It’s that time of year again. The weather is cooling off, the leaves are turning colors, and the kids are back in school. Every parent in America is breathing a collective sigh of relief, as life resumes a more normal pace.
Ah, school.
But schools are more than just a place for kids to hang out during the day. They are where your community’s future work force is being trained, and if your schools are not up to the task, your job as an economic developer will become more and more difficult in the years to come.
When you talk about labor, several factors are at play. One is quantity, another is quality, and a third is reliability.
The quantity issue receives constant media attention. Every day, employers feel the pinch of our nation’s tight labor market. The national unemployment rate is down to about 4.2 percent, and in major metropolitan areas around the country, it’s even lower than that.
In the midst of good times like these, where almost all of our constituents have jobs, people begin to wonder why they bother to spend any resources on economic development. Unfortunately, unemployment is cyclical.
We may not know when, but we do know that the economy will eventually taper off, and that unemployment rates will again rise, freeing up idle workers for community economic developers to market. After all, that’s what we do for a living – we try to bring jobs to our community so that any one of our neighbors who wants a job can find a job, at least in theory.
Nevertheless, half our effort during good times is to convince our communities that economic development is an effort that pays dividends over the long haul. Sometimes it’s a tough sell, but that’s just something we have to learn to live with.
Quality isn’t cyclical
Quality, however, is not something that is captive to the business cycle. If your community is composed of educated workers, your work force will be educated regardless of what the unemployment rate is.
Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. If your community’s educational level is below that of the rest of the country, that’s not going to change with the unemployment rate, either.
What makes this a ticking time bomb for your community’s economic future is that, with the fastest growing companies in our economy being focused in the high-technology area, your chances of attracting those companies to your community — if your educational levels are low — are somewhere between slim and none.
So, what can you do to raise your community’s education level in short order? Unfortunately, the answer is nothing. Not in the short run, at least.
That doesn’t mean that the situation is hopeless — don’t break out the tranquilizers and the resume paper just yet. Rather, it means that work force development, like economic development, is a long-term project, kind of like planting a tree. The axiom, “The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago, while the second best time is right now,” also applies to educating your work force.
But let’s be honest. If your local school district doesn’t compare favorably with other school districts in your region — or in your state, or even nationally — you’ve got a problem. And that problem goes well beyond whether the superintendent and the principal and the teachers are doing a good job, or are bad people, or any of the other highly-charged emotional issues that surround local education.
It means that your community is at a competitive disadvantage with other communities competing for companies offering good jobs in industries with a bright future. It’s as simple as that.
Granted, some school districts have a much greater challenge than do others. It’s pretty clear that the folks who run school districts in affluent areas have a much easier task achieving academic excellence than do the educators in more rural or impoverished districts. Not everyone has the same advantages, but that doesn’t mean that you should accept the status quo. After all, America was built by each generation exceeding the accomplishments of the previous generation.
So how do you know if your schools are doing a good job? Look at the test scores and the graduation rates. And don’t be distracted by spending levels or beautiful facilities — those are important, but they don’t measure results.
What’s really important is what the kids learn in school, and whether or not they finish what they start by graduating (in other words, reliability). If you settle for anything less, you’re only hurting your kids’ and your community’s future.
So next time you pass a school, don’t think of it as a place to keep the kids occupied and off the street until they reach the age of maturity. Instead, look at it as the foundation of your community’s economic future … and take an active interest in making it the best it can possibly be.
Bill King is the editor of Expansion Management Magazine.
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