- I'm here with Angelique Power, President and CEO of the Skillman Foundation.

Welcome to "One Detroit."

- Thank you so much.

Glad to be here.

- If you had to name the top three levers to pull in our state to get more people to stay here, more people to come here, I mean education would absolutely be at the top of that list.

We don't do a good job, and it's not just Detroit, it's not just urban areas, the whole state.

We have fallen way behind in terms of our investment, structure, design, strategy, all of it.

- You get it.

I mean, for 20 plus years, we've been underfunding public education in Michigan.

And so I think we tend to think that one area is doing okay and another area is struggling.

But when you look at the numbers, you see that Michigan ranks 36th, 38th in the nation.

There's a direct correlation between how much you are willing to invest in the system itself and what the outcome is.

And the other thing I'll say is that we look at a lot of scores of reading scores and math scores and we think to ourselves that it's an indicator of an individual student.

But those scores are indicators of a system, how well it's functioning, how well it's funded.

And so the big news from Grow Michigan Together is that four subgroups, pillars, two of them focused on education.

Everybody's saying we need an upgraded system and we need it yesterday.

- For a long time there's been a strain in Michigan between the idea of the state school board and the governor's office, who's in charge?

Who's got their hands on the wheel?

I feel like that's held us back from what some other states have been able to accomplish because the power is more centralized.

I wonder what you make though of how we navigate that to get to a better space.

- So the pre-K through 12 subgroup had four recommendations.

And the very first one was a cohesive vision for education.

- Amen.

We've never had one.

- We don't have one.

And so if you look at not having a cohesive vision, then you understand how you end up with 850 school districts, which is similar to California, which is four times bigger than we are.

And so absolutely we need a cohesive vision.

Our structure is a state school board, Michigan Department of Education, a state superintendent, a governor.

And like all of them are not cohesive.

And I think that where people start today is they say like, "Well we want the sup to report here or we want the state board to have this change."

But actually we need that vision first.

And then absolutely we need to structure around it and then we need to fund it like we-- - Right, right, right, we have never funded education in the way that we should in Michigan either.

I want to give you a chance to talk about Skillman and the role that it's playing in thinking about these things and turning a path forward.

- So I've been at Skillman for a little over two years now and I've spent one year listening and one year building and all of it in community.

And what we've heard so much is that Detroit of 10 years ago is different than Detroit of today.

And that Detroit 10 years from now is going to be very different.

And we are at a critical moment in Detroit.

Some may say we're in a fight for our soul.

So who are we gonna be in 10 years and who is going to be here?

And so we are planning with students, with teachers, with principals, with parents to do community driven education, policy change for the future.

And we're building on our legacy.

I'm so honored to walk on the path laid by the incredible Carol Gauss and Tanya Allen.

And both of them were very much invested in community and very much focused on the horizon line in policy.

So we're lifting the best of Skillman and we're going full throttle into making sure that young people are in these rooms on these stages.

You're hearing from teachers, you're hearing from organizers, and you're hearing from policy makers who are warriors themselves in many ways trying to be more connected to community - Equity and opportunity and access I think permeate every one of the questions we have in this state about things like education.

I know Skillman also works in this area, but talk about how important it's to keep that front and center as we talk about how we improve education to grow population.

- What's really interesting to me is that people use the word equity.

It's a buzzword in some ways.

And they have no idea what it means.

And so it's so applicable in education because what it means is every child that needs more gets more, that's it.

So when we're talking about equitable education systems, we're talking about young people that live in poverty, they come to school and they need different things.

We're talking about students that arrive with special needs.

They come to school and need different things.

And often we're talking about young people who English is the second language that they know.

Now a lot of these overlapping systems that beat down on different populations have like a triple impact on Black and brown young people.

And so we are also saying, let's do a racialized analysis of education systems in addition.

And these all overlap.

So if you look at a lot of students with special needs, a lot of them are Black and brown students or those that live in poverty.

But we're linking arms with people all across the state because rural communities are just as marginalized and oppressed and that we all need more to fit our customized needs of the moment.

And what a cool education system that actually plans for that.

That's hives of places where everyone is a learner.

That's how Michigan becomes makers of the future is when we fund it like we mean it.