The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce issued its annual report card on schools yesterday, but the report should be marked as an incomplete.
The report nailed the issues that are vital to the school system's success and its recommendations were also on target. What it lacked was an action plan -- not for the school district, but for the Chamber.
The report's recommendations stressed several times the importance of community involvement in the schools. We couldn't agree more, but while the Chamber's report was long on activities the school district should undertake, it did not list one action the Chamber would undertake to help.
For example, the Chamber's report stressed the need to fully fund schools and called for a "dedicated staff position in every school to serve as a parent/community liaison."
The Chamber could have offered provide the staff needed for that project as "loaner" employees from area businesses, along with the funding to make the positions viable.
The Chamber proposed tracking students who leave the system and determine why they leave.
The Chamber could have taken on that responsibility. In addition to making it a priority by not forcing the district to allocate already scarce resources, the Chamber could have provided an independent review of the situation so that school officials could not be accused of concealing problem issues.
In one of its best proposals, the Chamber suggested that the district "Create a new model for the traditional PTA/PTO to give every school ample opportunity to demonstrate parent or community support: PATCOs (Parent/Alumni/Teacher/Community Organizations)."
The Chamber could have offered to arrange for office space for such an organization along with support staff to manage the groups' efforts and professional staff to help them accomplish their goals. It could have also offered marketing help to bring groups that aren't typically part of the school process into the effort.
There are other things the Chamber could have offered to do to help implement the recommendations it made, but the point here is not to bash the Chamber. The Chamber has always made education an important part of its mission and it can arguably be said that the
Chamber has been the leading community organization in supporting education.
The Chamber has done a good job of diagnosing a patient that all of us already knew was sick. What we need now is a cure and that's what's missing from the Chamber's plan: a pro-active next step.
If the Chamber truly believes these changes are needed, it needs to make the next level of commitment -- offer up the appropriate resources to the schools so they can take advantage of some of their suggestions.
- Jim Grinstead
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