State and local leaders in education recently discussed problems and solutions for students and school systems during the second annual “Meeting of the Minds” event at Lawson State Community College (LSCC) in Birmingham.
The event was hosted by the J. Mason Davis Leadership Society, a United Way of Central Alabama (UWCA) donor network. The group brings together African American changemakers who champion diversity and opportunity, and are striving to positively impact the community through a shared affinity for philanthropy, volunteerism and advocacy.
Among the most significant daily challenges students in Central Alabama face are poverty and food insecurity, said Dr. Melvin Love, Principal of Oxmoor Valley Elementary School. And those problems often have a direct impact on students’ performance in the classroom, said Jason Meadows, who represents District 9 on the Birmingham Board of Education.
“It’s hard to learn when life is loud. If we turned up the music and made it really hot in here right now, many of you would have to leave this event,” Meadows said. “But that’s the reality of some of our students’ lives every day.” (It’s well-documented that children who are hungry or otherwise troubled at home have difficulty learning in school.) “And yet, they’re given the burden of having to take tests measuring their aptitude and intelligence,” said Meadows.
Some of those challenges can be solved by resources provided by United Way partners and programs. But the teachers need to be versed in understanding and recognizing the adverse issues that many students are dealing with – because it’s the teachers who can point them and their families toward help. And therein lies another problem because many teachers simply can’t identify with the level of poverty that many of their students live with, said Love.
“When I came to Oxmoor Valley in 2015, it was a ‘failing school.’ We had all these parent meetings, and it was clear that there was a disconnect between the parents and teachers,” Love said. “What we did was put the teachers on a bus, and we brought them into the community. Many of the teachers had never been in the community they worked in.”
Love said the experience gave teachers an opportunity to gain a greater sense of the lives of these families, enabling them to better engage students and parents moving forward. That, in turn, opened the door to teachers referring families in need to resources such as United Way programs and partners.
In addition to the problems that students face, the panelists said the next five years will be challenging for school systems, top to bottom. Among the biggest concerns is funding, said Meadows.
“Nothing is cheap. High quality teachers, they want to get paid. High quality instructional leaders want to get paid based on the industry standard,” Meadows said. “The technologies of today’s education system are very expensive. We’re not just talking about spiral notebooks and pencils anymore.”
Funding inequity has historically been a source of discontent among educators, Meadows said. Across the nation, zip codes with the highest property values (and consequently, taxes) have had the highest performing schools, he said. Leveling the playing field in terms of funding remains a major concern. Another critical issue is the rapidly changing environment we find ourselves in, said Dr. Cynthia Anthony, President of Lawson State. She said that the jobs students train for now may or may not exist in the next few years.
“We have to begin thinking about how we prepare our students for jobs. That may not be limited the actual subject matter of vocational training,” Anthony said. “We have to teach our students to be in a mindset where they understand and value critical thinking, flexibility and creativity, regardless of the situations they’re in.”
For as long as students and schools have faced challenges, community organizations have filled in the gaps where government stops, said Dr. Autumm Jeter, Assistant Superintendent at the Alabama State Department of Education. Partnerships between schools and organizations such as United Way have the potential to help overcome some of these challenges.
Case in point, Anthony is part of a group of community members seeking to do just that. As a member of the Fairfield Community Schools Advisory Committee, she helps guide the efforts to increase the availability of services for all kinds of needs through a UWCA partnership with Fairfield City Schools. And the results have proven to be outstanding by dramatically reducing chronic absenteeism and greatly improving grade-level performance.
The panel discussion was hosted by Victoria Barnes, a Miles College and LSCC graduate currently enrolled in a nursing program at Lawson State.
For more information about the J. Mason Davis Leadership Society, or to join, click here.
For more information about how United Way partners and programs work in early childhood development and education, click here.
