The Answers

A column on education in Watkins Glen

The following was written by Travis Durfee, President of the Watkins Glen Faculty Association. It is the fourth in a continuing series of monthly columns.

The Essentials, for the Christmas Season and Beyond

Again this year the teachers of the WGFA led a holiday service campaign that collected socks, underwear and diapers. The items were donated to Catholic Charities in Schuyler County for distribution through its Schuyler Outreach program. Thank you to all who donated.

WGFA members partnered with several local businesses, which hosted collection bins around the county. Many thanks to Absolute Auto, Chemung Canal Bank, Elmira Savings Bank, Famous Brands, Unique Country Boutique, Visions Federal Credit Union, Dollar General, the United States Post Office in Watkins Glen and the Watkins Glen Central School District.

This annual act of community service reflects the WGFA’s willingness to serve the community that supports our educational mission. Recent reports only emphasize the underlying importance of our mission to provide a great education to kids.

Ours is a community in evolution, and considering national trends, the power of education is more important than ever in our community’s future.

Fewer Students, Greater Concentration of Poverty:

Our district’s decline in student enrollment is well known. That point underscores the severity of a recent analysis of our community’s socioeconomic status.

The number of students receiving free and reduced price lunch is a common measure of poverty in a school community. Educational research verifies the connections between family wealth and learning that common sense suggests; a family-school connection enhances child development on both ends, and families struggling to feed, clothe and shelter their children have less time and energy, and fewer means to supplement schooling at home. Research has persistently shown the connection between increased academic achievement and higher family wealth. And as our district’s population shrinks, our community is becoming less wealthy.

Currently, 50% of students K-12 are eligible for free and reduced lunch. Those district averages mask the difference between our older and younger populations: the rate is 43% for students grades 7-12 and 56% K-6.

Adding to the situation is the continued decline in enrollment. Over the past three years our school district population has reduced by 63 students while our poverty rate has increased by 46 students: a 6% enrollment decline met an 11% increase in poverty.

Our local demographics connect to troubling national trends.

A Dimming American Dream, a New American Reality:

There is a common goal most parents hold for their kids, a shared aspiration, the basic definition of the American Dream: our kids should do better than we did.

A team of researchers recently set out to measure this ideal. Does this myth withhold scrutiny? How likely are children to achieve the American Dream? Economists from Stanford and Harvard studied decades of tax records to answer the question. The findings were dim.

According to the researchers, children's prospects of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century. Put another way, someone born in 1940 had a 90% chance of earning more than his or her parents by the age of 30. Today, folks born in the 1980s have only a 50% chance of greater prosperity than their parents by age 30. As we head into a new year, we are waking from the American Dream to face a new American reality.

How do we best help prepare our next generation for a new, more competitive world? How do we get America dreaming again?.

The answers lie in a larger societal puzzle that includes employment and the distribution of wealth, health care and mental health services, confronting drug and alcohol addiction, nutrition and environmental concerns. As educators, we in the WGFA can offer one piece: an engaging and challenging education.

Community Commitment and Educational Outcomes:

Today’s global economy is high tech and kids from our community need the skills and character to find the good jobs that will bring dignity and stability to their families.

We need good schools and empowered teachers to provide the kind of quality education that will serve the next generation.

Our teachers must recognize the challenges that our district’s population faces without lowering expectations. Our classrooms can help provide the stability and structure within which students can develop the discipline and skills to survive and thrive in a world that demands grit.

Families should support their children as they engage and thrive in our challenging curriculum, and then push them further. Encourage them to achieve more through extracurricular academic clubs and activities.

Our community must continue the sacred civic commitment of supporting high quality, challenging public education that serves the next generation. There's no better way to get America dreaming again.