Byron V. Garrett's 2010 National PTA Convention Remarks

Greetings! It is indeed a pleasure to see each and every one of your smiling faces, partial and spaces, dentures and braces.

Thanks to each of you for the incredible commitment you make to ensure America’s future by standing up for America’s most precious citizens: Our children. As we work together to fulfill the mission, I am simply humbled by your passion, resourcefulness and dedication. I am honored to serve as the CEO of the National PTA and take great pride in working on your behalf.

At this time there’s a group of individuals, I’d like to recognize.  You’ve seen them in orange shirts throughout convention—some out front, but many behind the scenes. Please join me in thanking your staff at the National PTA headquarters for a job well done!!!

This last year has been a banner year for family engagement, as each of you stood shoulder to shoulder in your respective communities to advance a worthy agenda on behalf of our children that culminated in H.R. 5211.

Please join me in thanking our state leaders, national committee members and the national board of directors for providing the structure and guidance required to lead this great association.

While I get to travel and see many of our members on a weekly, basis I spend a significant amount of time with three in particular. Our national officer team – Teresa, Betsy and Chuck work tirelessly on your behalf each and every day often sacrificing time with family and work, to travel the globe to usher this movement forward.

Just today, you witnessed the chartering of our 55th Congress – Puerto Rico. It seems like just yesterday when I was talking with Chuck about what it would take to charter Puerto Rico and he was determined to ensure we provided the resources of this great association to every parent and here we are less than 12 months later with a new congress. Please give your national officer team a rousing round of applause.

Throughout this convention, we’ve experienced and witnessed amazing things take place.

From the inaugural Selena Sloan Butler Award to the new Nickelodeon and Facebook Partnerships to the additional $1 million in support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, this indeed has been another historic convention.

Think about it: EMLC, Male Involvement; PIRCs; Title 1 parents; all under the banner of the PTA Convention. What a time, what a time, what a time! All of this great work is done to enrich the lives of children.

As Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a group of committee citizens can change the world, indeed it’s the only thing that ever has!”

There is a great transformation taking place in PTA and you are leading the charge.

Think about the words of Tony and Lauren Dungy, calling all adults – not just moms, but also dads. Weren’t they awesome?

Think of the commitment made by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to double the funding for parental involvement from one percent to two percent.

It is because of each of you and our more than five million members and friends that we have this type of impact.

Hear me clearly, no other institution exists that can match the power, organizational strategy and success of the National PTA. In the words of young people today, we’re often imitated, but never duplicated.

Because of this great transformation, we must engage in ways we’ve never done before.

The sense of urgency for our Transformation is clear.

The world has changed. The nuclear family no longer exists. Rural communities can become suburbs while booming metros become desolate, barely populated communities.

By the time I finish speaking, 35 students would have drop out of school. Thirty-five. Time is of the essence. Bold, innovative, decisive and committed leadership is required to right the wrongs in America and we have truly wronged our young people, by robbing many of a future that was promised by our founders when they pinned the words: We hold these Truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The time of holding to old ideas and practices, clutching to yesteryear for dear life must fade away to make room for the new.
 
We must be careful not to throw away, marginalize or discount anyone desiring to join the PTA family. Just because they don’t know our history doesn’t mean they’re not able to help write the next chapter of it.
 
We must take a cue from our National Family-School Partnership Standards and ensure we have a welcoming environment.

This must be part of our transformation.
 
Many don’t want to come to a meeting every week. So what? Many don’t want to participate in fundraisers. So what? Someone doesn’t have patience for bylaws and resolutions. So what? What matters most is one’s commitment to success for all children.

We know that one out of every 2 black and Latino men will never graduate high school, never attend college, and will be imprisoned both spiritually and mentally. That’s like telling me to pick between my 2 nephews (Brandon and Dwayne). One will graduate and one will not.

No parent should have to make such a choice in the country. This is BEYOND unacceptable. It’s criminal to condemn an infant to a life that goes from cradle to prison because we lose sight of what really matters.

A key to our transformation is agreeing to work together, rather than to work apart, yet we spend hours upon hours – planning, strategizing and often scheming about how we can manipulate the system. The time is up for games and politics. The time is now for serious advocates like each of us in this room to band together to achieve what many see as impossible. 

Take that same energy and effort and put it towards a membership campaign. As Terri Robinson on our staff says: “If you receive a no, it’s because you don’t KNOW enough to say yes.

We are failing America’s children. The case has never been more compelling than a story in The New York Post called “A Diploma I Can’t Read.” It chronicled the school experience of Wayne Knowland who graduated from Fannie Lou Hamer High School in the Bronx in spite of reading at a 2nd grade level. He couldn’t read a stop sign, nor a job application when he finished school.

His story is only one of millions of Americans, poor-and-middle class, black, white and Latino, who is half-educated in this country. American cannot survive half-educated.

The last time I checked, half equals 50 percent equals “F” equals failure.

Unfortunately, the recent oil spill is not the only calamity that is causing severe drowning. Our education and social service systems suffer from a number of calamities that result in billions of dollars in additional spending and lost productivity.

For far too long, our communities have been drowning in sorrow and despair.

Our special education children have drowned in a pool of scarce resources, materials and supports.

Our children are drowning in schools that crumble while they learn.

Our children are drowning in streets that grow unsafe by the minute, not allowing for safe passage home.

We need PTA to thrive. In order to thrive, you must understand that a rising tide raises all ships. We must continue to raise the tide for parental engagement, raise the tide in protecting school funding, raise the tide to ensure our children get better school lunches and access, we must raise the tide to secure America’s future by helping every child achieve his potential.

I had the opportunity to visit the Civil Rights Museum. I learned how to speak quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a child. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the photo of the balcony where Dr. King was assassinated. But I was simply overcome by the magnitude of the experience and am still attempting to wrap my mind around where we were then and where we are now.

So I leave you today with the words from great transformers like Rosa Parks: “My feets is tired but my soul is rested.”

Transformers like Fannie Lou Hamer: “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Transformers like Chuck Saylors:  “We must have a PTA that looks like America.”

But last, I leave you with the words of Dr. King: “Whatever your life’s work is…you should do your job so well, the living, the dead and the unborn could do it no better. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, then sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music… sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth would pause and say here lies a great street sweeper who swept his or her job well.”