What do you make of the numbers? And is it working? Is the goals and guardrails working? And how does your candidacy, your seat, Fresno County Superintendent of Schools, how does it relate to these numbers?

Well, you know, what I'll say is that Fresno Unified last year in 2025, they were at 37 and 27 for ELA and math respectively.

And they've gone up to 39, 29.

So, you know, we still have a significant number of students in Fresno Unified, not only Meeting standards.

I think, you know, we have to remind ourselves these are all students.

We had, you know, we had about 33,000 students in the district take the test.

And because, as you know, we test in grades three through eight and 11.

On all things including improvement.

So along with bringing that focus back to fundamentals and getting all of these school districts to kind of get on the same page, to support each other in success and to help each other over the rough spots, what do you see outside of that first 100 days? What would you like to see be the ultimate focus of your administration as county superintendent?

So, you know, I've been saying since I, you know, started on this journey that I've asked myself the question, if there was one problem or issue that I could solve, really solve, that what would have the greatest impact on the entire educational system? And it wasn't a hard call.

It is literacy.

Because if our children can't read, and I've said it before, by the time they get to that third grade.

Now, most kids, we teach them to read by first grade.

But by the time they get to the third grade test is the first test that we test every child in the state on the same test.

And if they are not reading by then, it really does affect the trajectory of the rest of their educational career.

And all of that disrupts the ability to teach.

As Fresno County Superintendent for the schools that you're over, can you control discipline in the classroom?

Well, discipline is an outcome of kids being utterly frustrated.

That's what it is.

I taught for 20 years.

I can speak to that.

And I've spoken to a lot of teachers over the last couple of years, and they have told me that extreme behaviours are very rampant in our schools.

But what I've noticed is, and it was my own experience in my district where I was superintendent, is that when the leaders and the administrators support teachers...

of a healthy person or a healthy parent that they want their children to do better than themselves? There's no competition.

Was it?

And it's, it's based in Blackpool.

And, like, when you go into it, and I've been in it for loads of different arts-related events, but it's only now that I'm looking at it through the eyes of Cork Heritage Open Day.

When you go into the building and you go in the front door, they still have the stained glass windows.

You can actually see the altars there.

You can see, um, where the choir used to perform.

So what they've done, I suppose, they w- they, and we actually have an amazing talk by the architect, Paul Hudson, who was involved in transforming it from, I suppose, a former convent-

So, and, and, and they're all very well-preserved and looked after.

A lot of

history.

We have buildings like Carpenters Hall, which is where all the kind of the unions were based, the likes of kind of the plumbers, the trade unions and actually the stonemasons were based there.

And we have a fascinating talk on the history of the secret language of the stonemasons that is going to be given.

Other buildings, I know you mentioned Masonic Hall.

That's one building that people just love to go in to see.

It's been closed the last three years because they did a wonderful restoration of the building.

Do you think it's really important to take history out onto the actual streets?

it's amazing a lot of people always say like you never really explore your own backyard yeah you know you go abroad you see all these other cities you travel to edinburgh have a look around there you go to london look around there and people say but have you actually have you gone on up to shandon have you done this have you got you know and people go no i haven't you know

Yeah.

And you know what we try to do as well, aside from all our wonderful buildings being open, we actually have a lot of walking street, street walking guided tours where we're so grateful to local historians in the city who give their time every year in Cork Heritage Open Day.

Lee Mohegane has been a stalwart.

of giving guided tours in Cork Heritage Open Day, and he's going to be doing a wonderful tour around the history of the old city walls.

And Liam would have grown up near enough to the middle parish, so he knows the area so well.

He's just a fountain of knowledge.

Wonderful, yeah.