YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - For the second straight year, Youngstown City Schools is hosting a program called Parent YOU or Parent University. It's designed to get more parental engagment.

The kick-off event was Thursday at Chaney High School and the guest speaker was famed basketball coach Ken Carter, who was the subject of the 2005 hit movie, Coach Carter starring Samuel L. Jackson.

"We have to keep kids healthy mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially," Carter said. The first teacher of the child is the parents, they are the very first people that teaches them right and wrong, how to go forth in this life and be successful. A lot of people don't know what success is. My definition of success is real simple, how often you do things and the intensity in which you do it, that's what makes success."

Stressing the importance of education, Carter spoke to about 30 or so in attendance in hopes of inspiring them to be more engaged with their kids and their education.

"You gotta be life long learners, period," Carter said. "Everybody always talking about public education is dead, no it's just on life support, we just got to breathe some life into it. I'm here to breathe some life into the parents, into the teachers, the administrators because kids are 1/3 of our population but 100% of our future."

Carter made national headlines in 1999 when he locked his undefeated basketball team at Richmond High School out of the gym, because they weren't meeting academic standards.

"Basketball was the hook, education was always the goal and I wanted our kids to become high school grads, not high school dads," Carter said.

His approach worked. In his five years at Richmond, every single one of his players graduated.

If parents are going to turn around the failing Youngstown City Schools though, he says it will take a major change.

"They have to reset their preset," Carter said. "See it's already been preset that you're going to fail. Richmond was the most dangerous city in the state of California, yet it's the most known one now because of the movie and what we have done and it started off with very small steps but they were steps in the right direction. As we start to build, we had to take the steps, there was no escalator and there was no elevator, we actually had to take the steps. We just have to get them on the right track."

Carter is hoping to leave the community with this message.

"Not all of us can become famous but each and every one of us can become great because greatness is defined by the service we give to others. We just got to continually give great service."

As for the movie, Coach Carter, he says it is 98.5% accurate.

"The only thing changed is families names and some of the teams we played because we did beat teams by 50 points," Carter said.

What did he think of Samuel L. Jackson playing him?

"I always called him Mr. Samuel Jackson because he was just at another level," Carter said. "Not only did he know all of his lines sir, he knew all of everyone elses lines. He is absolutely the best actor in the history of the game. People always ask me, coach you a lot of personality, why didn't you just play yourself, No! I see what real perfection is. He's never late, always on time, knows his parts, knows what is expected of him and guess what, he under promised and always over delivered."

His favorite scene in the movie is when he finds the players in the gym studying after the Richmond School Board voted to end the lockout and cut the locks off the gym doors.

"That was the day I was gonna actually quit," Carter said. "I was actually quitting because the school board decided that you know, winning was more important than having some integrity. Can you imagine that? Winning a high school basketball game is more important than having integrity in your life and being accountable. When he stood up and said you playing small does not serve the world as there is nothing enlightened about shrinking so others won't feel insecure around us, we are all meant to shine. So we just put them out on the court and let them shine."

He also says Cruz is still selling drugs, but now he's a doctor.

To read more about Ken Carter, just visit his website, coachcarter.com