Authentic Community Engagement Becoming Even More Important for Schools
Few, if any, public schools have managed to provide quality experiences for children without high levels of community support. If you click on Jamie Vollmer's website , the first thing you see is the quote, "No expenditure of our tax dollars yields as high a return as our investment in public schools." Vollmer didn't used to believe this. In 1988 he was asked by Dr. William Lepley, Iowa's Secretary of Education, to join the Iowa Business and Education Roundtable. Before becoming an advocate for public education, he was a harsh critic. In his first two years as Director of the Roundtable, he visited dozens of schools, met with hundreds of educators, and interacted with advocates from every point on the political spectrum. One of the first "aha moments" for Vollmer was a realization of the increasing number of things that have become the responsibility of public schools. In what has come to be known as Vollmer's List, he names these responsibilit