We cannot wait to share space with hundreds of social work students and professionals who are ready to advocate for issues that affect social work, our clients, and our communities – all in-person in Sacramento, California. As part of our Lobby Days Conference on April 21, we are proud to announce that the California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, MSW will be joining us as our Keynote Speaker! Superintendent Thurmond will kick off Lobby Days by sharing his journey and illustrating the impact our profession has on social justice, policy, and legislature.
About Tony Thurmond, MSW
Tony Thurmond, California’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, leads the nation’s largest public school system, serving over 5.8 million students across more than 1,000 school districts and 10,000 schools. In addition, he oversees three State Special Schools for deaf and blind students. Since taking office, he has championed historic investments, legislation and initiatives to close achievement gaps and promote access and opportunity for all of California’s students.
Superintendent Thurmond is an educator, social worker and public-school parent who has served Californians for more than 18 years in elected office. Previously, he served on the Richmond City Council, West Contra Costa Unified School Board and in the California State Assembly representing District 15.
In his first term Superintendent Thurmond worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to provide connectivity and devices to ensure millions of students could continue learning from home, distributed nearly 1 billion meals to students and families, established mental health services for students and secured $6.6 billion in funding to safely re-open California schools for in-person instruction.
In his second term as the leader of California’s education system, Superintendent Thurmond has tripled the amount of per-pupil funding from a decade ago and has focused these investments on transforming California’s publics schools. With a focus on addressing critical needs, his initiatives include funding community schools, launching universal meal programs, universal TK for all 4-year-olds and a reading by 3rd grade Initiative. To ensure students have access to quality support he secured funding to recruit 10,000 teachers and counselors. Making ongoing teacher development a priority, he has allocated substantial resources for reading coaches and professional development in math and literacy instruction, empowering educators to excel in the classroom.
Recognizing the importance of real-world experience in shaping students’ futures, Superintendent Thurmond formed public private partnerships to initiate paid internship and apprenticeship programs and has sponsored legislation to create personal finance and computer science graduation requirements to prepare our students for the jobs of tomorrow.
Superintendent Thurmond’s family relied on public assistance programs and great public schools to get out of poverty. Public school education allowed him to attend Temple University, where he became student body president. He went on to earn dual master’s degrees in law and social policy and social work (MSW) from Bryn Mawr College and began a career dedicated to service.
Learn more about Superintendent Thurmond here.
We look forward to welcoming over 1,100 attendees and Superintendent Thurmond to the stage to share how social workers can lead change together.
