Governor O'Malley Hosts Workforce Creation Summit
February 2, 2008
(Applause.) This is about one of the central, probably the central strategy of this administration. And there are three, one of them is security integration -- you know, integrating our homeland security with our traditional public safety with our social services, with all of the things we do for families that are at risk, for kids that are in danger of becoming another sad statistic in our State. So security integration.
The other leading strategy for this administration is sustainability, in terms of the land, the air, the water that we use, the energy, therefore, that we use.
But the third piece is why this congress of opportunity has come here today, to the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins. And this congress of opportunity is really about the central strategy, which is workforce creation. You know, planets evolve, continents develop, people create.
So a central aspect of everything that our State government should be about in so many ways, shapes, forms in the silos of the past is about workforce creation. It is about workforce creation.
We've invested significantly in K-12 education. As a State, we've ramped up in about a five year period of time, on a $15 billion base, from doing about $3 billion a year in K-12 education from the State level to doing over $5 billion a year. This year is a record year of funding for K-12 education. And these last two years have doubled in school construction investment than we did in the last two years of the prior administration.
We have world-class workforce, a robust economy, unemployment rates that most any other Governor would be jealous of, and yet we also see more people now applying for temporary cash assistance, more people applying for unemployment, and employers struggling always to attract people that have the basic readiness to step in and do some jobs -- the many jobs that are required in this creative economy, because for every one person you create -- every job that's created in the so-called creative economy, you create the need for two more in what has traditionally been thought of as a service economy.
For these reasons, we've also created a P-20 council. Too often we've had education issues being handled here with one or two people with a background in education going to a GWIB, right? Or the local WIBs. And then we've had one or two people from the GWIBs sometimes crossing across the large divide and serving on school boards or other things.
Our P-20 council is going to be our attempt to focus on making both of these things come together in a much more coordinated, cogent, comprehensive way. And hopefully, a much quicker and more effective way. And we have a number of good people who are going to serve on that.
Our agency has been collaborating in some innovative ways. We have a number of secretaries here who are with us and they understand that it's all about alignment and coordination.
This summit is about harnessing the vast amount of knowledge in this room for the benefit of our entire State. And we cannot do it without you. I'm really, really excited about our workforce efforts. We can become a leader in this entire country in maximizing the potential of every individual, which is probably at the end of the day the most important value that all of us share, right? A belief in the dignity of every individual and an understanding of our own responsibility to advance the common good.
Thank you all very, very much. (Applause.)
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