Education exposes young people to a broader world, a world full of opportunity and hope.

Education is the foundation upon which we build our future.

When nearly a third of our high school students do not graduate on time with their peers, we have work to do. We must design our middle and high schools so that no student gets lost in the crowd and disconnected from his or her own potential.

We all leave personal legacies for the people we know and love.

We can leave our legacy only if we are willing to change - to go beyond partisan labels, and to solve the problems facing Washingtonians.

We need to take advantage of the opportunity we have now to create a vision and become great.

I will never be able to create a budget from scratch with the amount of time that I have, but my instructions remain the same: Give me a budget that has no new revenue.