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Washington2Washington Educational Partnership
Transcript of Launch Event
Washington, D.C., June 6, 2000
MR. VINNAKOTA: My name is Rajiv Vinnakota. I'm the co-founder of The SEED Public Charter School of Washington, D.C. On behalf of the school, I want to welcome you to our new campus here in southeast D.C.
(Applause.)
MR. VINNAKOTA: I'd like to give a special welcome to Secretary Riley, Mayor Williams, Mr. Bill Gates, Microsoft Corporation, and our friends from Sequoia Junior High who are joining us by satellite link.
The SEED School is the first of its kind in the nation -- a public, urban college preparatory boarding school. We are a co-ed, seven-day-a-week boarding school, and we offer rigorous academics and an active community service and social enrichment program.
We expect our graduates to go on to the nation's leading colleges and universities and to become tomorrow's national and international leaders.
The construction that you see all around you is our investment in this community. We are building a sate-of-the-art educational facility to serve the children of the District of Columbia.
Just yesterday, we finalized a construction loan with Bank of America to complete the first phase of our new campus.
(Applause.)
MR. VINNAKOTA: We are extraordinarily thankful to Bank of America and all of our generous donors for making this possible. In particular, we would like to thank Donald Brown, who offered us the early, unflagging support necessary to realize this dream.
(Applause.)
MR. VINNAKOTA: We are honored to have been selected to participate in Microsoft's Washington2Washington program, along with Sequoia Junior High of Kent, Washington.
It is only fitting that two such innovative schools will be brought together by such an original program. Together, we will further Microsoft's mission to build innovative educational programs enhanced by technology.
Likewise, the unique technology we inaugurate today will enhance our program to strengthen our community and educate our children.
Thank you all very much for coming today to witness the beginning of this powerful partnership.
(Applause.)
MR. LITTEN: Welcome to the announcement of Washington2Washington. I'm John Litten. I'm the program manager for Youth & Learning at Microsoft.
I've been asked several times today, and over the last few days, why these two schools? Why Washington, D.C. and why Washington State?
Washington State is pretty easy. That's our home. And I've brought this rain for you as our first cultural exchange --
(Laughter.)
MR. LITTEN: -- so enjoy it. It's here for the summer. I'm taking your sun and warmth back with us to Washington.
I've visited, for the last five years, regularly, with Dr. Ursula Hermann, and we've had this ongoing conversation about how can we use technology to better inform instruction for kids; how can we use the power of technology to make a difference in children's lives?
So when I had this opportunity for Washington2Washington, I went to visit her at Sequoia Junior High, and said, "What do you think?" She said, "Yes, this is going to work, and please do it here at Sequoia." That took care of one school.
I then put a challenge out to all of our marketing people on the East Coast, and said, "I need a school on the East Coast."
During a visit here to give a speech at the University of Maryland, I was introduced to a couple people from The SEED School, by one of our marketing folks. They were there to apply for a grant from Microsoft, one of our local community grants.
I visited with these folks and found them to be so innovative, have such a passion for making a difference -- the exact kind of passionate innovation that we look for in employees at Microsoft -- that I said, "This is the school on the East Cost," and so Washington2Washington was born.
At Microsoft, we know clearly that it takes great teachers, supportive administrators, community support, and strong parent involvement to have quality education. We're very honored when we can take part, in any small way possible, to help enrich education for children.
We have a partner in this project. We called Dell Computers and said, "We need computers for this project." Our partner in business is Dell, one of our many partners. Dell provided eight computers for each school, a laptop for each school, and a laser printer for each school, for a total of about $30,000.
In addition, we'll have digital video cameras, still digital cameras, and an entire web site that's up today, www.microsoft.com/w2w, and that site will be up all year long so everyone in the country and around the world can watch this project in reality.
Before we go on, I would like to introduce one person that's joined us today. She's very special to us. She's the representative for the District of Columbia, Congressman Eleanor Holmes Norton.
(Applause.)
MR. LITTEN: It's now my pleasure to introduce the mayor of Washington, D.C., the Honorable Anthony Williams.
(Applause.)
MAYOR WILLIAMS: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here at this special event, Washington2Washington.
I want to acknowledge, as always, whenever we have a great event in out city, we always have our Congresswoman, Eleanor Holmes Norton. I want to acknowledge her.
I also want to acknowledge Secretary Riley, who has been our partner in so many different ways during his tenure as Secretary, and really keeping our children first in all of his activities, both here and across the country.
John Litten, thank you for what you're doing.
He's a small entrepreneur from Washington. I forget his name. Oh, yes, Bill Gates.
(Laughter.)
MAYOR WILLIAMS: But thank you for what you're doing, not only here in this program, but to give access to minority students to science and math is something that's near and dear to many of our hearts, and we certainly appreciate that. It's a great activity.
But this is important for those of us in our city who care about our children, to be here today at SEED School, the first urban public boarding school in the nation, which will eventually serve 300 students with a challenging academic program in a safe, secure, and structured 24-hour environment.
In a few minutes, you'll be hearing from Delano Jackson, an eighth-grade student at The SEED School and a member of its first graduating class.
Now, I understand that one of his goals in the future is to open his own school right here in our city, and he's just one example of the big dreams that all of our young people have, and I'm sure there are some big dreams that surround me here today.
Through SEED's partnership with Microsoft, we're giving students like Delano the tools -- computers, pockets PCs, still and video cameras, and printer -- and the training to succeed in the digital world, and through the partnership with Sequoia High in Washington, we're encouraging students to learn from other students, working together as they explore the potential of computers and the Internet.
This program is practical, but it's also innovative, and it's an example of what we can do working together with public-private partnerships.
Even more importantly, it represents the kind of investment we all have to make to improve our schools.
As well, it represents, I think, something very, very important, and that is a partnership between our city and American citizens across this country, because every American citizen has a stake in what happens in our nation's capital, and we are very, very proud to have this partnership with Washington State and with Sequoia.
Speaking of Sequoia, it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Ursula Hermann, who is the principal of Sequoia, and who is a fine example of how, at the heart of every great school, there lies -- no, this is true -- there lies not only good parents, not only good teachers, not only good managers, but a great principal.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Hermann.
(Applause.)
DR. HERMANN: I have to tell you, this is so cool, isn't it? Aren't they great?
When I was asked to talk to you about what this project means for our schools, it was at once easy, and at the same time difficult.
Ultimately, what I needed to ask myself for all of us was this:
What difference will it make for students on opposite sides of the country to be linked through technology? What difference will it make for students and teachers to be able to communicate from the East Coast to the West Coast about national and global issues? What difference will it make, really make, in our lives and the lives of others?
Here's the difference it will make, for us and potentially for all of our public schools? There, I said it: for all of our public schools.
Sequoia Junior High School in Kent, Washington and The SEED School in Washington, D.C. represent everything that our great nation has to offer. Yes, everything: the best minds, cultural and ethnic diversity, and all of the challenges implicit in a pluralistic society.
I ask my students regularly to look around the cafeteria, down the hallways, and in their classrooms to discover the wonder of knowing people from around the world, because Sequoia is truly an international community; but I also ask them to move beyond discovery and experience, firsthand, new and different relationships, as well as world perspectives.
Now, as a result of technology, the generosity of Microsoft, and the instructional expertise of our teachers, Paul Nepp and Brandon Lloyd, out students will be able to reach across the country from the Nation's capital, Washington, D.C. on our East Coast, to the Kent School District near Washington State's capital on the West Coast.
Through simple, yet dynamic, the complex dynamics of technology, they will be able to talk to one another about life on opposite sides of the country. They will be able to discuss, deliberate, and engage in issues of government, politics, the environment, and the future of our nation.
They will be able to more fully understand and experience the magnitude and the reality of global citizenship. They will be linked not only through technology, but through the work they will do together. They will be able to talk about and shape their own ideas, as well as the ideas of others.
They will demonstrate how the best of our human resources -- our youth -- can link with technology to prove the power of public education.
This project will prove that students and teachers, in partnership with their local and national communities, can and will both transform and reform how business is done in our public schools. They can and they will demonstrate that the nation is our classroom and that we are all teachers and learners.
What difference, indeed?
Mr. Gates, Mayor Williams, Ms. Baird, Mrs. Collins, community members, Secretary Riley, fasten your intellectual seatbelts. Our kids are going to give you the ride of your lives, from Washington2Washington.
And finally, from Sequoia Junior High, from our Latino students, Mr. Gates, "muchas gracias"; from our Eastern European students, "batseba"' from our East Indian students, "doon ayvad"; from our Japanese students, "arigato gosiamas"; from our Samoya students, "fafak ilava"; and from our Vietnamese students, "kam oon."
Thank you for this great opportunity.
(Applause.)
DR. HERMANN:How could I have forgotten this? My goodness, I was saying before what a pleasure it was going to be, and what an honor to introduce Secretary Riley -- our United States Secretary of Education, Secretary Riley.
(Applause.)
SECRETARY RILEY: I was waiting for that introduction in Portuguese, but it never did quite come.
(Laughter.)
SECRETARY RILEY: I thank you so much, Dr. Hermann, and thank all of you.
It's a real honor for me to be here with our great mayor, Tony Williams, and Member of Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton. I have a wonderful working relationship in terms of education, and every other way, with both of these leaders.
I want to thank all of those who have been involved in this exciting SEED School, a public charter school that I think is going to be very exciting for a lot of reasons, and certainly a very important reason today.
It's a great pleasure to have all of you here and all of the folks from Sequoia. I am so pleased, Bill Gates, to you and Microsoft and the other partners that are announcing this very exciting venture.
I appreciate the fact that Microsoft sees the importance of sharing its technological expertise with students and teachers of these two schools, and we hope to see a lot more of this kind of thing in the future. It deals not only with the geographic divide, that is clear, but also the digital divide, as well.
For The SEED School, this project is really a vision for a bright and exciting new future. It's just like the Phoenix. It rose out of the ashes to live again and make an exciting, all-of-a-sudden thing appear that's going to connect up students across the country.
I was with Vice President Gore at a school in Maryland about two years ago -- Forest Knolls Elementary School. It's a school that has a lot of technology, an elementary school, and we were there in a fifth-grade class.
We walked over. These two students were on the Internet, Bill, with two students in Ethiopia, and they were talking back and forth on their computers.
The Vice President leaned over to this one child, fifth-grade student, and said, "Tell me what you're learning." Well, we thought he was going to tell us about Ethiopia and what the main food products are there and what's happening and back and forth.
He looked up at the Vice President and me, and he said, "We're learning that we can be friends."
Across the world, connected by the Internet, friends are made, and that's going to be true here, too. As important as the intellectual part of this is going to be, it's also going to be very important to connect up young people with each other.
I'm so pleased that one of the Department of Education's primary goals, of course, is the increased use of technology in education, and it's going to be put in practice here in kind of a model classroom environment, in Washington2Washington.
I can only imagine the conversation of some of these students, as they discuss various aspects of, say, two aquatic creatures that are important to these two regions, the Pacific Coho salmon and the Maryland crab.
They can discuss, of course, the biology, the ecology, the economics, the history, the gourmet arts, all of these aspects, and can really make learning come alive -- and that's just one small example of the thousands and thousands of subjects that can come up.
We have a lot of things going to try to expand technology in an educational way. One is the community-based technology centers that the Department has been working hard for. We now have about 200.
These are technology centers where people in disadvantaged communities -- a lot of adult education, but students, too, who might not have computers at home -- that can come and have instruction and have use of computers to do their homework or learn how to read and write or learn how to use a computer.
They're in housing projects and storefronts all over the country. We have only 200 now, and the President would hope for 1,000. We have $100 million in our new budget.
Unfortunately, the House and Senate committees have failed to address this request, and several others, but hope springs eternal, and we're going to hope that we have some things come forth that are very positive.
The e-rate, also, is a very positive thing that we worked hard on, and I think that's going to help expand this issue.
Washington2Washington project really will represent the best of uniting people, and the purpose of learning. Teaching and learning is really what it's all about.
So I'm very honored to be here, and my chief responsibility is to introduce you to Delano Jackson, who is an eighth-grade student here at The SEED School, and all of his fellow students, I know, are excited about the fact that he's here and playing a very important role representing them. He will be part of the graduating class of this school in year 2004.
Delano is a very involved student. He was acting in "The Soldiers" play, an African American anthology here recently, assisted in the school's technology programs.
I would say that he aspires to be a world-renowned scientist, like his Aunt Shirley Jackson, who is president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Delano, as the Mayor said, has an aspiration to also build a quality school for his fellow citizens here in Washington, D.C.
It's a great pleasure for me to introduce this fine student to you, Delano Jackson.
(Applause.)
MR. JACKSON: It is my pleasure to introduce the founder of Microsoft, maker of cutting-edge operating systems, advanced applications, and utilities, now a company with a $19.75 billion fiscal year.
Microsoft has set a mission for themselves to impale technology in everyday life, but Microsoft was just a dream before this man decided to leave college to fulfill his dream. Now, his dream is a household name that we all see and hear daily.
This man spends his time acknowledging the many shortcomings of today's world, and acting on them. Recently, he partnered with scholarship organizations that support minorities, like the United Negro College Fund, in hopes of making others' dreams come true.
Lots of young people think of him as an inspiration, a motive in whatever they do, because of his prestigious level of success.
Ahunista Vila, please raise your hand.
(Applause.)
MR. JACKSON: My fully qualified, dynamically helpful partner and I have conversations about his accomplishments and compare them to our own.
In sum, to make a long story short, we still have a long way to go --
(Laughter.)
MR. JACKSON: -- but we are glad to finally meet him.
Everyone, I would like to introduce my idol, Chief Software Architect and Chairman of the Board of Microsoft, Mr. William H. Gates.
(Applause.)
MR. GATES: Thank you, Delano. It's exciting to be here working hand-in-hand with these two schools.
The more I've learned about these two schools, the more impressed I am. It's very exciting to see this kind of innovative work taking place.
I have two children myself, and I'm very hopeful that they'll have the kind of teachers and administrators that I've met a part of this Washington2Washington planning process.
Technology can be a great tool in improving education, and there's many ways we can see that really becoming a reality.
Kids are taking PCs and the Internet to new heights. They're the ones that are designing the cutting-edge web sites. They're the ones that are pushing forth things like digital music, digital photos, instant messaging; and they will take this tool in directions that we don't even expect.
When I was a student, computers were very expensive, and almost no one had access. In fact, I was very lucky to have a slow teletype that we could use about 30 minutes a day to connect up to a mainframe computer.
Even so, it was very fascinating to me to think, "what could this computer do, what was the future of this computer," and that early exposure made a huge difference in my life.
Well, today, because personal computers are very, very powerful and very inexpensive, literally millions and millions of kids can have access, many at home, and for those who don't have an opportunity to have it at home, through their school and through their library.
One of the visions here is what we call connected learning community. This is the idea that when you have this breakthrough communications tool, you can reach out in ways that were never possible before.
For example, just think about teachers. Teachers, how would they share their best practices? How would they find another teacher who's teaching the same curriculum, and show them what they're doing, and benefit from each other's good work?
Well, before the advent of the PC and the Internet, that would have been very difficult. Particularly if the two teachers were far away from each other, it's unlikely that they would be able to collaborate together.
Now, they can get online to find each other. They can share the material they present, they can edit those things, send them back and forth. And so they get an opportunity to essentially form a community of all the teachers working in an area.
If we think about the involvement of parents, a parent who is able to get online can see what their kid is learning; they can see what the homework that's been assigned is so there will be no confusion about that; they can really be in touch, in a way, and even offer to participate in any dialogue that's going on the classroom, bringing their real-world experience.
Most profound, however, is what it means for the students.
You know, I bring a basic optimism to this, which is that I think all students start off with incredible ability and curiosity, and if they're given the opportunity to pursue that, if they're given a chance to see the neat things about the world in terms that they can appreciate and enjoy, that their abilities will be reinforced and that we'll really achieve so much more potential out of the great students we have than we do today.
This Washington2Washington program is a very great example of this idea. Having these computers, letting these kids be out on the Internet, organizing it so that they're sharing with a school that's on the other side of the country -- I don't think we know exactly what's going to come out of this.
What I do know is that it's the energy and the creativity of these kids who will shape it and take it in a direction that I think will be incredibly positive.
One of the comments from Brandon Lloyd, who is a social studies teacher here at The SEED School, was, "You just know something is going to be different in this project," and that really sort of summarized my thinking, as well.
There's a lot of good ideas on how to kick this thing off, and I'll be fascinated to see where it goes throughout the course of this next school year.
So these kids have a chance to write a chapter in how technology and collaboration can bring things to new heights. They're already doing a lot of breakthrough things by being part of these wonderful schools.
So we're really pleased to be working with them. I'm excited about the program. You'll be hearing more about it throughout the year, either through the Web sites or various milestones we'll pick, as it achieves success; and definitely expect the unexpected.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
MR. GATES:With that, I think we're going to take the time we have, and Secretary Riley and I will have a chance to answer questions that the students have.
All right, we're all set. First, let's take a question that was sent in from Sequoia, and this is a question from Audrey Jack there. One of the things that they were interested in is:
"Because the two schools involved are both similar in their makeup, having highly diverse ethnic groups, do you see this program as a step towards providing equal access to learning for all students?"
I'd say basically, yes. It's kind of exciting that these pioneering schools have a lot of new things that they're doing, and we definitely want to make sure that technology is out for all schools.
It is kind of disappointing if you look at it right now. It's mostly the schools in the better-off neighborhoods that have personal computers and have connection to the Internet.
And yet, you know, these tools are so fundamental that it's almost like literacy. You want to make sure that everybody is involved, because not only is it a great tool, it's something that's very important for all the jobs that are going to be out there being involved with the Internet.
SECRETARY RILEY: Well, I think the exciting thing about connection up with a classroom all the way across the country, and really having a direct connection with them, talking about what they are doing, what their interests are, what your interests are and what you're doing.
The fact that, as the principal pointed out, there are many languages spoken there, I think you will find that very interesting, to have kind of a West Coast angle of that kind; but they are going to be very interested in what's important to you.
As I pointed out in my statement, I think you will be making friends there, and as I understand, Bill, they may get together at some point in time and meet each other, and that kind of thing.
So I think you're going to find that the diversity is important, the connecting up -- I talk a lot about connecting up -- it's important for you to connect up in learning, and the students in Sequoia to connect up in learning, but to connect up with each other, and have friends across the country, I think will be very exciting.
MR. GATES: Why don't we go ahead and open it up?
Q:Hello. I got a question for Mr. Gates. My name is Shantia Humphries, and I'm in the Seventh Grade.
What inspired you to make Microsoft?
MR. GATES: Well, the thing that really got me going was that I was lucky enough to see that the computer was this interesting tool. I wasn't -- I didn't have super-good grades, but I knew that I had a lot of things I was curious about.
Fortunately, my parents had encouraged me to read. I did very extensive reading. And as soon as I saw the computer there, I thought, "Wow, what an amazing thing," and my friends and I got to play around with it quite a bit.
So from a young age, even in high school, I thought: "Well, this is the thing that I'm best at. This is the thing that's really going to change the world."
We weren't sure exactly whether we could create a company or not. It took a lot of confidence, in fact, and I was still in college when I decided, no, the time -- the time had come, and so five of my friends and I really were the first employees there.
The idea was that we saw something that the adults weren't doing, which was thinking about great software and how software could make these computers usable by everybody.
People were still thinking of computers as these very expensive things that were controlled by businesses, not as something that an individual would own and use, and I knew I wanted one, but the software had to be a lot better.
The whole story of how we started as a small company, and then, year-by-year, grew, you know, it's sort of a dream come true. We didn't expect, believe me, to have the kind of success and be able to hire the number of people that we have, but it all grew out of that vision of making the PC a great tool.
SECRETARY RILEY: I think it's important, too, to realize, knowledge is important, but creative use of knowledge is extremely important.
In this particular era -- this Education Era, I call it -- it's important for you students and the students at Sequoia to be interested in the arts, to be interested in learning how to develop the creative use of knowledge, and I think that's a good example.
Q:Hello. My name is Mark, and I have a question for Mr. Riley. Secretary Riley, what is your interest in charter schools?
SECRETARY RILEY: Well, charter schools, of course, are -- a charter is a contract. A charter school is a school that is contracted with the school board.
It's a public school, and it's established under this contract, with certain agreements to have to provide certain successes, because that's part of the charter; and then they have a lot of freedom in deciding how they're going to do it, but then the school board watches to make sure they are successful.
So they are freed up from some of the regulations, but they are looking at results; so in your school, the school board will be watching for results, and the people who run this charter school will have a lot of freedom in how they do it.
They'll do some things differently, I'm sure, but the results, your success, will be what they'll be watching.
Charter schools can be wonderful, and they can be not wonderful. Like everything else, it's a wonderful tool for a school board to have, and we're very supportive of them having that tool, but it's up to the people in the school, including the students, to make sure it works well.
Q:Good morning. My name is Diana Holly, and I have a question for Mr. Gates.
As a child, what was your plans for the future?
MR. GATES: Well, I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot. I was always up in the library.
Every summer, when they would have a contest about who read the most books, it would always be me and a bunch of girls would be in competition.
(Laughter.)
MR. GATES: That wasn't considered as cool back then, for guys to be reading lots of books. Hopefully, that's changed, because I think it was a huge benefit to me.
And so I always, you know, because I read about so many things, so many places, I knew I wanted to travel around. I actually came back to Washington, D.C. for a summer, and I was a page in the Congress, and that had been a goal of mine.
In fact, I was licking stamps for a Congressman for about four or five years to see if I could get that appointment, because I wanted to come back here and see what it was like -- what the Capitol was like, what the whole Congress was like.
That's something you have a, you know, easy chance to see all those goings-on, as well.
So I wasn't quite sure what my career would be -- you know, I thought it would be something to do with science or math -- until I ran into the computer, and there I saw a chance to take my hobby and actually take something that could change the world, make a business around it, and really make that my lifelong pursuit.
But that wasn't until I was late in high school, when I was absolutely sure about that.
Q:My name is Ebony Rose Thompson. I have a question for Mr. Riley.
In your two years as Secretary of Education, what do you think is the most important thing you learned about children?
SECRETARY RILEY: Well, I think a lot of things, of course. I think if I tried to single out what I think is one of the most important things to change education in this country, is to raise expectations that we have of children.
Young people who are in school, involved in teaching and learning, when you don't expect a lot out of them, they don't learn a lot. That's my view.
I think that in all of America -- and we're changing that now, that's what the standards movement is all about. That's what things like this is all about.
This is raising the level of education and saying that you can learn more, you can learn better, you can learn differently.
So I think it's very important to raise the expectations of every one of you students, and those in Washington State, to expect more of you than you have any idea of reaching, so you'll be challenged and reach upward, and I think that's a very important part of education.
(End of event.)
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