THANK YOU, CHATTANOOGA 2.0, FOR BACKING OUR SCHOOLS
All too often, it seems, we are writing on this page about our schools and the children in them who need so much educational help — help ranging from better teachers to better classrooms to better elected and appointed leadership.
Today is different.
› Today we are bragging about the 1,500 families of pre-K and kindergarten students who have signed up to receive three texts a week reminding them to nurture the brains of their infants and toddlers by reading, singing and pointing with the youngsters to build their vocabularies. About 35 organizations in the county partnered to make this happen. After all, 80 percent of brain development happens in a child’s first three years of life.
› We’re delighted to note our county is home to a growing top teacher mentoring and recruitment effort. The competitive Project Inspire began with eight middle and high school math and science teaching residents, but it will have 50 by 2018. The residents receive a living stipend while they student-teach for a year in classrooms with state-rated “highly effective teachers.” Along the way these residents work to earn a master’s degree in education while being mentored by the Public Education Foundation here. When the residency is done, they will teach in Hamilton County for at least four years.
› Science is getting a boost in fourth-grade classes, and art is back in second-grade classes with the help of $60,000 in grants from the Footprint Foundation, a spin-off of the Lyndhurst Foundation. A local teacher group writes the curriculum and provides the necessary teacher training, while the Footprint Foundation funds and provides all the supplies needed for the classrooms.
› The VW Mekatronics Akademie is expanding to 50 students who will earn a high school diploma and dual enrollment credit that will graduate them ready to work in a good-paying robotic industrial setting.
› Similar industry-sponsored opportunities are coming. The Manufacturing Excellence Program will train 10 to 15 students at eight high schools. Gestamp’s “12 for Life” program will serve 20 students starting in the fall of 2017. The Polytechnic High School program will begin this fall serving 100 students who will earn manufacturing certificates or even associate degrees from Chattanooga State in addition to high school diplomas.
› The Step-Up program is a partnership among schools, organizations and businesses in which Hamilton County high school students are hired for summer internships to gain soft-skills training along with trades and service job experience. PEF started the program with 76 students last summer and plans to help 150 students find jobs this summer.
For these and dozens more initiatives, credit goes in no small measure to Chattanooga 2.0.
The movers and shakers of Chattanooga 2.0 are fond of saying that 2.0 “isn’t a thing, it’s a movement.”
It’s “mission” is this: “to write the next chapter in our future by transforming education and workforce opportunities in Hamilton County.”
And we’re grateful.
About a year ago — beset with fallout from falling scores, a hazing rape, and the community’s lack of trust — the Hamilton County schools superintendent resigned after months of turmoil. Just a few months later, three of four incumbent school board members were unseated in an election. Just a few weeks ago, the board finally hired a superintendent search firm.
The troubles had actually begun long before. It took decades to create a school culture in which only 40 percent of our children are kindergarten ready and only 40 percent of our third-graders can read at grade level. Given that damning foundation, it’s little wonder that only 38 percent of our young adults in the workforce have some sort of technical training or any kind of college degree. Thus it follows that despite Chattanooga being one of the few cities in the nation to make a comeback from manufacturing job declines and recession, our new employers like Volkswagen, Wacker and others say they have 15,000 jobs they can’t fill with local people. It was that sobering fact that galvanized the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce to begin sounding the alarm that sparked Chattanooga 2.0
Meanwhile, the state began knocking on the door to take over five failing schools here, and there are 11 more schools among our 79 that are skating on the edge of a similar danger.
Chattanooga 2.0 has provided both a road map and destination for our schools. The coalition, led by the chamber, the Benwood Foundation, the Hamilton County Department of Education and the Public Education Foundation, became a movement that quietly rallied community support and knitted the fragile partnerships to build ladders out of poverty for many of our students.
A diverse steering committee of nearly 40 people made a blueprint and began coaxing, coaching and pressuring coalitions among the school board, school system, city, county commission, local industries and the community at large.
Jared Bigham, the executive director of Chattanooga 2.0, has described the plan as “a silver buckshot approach, because no single silver bullet will fix this.”
Another of the 2.0 leaders has said the hardest thing about the work has been “getting everyone to hear us.”
So, listen up, parents — all 80,000 of you here: Good things are beginning to happen in our public schools. Don’t let it stop! Praise it, and insist that it continue — on steroids.
Insist on it at the schools, the school board, your City Council meetings. Insist on it at the Hamilton County Commission. Insist on it at your local chamber meetings, your Kiwanis and Rotary meetings, your church meetings.
Our kids are the most important asset we have — both as families and as a community.