Is anyone in public education championing progressive reform today? Are local school boards and superintendents working to only improve Academic Performance Index scores and Adequate Yearly Progress goals at the expense of gutting classrooms from meaningful intellectual inquiry? I learned last week that there is still tremendous passion for progressive reform in Santa Clara County for our public schools. For that I am grateful and reinvigorated.

Thomas Freidman in his column in the NY Times on Sunday summed up my feelings perfectly with respect to the federal budget impasse. He wrote: “So far, the GOP is calling for cuts in the things we need to invest more in—like education and infrastructure—while leaving largely untouched things we need to reduce, like entitlements and defense spending. A country that invests more in its elderly than its youth, more in nursing homes than schools, will neither invent the future nor own it.”

I know you care deeply about the success of our nation’s educational systems and the student clients they serve. You and your boss advocate for an education system that is second to none. Early childhood education can be the great equalizer between poor and wealthy families. The $21,495,317 that Santa Clara County receives in federal funding for Early Head Start and Head Start saves the taxpayer at least four times that much, if Head Start did not exist.

Sometimes I feel I am living in the Twilight Zone. Is it strictly science fiction to think the common school curriculum supported by leaders in education, business and labor will help raise student achievement across the grades? Perhaps yes.

What is going down in Wisconsin with the teacher’s union is a Category 5 hurricane. In order for us to really “win the future” we must be smart and collaborative. We cannot declare war on public employee unions and think our future would be brighter. It will not.

It was the threat of the Soviets leapfrogging us with their launch of Sputnik that spurred America to refocus on creating a generation of the best mathematicians and scientists. And Houston, we have a problem. The nation that put the first footprints on the moon in 1969 and built amazing vehicles that transport humans to orbit the earth—the Space Shuttle—is losing an important race in American education.

There appears to be a renewed interest in our county about the health and welfare of some of our most wounded children. My highest praise for the advocacy work being done by Judge Patrick Tondreau, presiding judge of the Juvenile Justice Court and Pam Serrano, Chair of the Juvenile Justice Commission. UPDATED Monday Feb. 21, 1:30pm.

The education of our most vulnerable youth in Santa Clara County should be at the top of our agenda as a civil society. A high-quality educational program implemented for delinquent, foster and truant youth built around their academic, social, emotional and developmental needs and addictions would increase the quality of life for the student and the entire community. It would even reduce our state deficit if we have fewer adults in prison at a cost of $45,000 each per year.

Every young person listening tonight who’s contemplating their career choice: If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation, if you want to make a difference in the life of a child, become a teacher. Your country needs you.

Kudos to Pres. Obama for including that statement in his State of the Union address Last Tuesday night. America’s teaching force is the cornerstone of our society. As Pres. Obama said, teachers are known as national builders in South Korea. He exhorted Americans to treat our teachers with the same level of respect.

Very rarely does our region get mentioned for innovation outside of the high technology sector. Pres. Obama should take note on what is going on behind the scenes in Silicon Valley, in public education and charter schools, and mention it tonight in his State of the Union Speech.

You would think that providing for the needs of children would be everyone’s top priority. But that’s not always the case in the City of San Jose.

Everything comes down to the quality of our public education system and the manner to which a society treats its children. We reap what we sow. Too often in public schools for some children we are sowing the seeds of despair not hope. The racial achievement gap is a case in point.

As we ponder the life’s work of Dr. Martin Luther King and his commitment to the raising up of all God’s children we must come together with a strong bipartisan consensus on developing a plan so as not to leave any child behind anymore. Every dollar spent in the implementation of this plan, and we do know what works and what to do, will reap $4 in savings to the econom

This new-year, 2011, will be the year for a new federal program for the reform movement in public education. Or will it? Will we punt once more since the problem appears to be intractable and no clear consensus has emerged on where we need to go from here? The history is instructive.

I ended last week’s column with this wish, “vote yes on increasing funding for the children in 2011.”  For me the yearning is as serious as life and death. How we treat our children will be correlated with the quality of our lives in the future. And for me the future is now.

Two weeks before Mark Zuckerberg was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” The Mercury News reported on Zuckerberg’s intention to donate much of his wealth to charity. I’d like to offer the following suggestions to Mark, and to any other billionaires looking for charity investment ideas.

In eleven days we celebrate the first day of the new year. For Californians it is the most critical year for our future as a state, at least in my lifetime, in my opinion.

Few can argue that quality public education is the means for us to reduce crime, increase employment, grow the economy and decrease poverty. California schools have $20 billion less than was promised by the legislature three years ago. Therefore, we can no longer continue to slash funds from already under-resourced institutions without peril to our children, their teachers and our future. This insanity must stop in 2011 with the help of Governor-elect Jerry Brown’s leadership.