I did give out some demographic and financial data. It was a lot in a short amount of time, but hopefully you were able to review this, digest it some, and think about these things.
At our SIAC meeting we discussed some of our basic programs that we must offer: ELL, TAG, Multicultural and Global Education, Special Needs, and Dropout Prevention. We reviewed our test scores, reviewed student surveys, and then discussed the more area-wide concerns.
From my perspective (which may be wrong) some of our conclusions were that our test scores are high, our curriculum is broad-based and solid, we like/love our school and teaching staff, our school is currently financially and functionally sound, good decisions have been made in the past, and our facilities are new. Basically we rock on all elements!
AND
We have had continuous declining enrollment, our K-3 has about 60 kids (or 20 per grade), the enrollment for the future looks bleak, economic development in the area could improve, and we are not alone in Northeast Iowa.
What are we/should we be doing about this
Also, we talked about having the five or six things that are most important to the long-run existence of Eastern Allamakee School District.....in other words, what matters most?
ReplyDeleteWe represent three MFL MarMac students who saw this blog. We agree that a better economic outlook would be improve Northeast Iowa in general. We hope that all of the area schools can someday gain in enrollment.
ReplyDeleteHello;
ReplyDeleteThis is from Bruce Palmborg Lansing resident.
Great idea Dale this blogging.
There are many pieces/parts/areas to the question of reversing the declining enrollment.
So what follows is one possible approach to begin to build on or to say Palmborg I don't think so
A portion of the start-up process could be about formulating critical questions. For example . . .
1.) What should be the geography of our focus?/Should we go beyond the boundaries of EACS?/Is it the entire County?
Identify the positive and negatives.
(From 2000-2010 Allamakee County had a -2.4% pop. loss and has been in decline since before 1900. Lansing experienced a similar general decline since prior to 1900
with -1.3% decline from 2000-2010. In the 1860's and early '70's Lansing had a pop. in excess of 2,000 and was the economic engine of the County. Waukon's
pop. trend has been one of growth from 1900 forward but for 2000-2010 it experienced it's first decline in many decades of -5.7%)
2.) How do we identify all the pieces or most all of them?
3.) What are the priorities?
4.) What are the goals?
Short and long term.
5.) Administratively what would be our model for managing & progressing this effort?
How do we begin a process?
How about a panel discussion-some "experts" who could speak to their area of expertise and perhaps a bit beyond. They would help us with the points above(1-5).
Laura Olson, Director Allamakee County Economic Development - she has a wealth of expertise and experience and is connected to a number of regional matters
as well.
Dr. Wee, President of NICC - he is committed to growing this part of Iowa and could very well represent the vocational/technical/ educational perspective.
Lora Friest - Director NE Iowa Resource Conservation & Development(RC&D) - Lora is an excellent critical thinker, strategist and is able to see the common thread in what may appear to be disparate ideas. She also is and has been involved in a number of betterment projects in the NE.
Perhaps an academician from one of our universities with a specialty in a relevant area.
At our upcoming meeting we could work through this approach identify additional panel participants & formulate very specific responses we would be seeking from the panel members etc.
We need a note taker. I'm not speaking to meeting minutes but to notes which would establish a record of our discussions and provide part of the needed continuity over time. The notes would be processed and distributed to participants.
Finally at our first meeting Ben Winchester was brought up. Ben is on the faculty of the University of Minnesota Extension Center For Community Vitality. He recently gave a presentation at NICC in Calmer reporting on in-migration from urban areas to rural areas. His work is available at
http://www.extension.umn.edu/community/brain-gain
Have at it.
Thank you!
Bruce Palmborg
Lansing, IA
Where "It's good enough"
isn't good enough anymore.
Hollowing Out the Middle
ReplyDeleteThe Rural Brain Drain and What it Means for America
Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas
Excerpt from the Conclusion – page 166
“Educational programs will need to be revamped so that the next generation of workers will have more options than simply following their parents into jobs at Deere. As noted, traditional blue-collar jobs that once expanded the middle class simply do not exist for today’s workers, and, more important, the next generation must be trained for the realities of the new marketplace. Every young person who completes high school must be proficient in computer technologies, and for those not headed to college, high school curricula should be modeled after the most successful community college programs for accounting, business, nursing and medical technology (both areas, experiencing shortages of qualified workers in Iowa), and computer science. Instead of preparing high school students for conventional four-year college curricula, education should be transformed to funnel young people into vocational and preprofessional training that will fill the holes in the countryside’s labor force. It is dangerous and misguided to fund and operate rural high schools with the primary goal of getting the academically oriented students to college and assuming that the non-college-bound will somehow get a job on their own.”
Valerie O. Reinke