and throw it in, have no fear and see where things sleep. I have my own parts in the story 20 years after barbara and she died some years ago. I have been on panels occasionally were one of her classmates was there and some other africanamerican students were the first black kids in an allwhite school and did they get to be there tell me experiences in the 50s and 60s and im telling my fall 1970 experience is very mild and i feel very humbled to follow in the footsteps of great leaders like this young lady. But, i did have my little chapter of helping integrate the schools. Heres my picture on my first day of school at must be middle school. What is now Martin Luther King Middle School in an allblack neighborhood. An allblack school named after a confederate hero, general mosby. That is me and i am in that goofy culottes. My little brother people in over the shoulder and thats my mother taking me to school. My dad was elected governor in january 1970. A republican governor of virginia. The first governor of virginia, first republican governor since reconstruction. The parties were a little mixed up then, especially in the sou south. The party in power all that many years had been what we called dixie craft and they had been the segregationist. My dad ran on a platform, among of the things of ending the era of defiance. He and his inaugural address in january of 70 announced that were going to end this era and bring bridging into the 21st century and make racial reconciliation happen. He helped in the great State Government with appointments. Little did he know groups. Not playing well. Little did he know that he was going to have an opportunity very soon in his early in his administration to put his money where his mouth was. And when that following summer we had been in the Governors Mansion playing again. I did not even touch at this time. There we go. When a Court Ordered that the schools in Richmond City, we had moved from richmond from roanoke where we grew up in january 1970 when dad was inaugurated. Were going to the city Public Schools, we always been a Public School family. But were just naturally fell into the white school in the suburb that were most like the schools we had gone to enrollment. We came from a very homogenous, not only allwhite background, it was white, anglosaxon protestant, i didnt know people from different religions, we were uppermiddleclass and did not know people from different economic backgrounds. So he went to school in Richmond City at the beginning like that. The judge ordered crosstown busing to and that. All the different mix it up and that worked in the judge ordered crosstown busing and we were signed to the two most be middle school. We went to the high school, Thomas Jefferson. I showed you my picture instead of my sisters pitcher. My dad took my sister to the high school that morning. There is a picture of my data my sister that went around the world, we heard from soldiers of vietnam puts in that picture. Was on the front page of the new york times. She was wearing my dress which she did not have my permission today. But, i showed you my picture because i got all over. That pitcher got all over because it was an important statement at the time. Were other southern governors within years before that have been doing the locking arms to block schoolhouse door so little black children could go to school with white children. And our family step in moving forward and saying were going to make this work was a dramatic break of that history. So i went to mosby for two years and then went to a next her mental high school within the city. I had a great school experience. I can tell you more about that later. The point i wanted to make is we are hoping to integrate the schools. We were excited about integrating the schools. Little did we know most white people who are supposed to show up at the school that day did not show up. People started schools in peoples basements. This is before homeschooling really had a label. People started little academies. People moved to the county. So, we do more to encourage white flight than to integrate the schools. In the short term. In the long term, ironically, i think some of the counties people fled to are now more integrated than the city. We have white people and black people and brown people which we did not have an virginia bed. We have large hispanic populations of people from different places, the whole culture is much more diverse in virginia. Some of our suburban communities are much more diverse. The unintended consequence and outcome we did not anticipate was that we left behind in urban core. Some of us if you havent read the book you get the total history and the 5 miles in a world apart, im not saying it right, but you know it. 5 miles away in the world part. Who give you the history and how there is an opportunity to order cross jurisdiction busing which wouldve prevented the white flight. It was not successful in the Supreme Court due to timing. The luck of the draw. My lesson here is the lesson that sometimes things dont happen as you expect them to. Im going to move forward. I want to talk with deborah new. I will go more quickly through my next two thoughts and lessons. My next thought lesson, barbara was fighting for the equal part of separate but equal. That fight lives on. That fight very much lives on. We do not have equality in our schools. I had the opportunity to work with our schools and lots of different ways over my career. Im fairly light to education policy. O secretary of education started three years ago. That was really my First Education policy job. I had worked with schools in many different contexts. I was apparent. Our children went to the same Richmond City schools that i attended. When debra was superintendent there, i stayed away from her then. I never had to deal through them. As a Juvenile Court judge and as chief judge i had a lot of opportunities to work with the schools. As a champion for Child Welfare and foster reform i had a lot of opportunity to work with schools. My education is an education policy person was during my time as secretary of education. What i learned is what you know already. Our schools are still not equal. We have significant challenges, particularly in our urban and high poverty communities. It does not break down on race. It is largely race, but i think its really more easier to understand broken down by socioeconomic status. Our urban core and rural poverty schools are suffering. Spend a lot of time as secretary visiting schools. I want to show you one now. Im visiting tj. If you have read dean rines but, you know that one of the school he talks about in the two schools 5 miles way, one of the county, one in the city, Thomas Jefferson is the school in the city. This is mr. Stevens, master math teacher. This is mr. Fox, student and a Teacher Residency Program will need to be a great teacher. This is raymond, fluffy robot. They tell me it was named by the girls. They are not in the picture, but there were enough of them to get naming rights, which is great. If you dont hear more about mrn read my love letter to the Richmond City school. You find it on youtube. The ted talk. I think there is a link to it on the site. But what i want to talk my visit for us just how much the schools and all those tj, freeman and those two schools that they compared to further see a comparison all across virginia. This school struggles for money for the robotics team. They struggle to get Great Teachers that mr. Stevens is is an extraordinary teacher. The pressures on a teacher like him to get out, this is a school, even though theyre doing great work academically with these kids, there tech scores are not what they would be in the suburban school. Because the kids dont come in with the knowledge that they come in with at the suburban school. Its more that their starting from a further back starting po