REACH seeks parental involvement
Fayette County’s educational system faces challenges, not the least of which is getting people interested in what’s going on within the schools. Reaching Educational Achievement Through Community Help (REACH) is trying hard to spark that interest and actually go further by getting people involved in bettering the schools and, ultimately, the community.
“We’re in the process of creating an awareness of the need for change. We are trying to bring out as much interest in teaching, etc., at a school board meeting as for hiring a football coach,” said Barb Gibel, REACH spokeswoman and Fay-Penn Economic Development Council education/work force development manager.
Gibel and other REACH leaders recently talked with Herald-Standard editors about their efforts when Dr. Willard Daggett, president of the International Center of Leadership in Education, visited the county for the fourth time in three years. REACH was formed in 2001 under the auspices of Fay-Penn as a partnership among business people, educators and community members after Daggett first visited the county and invited its leaders to an ICLE model schools conference.
The REACH mission is as follows: “To improve educational achievement in Fayette County schools to help students succeed in their adult roles and to meet employers’ work force needs through integrated advanced, life skills, technical and vocational programs.”
The group just finished what was called an essential skills survey, which asked more than 700 people in the community to rank Pennsylvania’s required academic standards in math and language arts to the importance of the skills in the workplace and everyday life.
Daggett said the purpose of the essential skills survey is to define what academic standards the community thinks teachers should be emphasizing more than others.
REACH soon will start to collect everyday reading materials from Fayette Countians for a study meant to compare those materials to current textbooks and define how well local students need to be able to read to function in this society.
Called a Lexile Framework, the study uses a point system to compare the difficulty of the reading material to students’ reading skills. When such a study was done at the national level, Daggett said, 75 percent of the nation’s 11th- and 12th-graders did not have the reading skills necessary for entry-level jobs.
Daggett said it is even possible to equate the Lexile Framework results to a school’s scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, which tests the state’s academic standards.
Leo Krantz, REACH co-chairman, suggested it could be of interest to go even further and let parents know how their child’s specific reading skills stack up to specific jobs. He said if the child cannot read well enough to get a job in a fast food restaurant, a parent might want to know that.
Dr. Frederick Smeigh, superintendent of Frazier School District and co-chairman of REACH, said one of the biggest challenges for Fayette County schools is parent interest. For example, he said the schools may offer special tutoring after classes and in the summer, but parents do not take advantage of the opportunity.
Then, schools face the challenge of not having enough money to pay for the programs that can make them better.
Mike Krajovic, president of Fay-Penn, talked about the movement under way for school funding reform at the state level.
He acknowledged that Fayette County schools get a high percentage of their money from the state but pointed out the local schools are operating within a lower tax base than more affluent areas and cannot easily make up the difference by raising local taxes.
“The governor is championing tax reform. It can be strongly argued that children in affluent areas have advantages over rural areas. Children are not entering school equally,” he said.
He said REACH supports Gov. Ed Rendell’s efforts to redistribute the state resources among the school districts. “We don’t want to just throw money at the issue, but it makes a difference,” Krajovic said.
Daggett said the key is to use the money to make the system work. He said REACH can help by bringing people “to the table” to discuss what changes need to be made and how to make those changes.
The new federal No Child Left Behind Act will help make certain that the schools make improvements. Passed in 2000 by George W. Bush, No Child Left Behind is not new, but it is a law that for the first time demands accountability, Daggett said.
In the school year 2014-2015, 100 percent of the nation’s students have to be proficient in their studies. Along the way, a certain number of students have to make progress each year. Not just the overall population of students, but students in nine subcategories must progress each year. If the students do not show improvement, the states may take over the schools. “Schools never had to do that before. It used to be that attendance was mandatory. Now, learning is mandatory,” Daggett said.
He said the challenge is that change takes time, and school leaders have to work within the confines of a variety of regulations as well as labor contracts. And, schools must overcome other issues, like nepotism, that are emotionally charged.
Smeigh said there are those who are comfortable with the way the schools are and will resist change.
“You can’t accomplish in 180 days the same as you did in the World War II era. There is so much to do and not enough time to do it. We do have to raise expectations, and the community has to demand expectations. If we talk about economic development, we have to talk about better schools,” Smeigh said.
For more information on REACH, call Gibel at 724-437-7913.