You Are Invited to Attend!
5th Annual Education Forum
Hosted by Knox County Council PTA
"The Tennessee Diploma Project: How Does This Affect My Child?"
Tuesday, August 19
9:00 - 11:30 a.m.
Andrew Johnson Building, 1st Floor Board Room
Featuring
Bill Williams, WBIR Anchor Emeritus & Honorary PTA Membership Chairman
Dr. James McIntyre, Superintendent Knox County School System
Jon Rysewyk, Principal, Fulton High School
Buzz Thomas, Executive Director, Niswonger Education Foundation
Dr. Gary Nixon, Executive Director, Tennessee Board of Education and
Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale
For more information contact Sandra Rowcliffe 603-5851 or sandrarowcliffe@kccpta.org
Over 200 Knoxville businesspeople, area educators, parents, students, and others attended the Workforce Development and Education Summit follow-up meeting sponsored by EdAmerica and South College. Knoxville Chamber Workforce Development and Education Manager Ahnna Estes helped organize the event, hosted by Innovation Valley, Inc. at Cokesbury United Methodist Center, designed to create action plans that will solve issues identified during March’s summit.
“Participants will come away with an understanding of what is required from them as we move forward,” she said.
Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale led a panel discussion and spoke about the value of an educated workforce.
“Businesses are relocating and expanded to areas where a qualified workforce is available,” he said. “Our challenge here in Knoxville, Knox County, and East Tennessee is to make sure we have the country’s best workforce. Regardless of our outstanding quality of life here or our collective marketing efforts to attract businesses to the area, companies will find other places to call home if we don’t have qualified workers available.”
Attendees took part in five breakout sessions designed to develop action plans. Participants separated into Communications Campaign, Effective Teaching/Relevance Taskforce, Attracting and Retaining a Quality Workforce Taskforce, Bridging the Gap Between Higher Ed and Business Taskforce, and Under-Utilized Workforce Taskforce breakout sessions.
Chamber President and CEO Mike Edwards challenged those in attendance to focus on implementing action plans.
“Discipline yourselves not to talk about what the problems are,” he said. “We’ve already done that. Spend your time on action items and how we’re going to go about addressing the issues we face.”
For more information about the summit’s follow-up meeting or information about Workforce Development and Education, please contact Ahnna Estes, 865-246-2658.
The spring Workforce and Education Summit dealt with education in broad terms and participants discussed what was necessary for students to successfully complete their education and be functioning members of the workforce.
On June 10, the Chamber will hold a follow-up meeting at Cokesbury United Methodist Center so that the community can share ideas and action items that will positively benefit the local education system and workforce development initiatives.
Read the Knoxville News Sentinel column on the workforce and education follow-up meeting.
For more information on the Summit follow-up, contact Jennifer Evans or Ahnna Estes.
Reports from the Workforce Summit:
Final Summit Report
Appendix 1: Summit Notes
Appendix 2: What to Do For Schools List
Appendix 3: Summit Evaluations
The Crossville Chronicle recently ran a story about a meeting Mitch Steenrod, VP/CFO of Pilot Travel Centers, held with Crossville residents about education.
According to the Crossville Chronicle, "Steenrod wants to see a cause and effect from funding for public education. He said the Knox County school system is instituting a new accounting system that will allow them to know the total costs down to the building level ... Knox County is also trying to integrate the value added scores from standardized test into the data reports to be able to look at educational success.
"Steenrod added he felt If taxpayers can be shown the results coming from their investment, they are much more likely to be comfortable with their tax money supporting the school system.
" 'The business community is telling the schools what they want in their employees,' said Steenrod. 'Those things are communications skills, decent math skills plus confidence and problem solving skills.' "
Read the Crossville Chronicle story about Steenrod's meeting in Crossville.
Knoxville Chamber CEO and president Mike Edwards recently participated in an education roundtable conversation with other community leaders, which was held by the Knoxville News Sentinel.
The group discussed issues facing East Tennessee public education and what steps need to be taken to ensure a bright future for the region.
Edwards said, "Well today … we can't write off 50 percent. So, whatever we've been doing that doesn't work has to end. And I think by the time we strip it all down we're going to have to get to individualized learning and individualized teaching. We've got to build a model that will do that."
Read an edited transcript from the News Sentinel's quarterly business roundtable.
The Public School Forum, an organization concerned with ensuring Tennessee's schools are implementing best practices in education, has launched a new website.
The site features three public service commercials, two of which include Tennessee Lady Vol women's basketball coach Pat Summitt. The announcements concern raising educational standards and equipping students with the right knowledge and equipment to succeed in their studies.
The commercials are currently airing on seven East Tennessee television stations, and can be re-viewed on the site. The site is supported by the Knoxville Chamber and the Great School Partnership.
You’ve heard it again and again from the Knoxville Chamber… improving education and workforce development is critical to the economic future of the region. But what can you do about it?
You can attend the Workforce and Education Summit hosted by Innovation Valley Inc.
Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale recently challenged the Knoxville Chamber to plan the regional workforce development and education summit to identify strategies and tactics that will lead to the development of the workforce of the future. The summit, which will take place on March 24th at the Knoxville Convention Center, will include educators, businesspeople, parents, community leaders, faith-based institutions, and students throughout Innovation Valley. The education and workforce summit will begin at 8 AM.
The event is an opportunity to rollup your sleeves and dig into the work of improving the region’s educational systems, which ultimately determines the quality of the workforce.
“For the last couple of years, the Chamber has argued that education and workforce development must be improved,” says Mike Edwards, the Chamber’s president and CEO. “I think the organization has done a good job of convincing businesspeople that this is a critical concern. But, I don’t think I’ve done a good enough job of demonstrating how to get involved and how individuals can have an impact on the improvement of education, the increase of academic rigor, or the skills that students have when they leave high school."
The goals of the daylong summit are to outline what the region's future workforce looks like, to identify the barriers that may be standing in the way of achieving such a workforce, and for each attendee to leave with a plan of how he or she can individually contribute to the overall goal of developing a skilled and educated workforce.
The opening session will include a discussion of the future workforce and will lay out what the future workforce would look like. Following that general assembly will be a series of breakout sessions focused on K-12 education issues. Later sessions will focus on workforce development issues including bridging the gap between higher education and business, improving existing training programs, accessing the under utilized workforce, and attracting and retaining recent college graduates and other quality employees. Attendees will be challenged to be apart of breaking down all identified barriers.
Registration for the summit will be available online beginning February 22. Please visit the events page.
Summit agenda.
Summit registration form.
Summit breakout descriptions.
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