Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 25, 1992 TAG: 9201250166
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
BUSINESSES HEAR WHAT SCHOOL SYSTEM HAS TO OFFER THEM
Pulaski County educators offered business and industry a deal Friday - a chance to help each other prepare for the next century."We are looking forward to working with you in a way we have never done before," Superintendent William Asbury said.
"This is part of the future right here and it's coming at us amazingly fast."
"We want to look at how we can share our resources," said Joy Colbert, director of research and development for the school system.
"Perhaps it's time to look at how we could start sharing our talents in both education and business. . . . We have a lot of resources that you might not even realize we have in Pulaski County."
That includes people in the school system with specialities that help train employees in new technologies, Colbert told a gathering of business leaders at a breakfast at Pulaski County High School.
Computer telecommunications and a television studio are among what is available for potential business use in county schools.
Computer laboratories already are open to the public four nights a week at the high school and two nights each at Jefferson and Riverlawn elementary schools.
Associate Superintendent Phyllis Bishop said the potential of computers in all the schools, paid for with voter-approved bonds, has not come close to being realized.
In turn, Colbert said, business might consider offering job apprenticeships to students.
"When we talk about transforming education, you're talking about something that might be analogous to moving a supertanker in a very small harbor," she said.
The payoff for business would be in getting graduates trained to handle increasingly sophisticated job requirements.
The plan for the proposed business-education partnership envisions signing up business people in three groups:
A division improvement team of educators, community leaders and parents. It would look at such things as how school staffing patterns, curriculums and extracurricular activities might be improved.
A futures task force with representatives from Virginia Tech, Radford University, New River Community College and business, community and educational leaders examining trends, national education goals and the latest technology.
A business advisory group dealing with the immediate future of education. "We're talking about a classroom without walls," Colbert said, using computers and fiber optics to network virtually around the world.
Plans are under way in Blacksburg to link schools, homes and businesses by computer to banks, stores, libraries, stock markets and one another, she noted.
"So a global village might be right next door. That's going to have an impact on how you do business, and it's going to have an impact on how schools do business. . . . Someone isn't going to do it for us. We're it."
Pulaski County is not the only school system in the New River Valley interested in working with business.
Giles County is one of three Virginia counties chosen to work with Virginia Tech on a project aimed at restructuring schools and involving business and industry with education.
It will join Scott and Wise counties and the Forward Southwest Virginia organization in the program funded through the New American School Development Corp.
Colbert said traditions in education, including the school year and day, are being reviewed in light of its graduates having to face global competition.
"We have to do business together, and how we restructure to bring that about is going to require the best thinking of everybody in this room," she said.
The three Pulaski County teams will come together sometime in February to hear Willard Daggett, who restructured vocational education in New York, speak on transforming education.