Doug Christiansen This is a very productive conversation. Please join me in thanking our facilitators.

I have several observations. It’s clear to me that we don’t know each other as well as we need to. We need to keep talking. Even though we want to get to the action steps, talking to each other is a good thing to do.

Secondly, it’s clear to me that there is a lot of finger-pointing. If only…  the employers, educators, legislators, etc. We need to get out of that kind of thinking. We need to have partnerships. Every problem we have, is a problem we all have.

I believe conversations change people and we grow from them. One of the ways we keep this going is that there is a place on our website where people can continue to talk. You can call it Doug’s myspace, if you want. (laughter)

We are going to do this through an adaptive process. We’re going to have to engage each other. It becomes difficult if we don’t find our common ground and that’s hard to do because we all have different situations, so instead of trying to meet on common ground which is slim, where we can meet is our higher ground.

Maybe we can meet with the governor and have this conversation around 21st century learning. This isn’t the answer but it’s a vehicle to get there. America is still the leading innovator and we don’t want to slide backward.

We can take this model and ask the questions that are implied. A group should get together and define what these things look like, such as the core subjects, global awareness, and life skills. We need to help define that before we come up with standards. If we come up with the construct of this umbrella, then we’ll take a step way down the road that is relevant.

Finally, I don’t think we understand each other very well. I don’t know if educators understand what kind of risk businesses take and I’m not sure if businesses understand the risks that educators take. If you look at the demographics of who we’re educating, you’ll see the percentage of the at-risk kids. One out of two kids in Nebraska has an at risk condition. We can’t solve the workforce issue with 1990’s solutions. We, Nebraska and Nebraskans, look different than we did ten years ago.

We need to understand each other so that we can get this work done. We get a lot done here because it’s the right topic, fantastic facilitation, and because you care so much.

Butch Lecuona It was so valuable for me to participate in the group discussions. The energy level and synergy is amazing. This is possible because we do care. We have to find a better way to do everything that we do.

It’s like what happens on the white board. We said build it and there it is. We have to continue this dialogue. If we don’t get this message out to everybody, then we fail. We have to do this individually and collectively. We need to ask ourselves what we have to do to make a difference in the future of Nebraska. We have to do something pretty drastically.

That’s a lot of jobs and we have to find a way to create the pipelines. We need to look at how we maximize limited financial resources to make it work. I see a lot of things on these boards about partnerships and communication.

I guess I try to be simplistic. Policy is policy, but part of the education process is to talk to our legislators, our boards, and our business community. We need to understand the importance of the economic stability of the state. We’ve had some great things happen here. It’s like a puzzle and no one is connecting the dots. We know what the puzzle is supposed to look, but there are pieces that don’t fit and we need to figure that out. There is a lot of work to be done. We may have a vision of what it’s supposed to look like, but we need to get it down to a level where everyone can understand what we’re talking about.

We have a great stake in this. It’s up to us to keep it happening. We need to talk to everybody, our kids, our spouses, our friends, our parents. As I educate my mother on what we’re doing, she reminds me of what’s important in life, which is to stay in balance and do things for the right reasons.

Today has changed. I remember old training programs and how we squandered those funds. If we would have done then what we did today, everyone would have a training account to get to where we need to go. We didn’t have the urgency and we have that today. Employers tell me all the time that they can’t find the right people. We need to find a way to create future workers today. Leveraging resources is one way to do that. We can take pride in our efforts as we see that other states have difficulty doing the same thing. That’s a significant thing to say about our state.

One thing I will do is to share this with our state and local investment boards. I’m going to share this with the governor. My charge to you is to keep the dialogue alive. I always say, “If not now, when? If not us, who?”

I want to thank you for putting your efforts in this dialogue and my gratitude goes out to each and every one of you.

Rich Katt I want to say a special thank you for the collaboration we’ve seen here. There are several agencies who’ve partnered to make this possible.

We’ve had some great ideas that have come out of this. One of them is to bring together some people from ages 14 to 20 to do this same process.

I would like to thank Terri for all the work she did for organizing behind the scenes today. She is phenomenal.

Tomorrow we’ll continue with a smaller group and focus on the Perkins grant.

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