Conversations with Al McFarlane broadcast interview on KFAI FM 90.3, Tuesday, December 6, 2011. The interview included Hennepin County Attorney, Michael Freeman and manager of the county’s Be at School program, Tamiko Thomas, St. Paul City Council Member Melvin Carter III and Sondra Samuels, Chief Executive Officer of Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ), a project recently awarded a multi-year federal grant for $28 million to create better education outcomes for children in a 18 by 13 block area of North Minneapolis.
Al McFarlane
Today, we look at challenges, needs, and opportunities for our community to support our children’s education. Michael O. Freeman is Hennepin County Attorney. Tamiko Thomas manages the County Attorney's “Be At School” Program. St. Paul City Council Member Melvin W. Carter III represents Ward 1 in Saint Paul and Sondra Samuels is Chief Executive Officer of Minneapolis' Northside Achievement Zone. Together we are exploring education and what it means to support children and families in ways that address the education achievement gap.
Mike Freeman, what is the Be At School initiative? People don’t normally associate the County with kids' education, but you have got a hand in the game, right?
Michael Freeman
Well the education process is important to all of us. I am a product of Minneapolis Public Schools. I learned because I got to school. Somebody made me go. The County Attorney’s office enforces the truancy laws. When I first became County Attorney, I learned that 98% of the young people who commit a felony were truant first. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to say “Let’s get those kids in school and we can reduce those numbers of felonies."During my first term as County Attorney from ‘91 to ‘99, we worked with the Minneapolis Public Schools and all the schools of Hennepin County trying to keep kids in school. When I returned, I found it an even larger need than before. Be At School is our new program to make sure kids are at school.
Let me just say Al, at the risk of filibustering, one of my chief partners in working on this in my first term was Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton. Together we created the Truancy Curfew Center to get kids off the streets late at night so they can get up and go to school the next day. Sharon supplied a lot of leadership; Minneapolis cops were great; and that Truancy Curfew Center that has been around now for 15 years is still working and thanks primarily to Minneapolis cops. They bring those kids in, we process them much more efficiently. We get kids off the streets late at night and into the classroom the next day.
Al McFarlane
Tamiko Thomas, what is the mission from your point of view? What is your daily activity to make this mission real?
Tamiko Thomas
Be At School is what I describe as a tiered intervention. When kids are not attending school, we connect them with community agencies and resources. The mission is to provide them an education. We invite families to come in and meet with us and we talk about the compulsory education law, letting them know that it is important for their child to be at school. and then we offer them a community agency to work with them. We fill in with the “Be At School” program. Now while the courts are a part of the solution, it is most important for families, community and school to come together to work on this issue. We are going to see the best results when we have that partnership.
So we on a daily basis are working hard with schools to partner with them, to let them know that we are a resource for them, to share the information on the laws with families so that they understand how they can ensure that their kid is not accruing unexcused absences
Al McFarlane
Is the bulk of your work in Minneapolis?
Tamiko Thomas
It is throughout the entire County although we do receive many of our referrals from Minneapolis Public Schools.
Al McFarlane
What is the ratio?
Tamiko Thomas
We receive about two-thirds of our referrals from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Al McFarlane
Mike Freeman, the perception is that schools in Black communities are consistently failing and that families are not supportive of efforts to keeps kids in school. Does that common perception hold any water?
Michael Freeman
I think it is way overplayed Al. I rarely met a responsible parent of any race that didn’t want their kid to go to school and to learn. Some of the folks that we see in the program are younger moms who didn’t do well in school themselves, are trying to find a roof over their head and the next meal for their kids. School doesn’t seem to be very important. But what “Be At School” does is work with that mom and say, 'Hey, we are here to help. You need shoes? We will find them. You need transportation? We will work it out. But you need to know that if your child is going to have a chance in this world, they have to go to school.
Many of our newest neighbors and friends from Somalia don’t understand about compulsory education. We help to work with them to provide that communication link.
Al McFarlane
When we look at the disparities in education outcomes though, Tamiko, how do you configure what you do to have a direct impact on reducing the disparity?
Tamiko Thomas
We are an attendance program. We are trying to ensure that kids are at school every day on time. We know that if kids are attending school and they develop a healthy attachment to school, they are going to achieve. But when you accrue a number of unexcused absences or just have chronic absenteeism, it is hard for that achievement to be realized. That is why we really remain very focused on helping families eliminate barriers that are preventing them from being able to get their child to school every single day.
For some people who are new to the country, once they receive information in that first level of intervention, and attend the parent group meeting, we share with them what this compulsory education law says. Once they understand it, they end up doing a lot better. Our evaluation from the University of Minnesota has shown that just a little bit of education can go a long way in helping to eliminate this problem.
Al McFarlane
Melvin Carter, you have a passion for education. You are a member of the City Council of the City of Saint Paul. How do these ideas, these challenges resonate with you as you listen to Mike Freeman and Tamiko Thomas?
Melvin Carter
Thank you for having us all on the radio here today, Al. This is a phenomenal show and phenomenal opportunity to raise all of this work to more people’s attention.
The first thing that goes through my mind as I hear them talk about this program is that it is a phenomenal program and it is doing exactly what we are trying to do in Saint Paul, which is identify a problem, take a unique approach to solving it, and really, say we are all responsible.
The County Attorney is assuming responsibility for educational outcomes. Our city council members need to assume responsibility for educational outcomes.
I think that we have realized in recent years that we are all responsible for raising our children. Many of us who are passionate about affordable housing. Well, if we want our young people to be able to afford to live in dignified homes, we need to make sure they are educated. Many are passionate about closing the employment gap. Well, if we want our young people to be able to compete and hold well-paying jobs they can feed a family with, we better make sure they are educated. Many are passionate about a safe livable clean community. If we want our young people to feel accountable for what they do today, we have to make sure that they are hopeful about their tomorrow… which means we have to educate them.
Al McFarlane
It sounds like you are saying we have missed the mark or dropped the ball and somehow bear some responsibility for …
Melvin Carter
I think a better way of looking at it is just saying that we are all accountable for picking up the ball and running with it right now. That is important because we often end up in this paralysis of blame in trying to figure out whether the parents or the teachers or the system or the government or who is to blame, none of which is really helping our children. We have to say forget who is to blame let us figure out who is accountable for solving the problem. Let us add some real ambitious meaningful goals. Let’s hold ourselves accountable to those goals and whether we meet them or not. Let’s evaluate our work and figure out how to do it even better next week and next year.
Al McFarlane
And so Melvin Carter how are you inserting the city into the process of education? Mike Freeman is saying that he has established education and supporting education as a County responsibility function and he has created a programming to support keeping kids in school. What does the city of Saint Paul do to support the education apparatus?
Melvin Carter
Well Al, my relationship in this started actually a few years back as I was trying to figure out where I wanted to send my own child to kindergarten.
Al McFarlane
So it is personal.
Melvin Carter
Very personal. Just like my family, so many families face this challenge where we know that where I send my daughter to kindergarten is going to have impacts on the next four generations of my family. As you start wading into proficiency rates and test scores and disparity numbers and those types of thing, you end up filled with this hollow like feeling inside. You ask, “Who can I trust with my child?”
So we have to tackle this. Luckily I didn’t start the process of getting the city involved in education. We got the Mayor in Saint Paul, Chris Coleman, who has been passionate about that from even before I got elected. So when we started the work of building the Saint Paul “Promise Neighborhood,” we had an easy champion there. We had great champions on the school board and then our superintendent Valeria Silva has been phenomenal. We certainly had more than one county commissioner who has been a supporter of this work. So we are not just the City. We have brought the City, the County, the School Board and 72 community based organizations together in this partnership. The County’s role has to be supporting family and personal life success. The school’s role is to deliver a very high quality curriculum. The City’s role is community building.
Al McFarlane
And all under the banner of “Promise Neighborhood” is that correct?
Melvin Carter
Absolutely!
Al McFarlane
Tell me about that.
Melvin Carter
The Saint Paul “Promise Neighborhood” is a coordinated community based, community led effort to ensure that all of our children succeed in school and in life. We have to make sure that every single child who is raised in our community has the opportunity to achieve to his or her full potential. Unfortunately that hasn’t been the case for far too long and I think that will continue until enough of us agree that we can’t let it go another generation.
Al McFarlane
Not dissimilar from the “Northside Achievement Zone” I think.
Sondra Samuels, thank you for being here and thank you for the work that you do, the leadership you provide in our community. So how does this resonate with you?
Sondra Samuels
Well I feel like I am in church this morning, Al, because I wanted to say ‘Amen’ to everything from Mike, Tamiko, and Melvin. There is nothing more important on the African American agenda, Minnesota’s agenda, America’s agenda than educating all of our children. Our President says that the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.
And we are so woefully behind.
I am just so passionate about this, Al. I am tired of burying our babies, putting them in jail. We have the cradle-to-prison pipeline that is a real pipeline in too many cities across the country. It is really about Brown and Black boys. If you line up three African American boys born after 2001, one will go to jail in his lifetime. And if you look at the educational attainment, education is all wrapped up in there, you will find that it is very poor.
But the cradle-to-case load pipeline that I am sure Mike and Tamiko know a lot about is really about Brown and Black girls. If you line up two Black girls who are teenagers in a home that is receiving welfare, one of the two will go on welfare in her lifetime, statistics show.
But we know the answer.
There is a solution.
We can create an alternative pipeline. That is what I think all of us are talking about here. It is the cradle-to-college-to-career pipeline that can be done, that is being done. And if there is any place that can do it really well, it is Minnesota and it is Minneapolis and Saint Paul. So I am excited about the work that is being done.
Al McFarlane
Mike Freeman, cradle-to-prison sounds like an indictment and you are the prosecutor. Is that real, or is it an oversimplification? Is there something that we all have to be more aware of?
Michael Freeman
When I was County Attorney last time, we did a study of delinquents under 10. Why did kids commit crimes under the age of 10. We found that the following factors were part of that child’s life: single parenthood; low income; lack of a positive influence male in the child’s life, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles who have been involved in prison; and lack of attendance in school.
That’s no surprise. There were kids at Seward School when I went there in the 50s who were following a pattern like that and, by the way, they were white kids. So this is not a unique color track. Every kid needs a family. Every kid needs a home. Every kid needs food. Every kid needs educating.
What we have tried to do in the county attorney’s office is say we want to do our part. We have an obligation to uphold the laws and we can use those laws to make sure the kids get in school.
Most parents as I said before want their kid in school but often there is some barrier, there is some problem or something. Elementary kids don’t want to be watching TV during the school day, they want to be in school. We just have to help their parents get them there.
Melvin Carter
That really touches on the first conversation I ever had with Geoffrey Canada who is the Executive Director at the “Harlem Children’s Zone” which has been known around the country for their work in New York. His bottom-line message was ‘it is the adults.’ When a 10-year-old misses school, it is not the 10-year-old’s fault. A lot of this really revolves around us adults, our ability to build systems of success around these young people that are get them to school, that are make sure they have the support they need to make it; to make sure that the families around them have the support that they need.
Michael Freeman
And Melvin they are not going to be successful in the science class if they are not there, bottom-line. You are not going to learn unless you are in the building. We get them in the door and then it is up for our very good schools to educate them.
Melvin Carter
And Mike, that is right in line with what we are doing in the Saint Paul “Promise Neighborhood”. I think of our work as really building a community based edifice upon which excellent learning can really happen. I have coached track after college for a couple of years, and I had a young man on my track team who would ride the city bus for two hours a day doing his homework on the city bus because he was homeless and that is the one place he had that was warm, that was lit and that was safe where he could actually sit and focus on his homework. Well just like you said, I mean we could give him whatever science teacher we wanted but if we really want him to be successful in his homework maybe it starts with a home.
Sondra Samuels
Yes, with the “Northside Achievement Zone”, we have been doing this holistic, collaborative approach. About 50 organizations and schools came together about three years ago and heard about the “Harlem Children’s Zone” and called the question: Could we have this place-based approach in which families, communities, schools and policy makers, all come together around our children? Could we do it on our watch and change the trajectory?
Because, like as Mike said so well, all kids need the same things. But we know that African American and kids of color are the canaries in the mine. If we talk about our students overall in America compared internationally not doing well, then drill down and disaggregate the data, kids of color are really not doing well .
We are made whole when we adults in the community do our job. So what we have done is establish 18 x 13 block area in North Minneapolis where 50–60 organizations and schools have said children in this area will have a culture of achievement and will graduate high school college-ready.
We have NAZ connectors “Northside Achievement Zone” connectors who are adults from the community who partner with families. They are not saving families. They are not service providers on steroids. They are partnering with families who themselves have a vision and a dream for their children and they work with the families to create achievement plans. Then, based on those achievement plans, the whole family is connected with the partners like wrap-around housing.
We actually have placed about 15 families in housing who would otherwise be homeless so that they can focus on their children’s education. We help them develop career and financial pathways that get people geared up for jobs and financial literacy so that they can qualify for some of the housing. We are identifying impediments to families doing what they actually want to do for their children. So we are bundling housing, career financial pathways, behavioral and mental health access that support families in creating achievement plans, tapping into an education pipeline that is all the way from womb to work.
Early childhood providers have come together and they have formed a NAZ action team. Our goal is that every child has high quality education because the achievement gap is really a bunch of gaps in one. It is a preparation gap, it is a teaching gap.
Al McFarlane
Mike Freeman, how does crime figure in this equation? What impact does youth crime and crime in the neighborhood have on children and families…on education?
Michael Freeman
The good news is juvenile crime is way down. Way down. It reflects parents getting involved and neighborhood groups getting involved. It is because the kids are showing more personal responsibility. The kids are going to school. The drop in crime rates is really phenomenal.
But one homicide or one rape is one homicide or rape too many.
The question is what can we do to focus? In the prosecutor’s office, it is our job to take the people who commit crimes and bring them to justice. But I think our job is also much broader than that. It must be crime prevention and that is where truancy comes in. As I said 98% of the young people who a commit felony were truant first. So we figure if we get them in school we help. You get kids off the street and make them obey the curfew laws.
There are not many good things that kids can do out in the streets after midnight. They ought to be home. My daddy said it too. Yes, he was a Marine Corp colonel, but Orville Freeman made sure his little boy was at home. So I think there are some good messages there. We got ongoing work to do.
The number of guns out there is way too large. It’s tragic. We don’t have the legislative tools or frankly we have not seen the kind of commitment from our communities about guns.
Al McFarlane
Sometimes in the Black community there distrust of the police department, of the Prosecutor and even lack of confidence in the Public Defender at the county based on turbulent historic relationships. Are we addressing that? Is our community seeing itself, number one, as the owner of the enterprise of governance, as participants in the process who believe that we can and should expect quality service and support from you, from the police department? Do you sense our community feels that we own the prosecutorial process, as opposed to feeling besieged by it?
Michael Freeman
Well I think we have made some giant strides forward.When I first became County Attorney, we had 3% people of color in our staff. We have 19% today. Since I returned five years ago, 40% of the lawyers we have hired were people of color. It is not just African American, it is Somali, it is American Indian, it is Hispanic. We need to do that and we need to make sure our office reflects the community as a whole. I think it is beginning to do that. I know the Public Defender Bill Ward is working on that. If you look at the appointments by this Governor, Mark Dayton, his appointees reflect racial diversity and sexual diversity. He has appointed gay and lesbian people. He is beginning to help us see diversity as an asset for our court system and that has to help. When a person comes in is charged and they are of Somali descent and they see a Somali person as a victim witness advocate in that courtroom, that makes a difference. We haven’t done enough but I think we have done better.
Frankly Al you are inviting a white prosecutor down here talking on a radio show. That is a pretty diverse step for you.
Al McFarlane
Our job is to keep us all accountable to each other and to encourage us to be the best and create the best. So let me let you close on this one statement, Mike Freeman. Do you envision a community where there is a sense of complete equity, ownership of the enterprise of justice in and among Black, Latino, Asian, residents? Do you envision a community in which we feel we are all co-equal partners? Are you doing things to make that happen? I think you are, but do you think we are going to succeed, if that is a worthy goal?
Michael Freeman
Al, that is absolutely a worthy goal and it is something we reach for. There was sin in the time when the good Lord was watching, walking the earth and there is sin today. I am not sure we are ever going to reach that utopia. That doesn’t keep us from trying to get there and having that as our goal. Having programs like we have heard talked about today can really make a difference. I think this society is more just and fair and more concerned about all its members than was the society when I first started going to Seward School in the 1950s. We are getting better. We still have work to do.
Al McFarlane
Melvin Carter, build on this discussion. What are your thoughts about how we encourage our communities to have confidence in government? How do we encourage and make government completely consistently responsive and responsible to the will and the presence of all of the residents of our community?
Melvin Carter
I think that is really the central question. What you asked Mike points to a lack of confidence that people have and communities across our country, not just in the criminal justice system, but in the ability of the government at all.
I think there are folks who lack the confidence that the government can, even with the best of intentions of leaders, be structured, aligned to serve the needs of people.
This is what “Occupy Wall Street” and the whole cry about the 99% really is about. This question, can our government be structured to effectively serve those 99% is the central question.
Engaging our people as owners and stakeholders in the processes of governance and service delivery is so important. We can’t just keep doing our work in a way that increases and manifests that dependency and reliance on social programs. We really have to go about building equity in our communities. That requires us to build leaders, to build people who know how to be champions for their own children and know how to take up that cause for themselves.
When I first visited the “Harlem Children’s Zone”, what I saw was a group of people who decided since that nobody is educating these children, nobody is supporting these families, nobody is fixing up this neighborhood they were going to form a nonprofit do it themselves for themselves.
And that is notable because those are all the reasons why we pay property taxes Al. That is exactly what our local government units are supposed to be doing. That is why we have a great public school system here in Minnesota and certainly in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. That is why we have all the kind of family and social service programs that we have in the County. That is why we do economic development and housing investments through the city. That is exactly what we are set up to be doing. So the central question behind how organizations like the Harlem Children’s Zone or like the Northside Achievement Zone or even something like the Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood comes to be is really a question of can our property taxes, can our tax dollars be used for what we are paying them for in the first place?
I have engaged with a lot of parents, a lot of families in this process of building the Saint Paul “Promise Neighborhood” and never ever engaged one who has said, I don’t want my child to be a lawyer. I don’t want my kid to be a doctor. I don’t care what that parent’s background is. I don’t care what that parent is into right now. Every parent really wants the best for their child. We have to start from understanding every parent, every family, wants the best life, wants a better life for their child. That is what parenting is.
One of the saddest things I see is when we clip our children’s wings to prevent them from experiencing the disappointments that we have experienced in life. So I think the central question is: what do we dare to believe about the future of our children? That is the question for teachers. That is the question for parents. That is a question for city council members and mayors alike. What do we dare believe about the future of our children? I think about stories like Venus and Serena Williams who grew up in rough and tumble LA in this kind of tough neighborhood where as the story goes, the gangsters were protecting the courts while they are out there, right, because there was this sense that these two kids are doing something different. I was that kid. My friends would sort of leave me out when they were going off to do something because they felt like I was doing something different. I had a number of times where people said “No Melvin, you are doing something different.” Do we dare believe that we can take a whole generation of young people in our community and do something different with all of them?
Sondra Samuels
We do.
Melvin Carter
I think we can. Not just get the Sondra Samuels of the world believing that, Sondra is going to believe that. But if we can get all of our parents, if we can get all of our teachers, if we can get the big brothers and sisters and cousins really believing that and really saying what, there is a better life in store for these young people. These young people can be doctors, these young people can be teachers, they can be lawyers, they can be whatever they decide to be.
And then what we need is some of those young folks staying in our community. I think one of the saddest things is the inner-city community, maybe particularly the African American community, is a net exporter of human capital. What I mean by that is there are so many inner-city communities around the country where the primary ambition of the best and brightest is to get out of that community and never return. So our young people who are growing up today look around and they don’t see anybody who grew up in the Northside who went on to become a doctor or lawyer. There are plenty of people who have. They happen to be, most of them, in Woodbury, Brooklyn Park and Roseville. But our young people need to be able to see them so that they can begin to believe these things about themselves as well.
Al McFarlane
Let me ask you this then, in whose interest is it that this condition, this scenario exists?
I was on a panel with entrepreneur and scientist Dr. Timothy Childs a couple of days ago over at the “Kente Summit for Black Men”...
Melvin Carter
I was there...
Al McFarlane
Dr. Childs described challenges he experienced as he developed a technology product that could fit on a person’s thumbnail that would replace a machine that was the size of a desk. When he brought it to the managers in the company they rejected and resisted his idea that would produce outcomes more efficiently more inexpensively and ultimately save the company money and make the company money. They resisted his genius because they were vested in an old idea that benefitted them. His idea made their process obsolete, and once could say, made them redundant. So they wanted to kill his idea.
So I bring that question to you in education: what forces prevent us from solving and creating better solutions to our community and for our families?
Melvin Carter
Al, I think that is a perfect analogy because if you look at that company… I don’t know the specifics of that situation… but I could guarantee you that company would benefit in the long run by implementing this kind of new technology. So to answer your question I think we all lose when any segment of our community we are failing to educate, especially as we look around the Twin Cities Metro area and our just skyrocketing population of people of color. As we look at them, if we just look at them as young Black kids or young Asian kids today, we will be missing the boat.
We have to realize that these young people are our next labor force, our next teacher force, our next parent force. They are our next tax payer force. They are absolutely the future of our community and we have to make sure for all of our sakes, even those of us who feel like we are doing well right now, we need to make sure that if we want job growth and job creation in our community, if want some tax base to sort of share the pie with us, whatever we want as our ambitions for our community we have to have all of these young people not just graduating from high school.
There are folks who will say that college isn’t for everybody. I always joke that college is only for folks who want jobs in the future. As we look at all of the emerging markets and all of the emerging industries, we know that a good three-quarters of the jobs that our children are going to compete for are going to require college education.
So we ought to be really aggressive in making sure that our young people are prepared to compete. I think we have an opportunity in Minnesota not just to get our young folks to the place where they can compete, but as we talk about this shrinking world and a global marketplace, because we have such a diverse place because there are so many languages spoken here, we could get our children way out ahead in being ready to compete in global market place by having every young person who comes out of high school and goes into college from the Twin Cities be proficient at least at some level in Hmong or Somali and a handful of languages.
Sondra Samuels
W. E. B. Du Bois talked about the “Talented Tenth” and what they needed to give back to the community. I subscribe to the “Talented Tenth” in that those of us who are already believers have to hold the dream for those who don’t yet believe and kind of usher in that era where our whole community believes that absolutely every single one of our children can and will graduate from college. I am really seeing that in the zone in North Minneapolis right now we have now about a 140 families that if you talked to them today they would say we are “Northside Achievement Zone” families. We have a NAZ connector who works with me weekly. We are being directed to opportunities and services within the zone. We are getting help with engaging with our child’s school. we are getting all that we need and I got to tell you the way it started was that we door knocked the whole zone of 18 x 13 block area, 5000 households, and basically what we were asking everybody is ‘Do you want your child to do better than you have?’ Unequivocally they said ‘yes.’
‘Could you use someone to have your back to make that happen,’ we asked, and they all said ‘yes.’ I mean guys that we were talking to Al, you will probably think that you might have to call the cops on them later. But not only did many of them say ‘yes,’ but finally have our system in place. It has taken us a year and a half to really get solid and we are still flying the plane while we are building it but now we have 140 families who are showing up.
We have something called “Family Academy” and it is an early childhood program. It is a parenting education program. Minneapolis currently has an ECFE program for example and we know that part of the achievement gap is the preparation gap. Our children disproportionately are not showing up at kindergarten ready to learn.
Al McFarlane
ECFE is what?
Sondra Samuels
“Early Childhood Family Education” and Minneapolis offers it free to residents but so often you don’t see indigenous African American, low income residents attending those programs. Bernadeia Johnson, who is a great superintendent, had the foresight to get us together to create the NAZ Family Academy. It consists of Northside Achievement Zone, Minneapolis Public Schools and Youth Coordinating Board. But the same families that we have been talking to and our staff our six NAZ connectors who were all full time staff who partnered with families are all from the community. The six connectors are all African American, half are men who are talking to other brothers about coming to early childhood program. They come 12 weekends in a row. We are about to have our 3rd graduating class. They get just $200 for the whole program, less than $10 a week waking up Saturday morning coming in the snow for 4 hours to learn about brain development, positive discipline, the importance of reading to your child. NAZ connectors, the young brothers, can talk to the other young fathers. I have a 16-year-old father right now Al who for 10 weeks has been showing up to find out how to be a good father to his baby because his father wasn’t there.
The guys show up looking cool and so on, but they quick learn and embrace importance of doing hokey pokey… playing with their child to connect those brain synapses. They do it and they do it week after week after week and then they say ‘okay what is next?’
The other day we had eight parents come in, all moms, single moms, talking about why they were in the zone. Only one was from Minnesota. The rest were from Southside of Chicago, and Gary, IN. They had all come here because they wanted a better life, better education, safety.
So we said if you stick with us and you stay in our pipeline that there is no way your child can fail because you have a viral village behind you. They can’t fail.
So what we do with the babies is we put stickers on them every week, not just their names, but the year they are graduating from college. Our youngest will graduate in 2035.
Al McFarlane
You are programming them.
Sondra Samuels
Yes right.
They are now known as Darryl 2035, and Janai 2034.. The parents are saying it now and that has me so inspired.
