|
Steve Chronister For York County Commissioner |
 |
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
Education Education is one of the most pivotal components of our community today. Our young people are the future of our community, and with proper teaching and benefits, they can grow up to follow their dreams and improve our world. There are many steps that we as a county can take to help ensure that our children get the best education they can in today’s world. No child should fail nor should education fail a child. The proposed Chancellor of Education position would be responsible for examining all education in the county from kindergarten to college. The Chancellor can objectively looking at education across the county. Supervising a county wide mentoring and tutoring program. Implementing and finding partners for community outreach programs like the USC model, Addendum II. The scope of their field could even include people that have dropped out of the education system, for example: the Chancellor of Education could approach the York Culinary Institute and develop an outreach program where at risk youth could develop and receive accreditations for some basic job skills. Mini courses in kitchen prep and basic cooking that could give participants from the community the ability to pursue careers in restaurants and food services. These institutions would be asked to donate these services, and in exchange they would give the students in these programs the choice to continue at the institution and apply for regular classes, potentially benefiting both the students and the institution. Classes would only be held two to three times a week at most institutions, and students would not receive full degrees, but benefit from the experiences and skills that they gain by being placed at local restaurants in need of support personnel. One of the improvements that can potentially address the needs of many students in York County is the development of a mentoring and tutoring program. This program would identify kids who are having difficulty keeping up with other students in their grade level and give them help early on. The program would provide tutors for these children with help in math, reading, or wherever they are struggling in an attempt to improve their learning and studying skills so they can join other children in learning their schools’ normal curriculum as soon as they are able. This program helps students early on so that they do not fall even more behind later by providing students with assistance they need in learning skills they can use further on in their education and lives. The Chancellor of Education could take on the well meaning but harmful state unfunded mandates put on our education systems. We are proposing that York County consider benefits for students of all age groups, from the beginning of their educational career until the very end. We should provide programs and assistance to all of our young people, from nursery school till college. The addition of the Chancellor of Education would also help to give our community the benefit of improved education and more opportunities would be available to our young people. The Chancellor of Education could take on the difficult subject of funding and budgets without having a personal turf to protect. Giuliani did this in New York City. He called for a system run by the bureaucracy to be switched so the funding and the primary decision-making falls into the hands of the principals and teachers who run the schools. By dividing the overall budget between the schools and giving the money to the principals and teachers first, and then the amount leftover to the bureaucracy, the students are directly benefited and can get the help that they need (6). Giuliani also addressed the general opinion of New Yorkers that the city school systems were failing in 1995, and compared them with the parochial schools in New York City. Many people would be nervous about the comparison between public and parochial schools because of the differences between the two, but there are a lot of positive aspects of parochial schools that can benefit the public school system (6). Parochial schools offer parents a chance to choose which school their child wants to attend. They also have “minimal administration overhead,” which means more money goes straight to the schools and directly benefits the students. The principals of parochial schools in New York City also have more freedoms, such as being able to design the curriculums of their students, school-based budgeting, and hiring/firing teachers and staff. By putting these matters into the hands of principals, schools are more directly benefited and students can get the support they need (6). Many people also think that parochial schools only accept the students who are superior academically, but parochial schools and public schools enroll about the same amount of students who have “multiple risk factors- meaning that they come from low-income families, single parent homes, with parents who did not finish high school and a sibling who dropped out of school” (6). And yet New York City’s Catholic schools are more successful in educating their students. Catholic schools have a 0.1 percent drop out rate, as opposed to an 18 percent drop out rate in New York City’s public schools. Students also pass the Regents competency tests at higher rates than those in public schools (6). Many students who graduate from high school do not have opportunities to move on to higher education, or to gain job skills. By looking at the outreach programs of the University of Southern California and how these community jobs give young people a chance to learn skills that can give them opportunities to pursue higher education or to find jobs, we can use these programs to benefit our own youth and our community. The Chancellor of Education can look for partners in local colleges and universities to provide a lot of assistance to communities through outreach programs. The USC’s Center for Economic Development Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) is one such example of the benefits community outreach can have, both for citizens of that community and for young people who participate. USC was voted College of the Year 2000 by Time Magazine because of their outreach to underserved communities in Los Angeles. The COPC is a specific department within the school that has outlined seven projects for the improvement of underserved communities in downtown areas of Los Angeles. These projects provide programs to aid community members of all age groups in improving and sustaining their communities through entrepreneurial classes, information on federal grants and loans, improving savings and asset-building, training graduates to perform outreach programs in their own communities, homeownership credit counseling and financial management, and narrowing digital divides within communities. |
