Everyone’s favorite future president has a message for the country. There’s no way he’ll get to the Oval Office unless he gets through school first. And what he, and schoolchildren around the country need are simple: access to healthy food, early education and an engaging, vibrant classroom experience.

That’s the message he and a cast of other irresistibly cute kids are sharing as part of a new video produced by SoulPancake for the Schott Foundation’s Opportunity to Learn Campaign. (Disclosure: Schott Foundation is a funder of the Applied Research Center, which publishes Colorlines.com.)

The three asks are seemingly simple enough. But far too many kids go to school in the U.S. without access to any of the three. And the political conversation about these issues quickly becomes a distant abstraction for people. "When you talk to folks about the opportunity gap in education, most people don’t really know what you’re talking about," said Joe Bishop, the executive director of the Opportunity to Learn Campaign. 

But the opportunity gap is real. More than 22 percent of the nation’s kids live in poverty, Bishop said, and fewer than half of U.S. children have access to pre-kindergarten. It turns out that these sorts of barriers end up having a huge impact on kids’ educational success. Researchers are finding that the achievement gap between kids who are wealthy–and have access to reliable health care, three square meals a day and early education–and those who are poor–and who must sometimes do without any of those three–shows up even before kindergarten. And because a disproportionate number of black and Latino families live in poverty, the opportunity gap is especially relevant to communities of color.

So listen up when Kid President talks. And head to the Opportunity to Learn page to learn more.