"All politics is local."
Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
1977 - 1987
Local politics is killing us in Scranton - not national politics. Everything negative that we've become over the past twenty years, including unemployed, can be attributed directly to short sighted, and inept political leadership. This failure of local political leadership is most evident on the Scranton School Board. The SSD's short comings and failures have been highly publicized over the years. The end result is: the SSD has become a low-achieving public school district. This condition is unacceptable because the only natural resource we have left around here that can be developed is our people. And yet, according to the recently published Brookings Institute report, we don't have many highly educated people living here at all. That's the case because there are no jobs in Scranton that require any special technical skills or a college degree. We invest nearly 120 million dollars annually in our public school system... for what?
To put it in perspective; there has been over 1000 dropouts from the Scranton School District since the new high school was built. On the other hand, and I think it not unreasonable to assume - that there has been an equal number of students who finished at the top of their class in the district over that same time period. But once this second group acquired marketable skills or a degree - they left the area (brain drain). The dropouts stay. What else are the skill-less to do? Some will compete for scarce low paying service industry jobs. Many more will rely on social services and government assistance for their day-to-day existence. Additionally these unskilled SSD dropouts that stay are procreating. And now, it's their children who are entering the public school system today. The failure of the SSD is becoming generational. The public school system was developed to be combat poverty, not contribute to it. The SSD is fast becoming a major contributor to Scranton's poverty crisis.
The district has high achievers.. the problem is, the SSD just doesn't produce enough of them to attract any real industry to our region.. see Brookings Report.
Sondra Meyers, a senior fellow for International, Civic and Cultural Projects at the U of S was an OP-ED guest columnist in the TT (Scranton Times-Tribune) this summer and she discussed the tiny island nation of Taiwan in her article. She reported that the country - lacking large deposits of natural resources; invests a substantial amount of its budget on education. Not surprisingly, Taiwan is near the top of the list in student achievement world-wide, and Taiwan is not far behind number one in high achievement, Finland. Both country's have strong economies in part because they cultivate their richest resource - their people. They're smart about education in those countries too. They're innovative. They quickly disregard what doesn't work, and improve on the things that do. You will never witness anything like that happening in the SSD. Never.. ever...
The biggest failure of the SSD political leadership is that they've never pursued a high achievement agenda. They never even mention the words. It's as if the high achievement concept is white noise. The political leadership can't wrap its head around it. For example: The SSD never applied for the federal government Race To The Top high achievement initiative grant money worth millions of dollars. They did not apply for the grant contest in part, because, it would require setting a high achievement agenda. The political leadership on the school board dosen't believe high achievement is possible citing the high student poverty level as the reason. At that narrow minded dismissal of the problem the conversation ends.
Further evidence of their failure is the pending privatization of an alternative school being planned for the large "at risk" student population the SSD has. The district has failed these kids, and is now set to farm out to a private, for-profit entity, the job these politicians could not do. That says a lot about what we are as a city. We really don't give a rat's ass about education. Therefore, why the hell would industry leaders ever consider locating to Scranton? They won't.. Would you? The achievement level of the local school district is one of the first things they look at. That has got to be a hard sell for Austin Burke.
That reminds me of the president's visit to Scranton High School last spring. You know he checked on the SSD's achievement numbers before he arrived to possibly give the political leadership an Attaboy! if the numbers looked good. I wonder how the conversation went between the U.S. President and the school board president. "Nice building you have here, Bob."
There has been an abundance of data available over the past decade foreshadowing what was to come. If interpreted and used correctly; it could have helped develop long term high achievement education policies. But for that to have happened in Scranton, it would have required the political leadership to connect the dots. Unfortunately for us, all of our dot connectors moved to where the skilled jobs are. The end result being that broad-minded, forward thinking political leadership is in very short supply in this city.
The high unemployment has been with us since 2008, and it is here to stay. The employment outlook will never improve unless the Scranton School District becomes the number one high achieving public school system in Northeast PA.
There is great opportunity in Scranton politics for a young person with a good head on their shoulders looking to make a name for them-self. The challenge here is to turn the Scranton School District into a high-achieving public school system. That type of political leadership can vault a career-minded politician right out of this local political cesspool, right onto the state or national stage.
It's amusing to watch all the local political hacks attempt to advance their political careers beyond the valley, only to fail miserable. They fail because they can't connect the dots. They fail to think the unemployment problem through. They can all tell you the area needs family sustaining jobs. But they don't see that the only local taxing body of the three in Scranton, that has any real control over its outcomes is the public school system. A high achieving public school system is our only real shot at improving our local economy. And it has to be the Scranton School District.
As Scranton goes, so goes the valley.
Sorry about the length of this post folks.
DT
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