Mayor Shirley Franklin
APPLE Corps’ Golden Apple Awards Breakfast
February 19, 2003
This is a great morning! This is one of the broadest cross-sections of people who care and love the city that I’ve been in. We’ve got city council members, state representatives, state senators, business leaders and teachers. We have students and we have Atlanta Public Schools represented by the Superintendent and the School Board. It really is a great morning! This is the Atlanta that I know and love!
It is also very special to me because the East Lake Community Foundation is being inducted into the Apple Corps Hall of Fame. Indeed I do remember that the idea of the Drew Charter School in East Lake was not automatically accepted. But we couldn’t tell Mr. Cousins that, he believed in it from the beginning. Many people who are here today have contributed to the success of East Lake in general, but I especially want to recognize those working with us at Drew Charter School. And it is also special because that was not an easy discussion with the Atlanta Public Schools. It was a time when there was some resistance, and rightfully so. The Atlanta Public Schools was responsible for all of the children, all of the time, and they wanted to be sure that this would benefit the children in East Lake. And some of the members said well, can you replicate it? And of course, the lessons learned through that process live with us today and we have a chance to look at all of the experiments that Atlanta is undertaking.
When I think about children, there is a poem that reminds me often of the challenges that we face, the main challenges the children face, and the many challenges therefore the City and communities face, and it's called Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the Sun?
Or fester like a sore- -
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over - -
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
The work that we do each and everyday in Atlanta is really to ensure that children are not deferring their dreams and do not need to. The lives that you touch as a teacher really matter to the future of our community. All told, teachers really represent for me a window of opportunity. They actually told us that we could do and be everything we wanted to be, and that the doors were open because we would find a way to make them open.
I do tell children (I don’t say this in adult crowds very much, but I will say it to you) that I wasn’t at the top of my class. My mother wanted me to be! I was not the Valedictorian or Salutatorian or the President of the Student Body, which means that everybody can achieve, because I came up from the middle of the pack! That is the value of public education. That is the value of a loving family and a loving and caring school environment.
I come today to congratulate and celebrate all of you who have been awarded and all of you who, frankly were even nominated! There is sometimes a public perception that nothing good is going on in public agencies, that we are not engaged enough, that we don’t care enough, and APPLE Corps, in this Awards Ceremony, has demonstrated that is NOT true. So we need to take time to celebrate our successes. We also need to recognize the tremendous achievements in the Atlanta Public Schools under the leadership of the Board and our Superintendent, Beverly Hall.
We have proven, over the course of the last two to three years, that the improvements we are seeing in our young people are not a fluke, not a one-time occurrence. And that is because we are lead by people who both care and who are expert at what they do. I am particularly interested in the work you are doing to reach out and partner. There are good things all around us; the question is “Is there anything left to do?” We can celebrate our successes, but I would suggest that this crowd, more than most, knows there’s lots left to do. Without strong public education, where all children have a chance to achieve and where the community is engaged, no matter what you build that is beautiful, it will not matter.
So, the question was whether I wear the flower today or whether I put it in my teeth? Because the question is: Can we tango together? Can we dance together? Can we move beyond just talking to each other across the table? Can we actually join hands, where we allow one another to put out our arms and touch each other enough to get this job done? So I didn’t wear the flower in my teeth, I did wear it on my lapel, but I want you to remember that it takes two to tango. And what we need to do in this city is to join APS with my partner, the City of Atlanta, so that we are dancing together, not just dialoging.
All of us at the City Hall believe that we have to be in a firm partnership with APS. I am interested as Mayor for my term, in being more actively involved in a supportive role with the Atlanta Public Schools and education in the City of Atlanta. I think there are some things we can do together that might tell a story for those who follow us.
The City of Atlanta can make the schools and districts around which the children travel and the families travel safer. We want to be sure that we are a part of reducing drugs and violence and dysfunctional behavior in and around our schools. I think we can use the power of the Office of the Mayor to ensure that there is a closer relationship with public transportation, so that youngsters and their families can get to and from schools without walking in the middle of the street. And that is a problem that we need to come together on in terms of infrastructure.
We can make the city friendly for employees, especially the teachers, when it comes to living in the city, should they choose to do so. We are interested in a teacher homebuyers program, but we have yet to figure out all the details. The fact is that the teachers, police officers, firefighters, other public employees, and frankly working families, are having a harder and harder time living in the city, and that makes them disconnected from the communities that they serve and the children that they serve.
I very much look forward to initiatives that you may know of at APS where we can support living in the city, in housing that is both rental and for sale that is affordable. We know that there are some limits on that, and I will spend just a little more time on that because we have to be careful of such things as the Georgia Constitution and equal protection. But the fact is that there are some communities that have done a better job than we have. So when you hear me talk about workforce housing, a big part of our target is the education community, young and not so young teachers and administrators, who want to be able to stay in town.
I think we can also partner in another very significant way through our parks and recreation facilities. Indeed in the neighborhood where I have lived for thirty years, there is a recreation facility about a block away from the Jean Childs Young Middle School, and I’m not certain there is much partnership in terms of the school and the recreation center, yet we serve the same population. If we do put the children first, and their families first, it is impossible for us not to make that connection. But there is still very much a mirror on this side, a mirror on that side, which we can overcome because we care enough about the outcome. It is important that we partner; we need to pool our resources.
Clearly I think that Atlanta, the City of Atlanta, can go along way toward assisting APS in getting their story out. Each of our council members holds very successful Town Hall Meetings. In the past, APS has really not been represented in those Town Hall Meetings. There are several elements to those meetings that could be beneficial to you. Often they are telecast on channel 26. Many of the meetings attract hundreds of residents, and many times children. I visited with Anne Fauver at Inman Middle School, and every seat in the auditorium was full. There were state representatives and children, there were parents, and people from the community. So it seems to me that we can partner in a different way when it comes to engaging the community and represent symbolically, and for real, that we are a partnership.
We also look forward to the kind of initiatives and talks that have been ongoing with APPLE Corps and the Atlanta Community for Public Education. I’m not sure how long these talks have been going on, but those talks have been going on for awhile, because I was on the committee when those talks started, and then I ran Mayor for two years and I've been in office for a year. Do you get my message? I’ve been in office for a year; your time is running out!
I mean it is time to decide what that relationship is. Another class of students will have graduated from high school. We will have a class that was in the 9th grade when we started, and will be in college as sophomores before we get moving. Now I’m telling you if we can get Fulton County and the City of Atlanta together over local option sales tax, and how we process people who are arrested, in two months, (In Two Months!); then we can have a discussion about public education and be finished with it in time for the new school year. This is my challenge to you now. My suggestion is that you need to get on with it. This won’t be the last time we can talk about it, and we need to be all on the same page.
We need to encourage student achievement and school achievement, and I’d be happy to work with you, Dr. Hall, and Board members on how the City of Atlanta might assist you in recognition of teachers, and students, and principles, and parents. Then we need to encourage innovation!
I ran for office, and everyone said you have to give the same speech everywhere you go. I didn’t believe them for the first six months, but then I realized I wasn’t making any headway. The poll numbers said that I was flat. So I said ok, somebody else has got a better idea. I honed my message. I ran on a platform of integrity, intelligence and innovation. Now, we can all speak to integrity, there is a lot of discussion about that. Intelligence obviously goes along with our discussion on education. But I would say innovation is maybe the hardest, because that requires us to change. Innovation requires us to see the good in things that at first sight may seem a little scary.
I would encourage us to remember that Atlanta is not the same city it was even five years ago. So the thought that we could have had a good idea five years ago that’s going to work five years from now is significant! This community is changing faster than we can even keep track of. I’m told we are getting grayer. We know we are getting more diverse in terms of our populations. We know that the demand for services is higher, not just because new people are here, but because our standards for service are higher.
We now compare ourselves against New York; we compare ourselves with Los Angeles and Chicago This is a new phenomenon, folks! We expect to operate and live like we are in a world-class city, and that is impossible without strong public education. It is impossible without a strong partnership between public education and the Mayor’s office. Now my goal is to ensure that we form the kind of relationship that cannot ever be broken, so that the next time someone comes before you as a candidate for mayor or as a candidate for the school board, or a candidate for city council, that we have set a standard of cooperation below which you will not accept, because you are the keepers of this dream. We are just vehicles for realizing the dream; we are just a step along the way.
The goal is to turn in the right direction and to keep walking in the right direction. And I will not allow us ever to turn back to a time where we leave the schools alone, either because they got it right or they got it wrong, because the world is changing too fast. And it is going to take everyone in this room, and everyone you know, to ensure that the future generations are going to do just fine. And I hope that APPLE Corps will continue in this very strong and bold approach. I know that Atlanta has many dreams. Let us be sure that our children’s dreams are not deferred. Thank you very much.