Education forum with new leader a conversation 'long overdue'

CEDAR RAPIDS - Officials at Grant Wood Area Education Agency were expecting a good-sized group of 70 to 100 members of the community to attend a Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2010, forum on education innovation.

They were pleasantly surprised when their predictions were smashed.

More than 300 people turned up for the forum the agency cosponsored along with the United Way. The forum was titled ““Building an Innovative Learning Community,” and served as a testing ground to try and get ideas for new school models from the general public.

“We wanted to make the argument  that while we had a great school system for the industrial age, we cannot continue to try and improve that. We've got to do something transformational,” Pickering said. “We're thrilled this many people in the community are interested in education.”

A panel of local community leaders ranging from superintendents to high school students began the forum by commenting on different opportunities and challenges in education. An overall theme among many of the panelists was the need for more technology in the classroom, and was summed up well by the testimony of Forrest Scott, a senior at Mount Vernon High School.

“It's hard to go the extra mile when you know exactly what you need to do to get an A,” Scott said. “There are certain things out there that really inspire myself and my students like robotics, cyber defense and  virtual reality, to go the extra mile and stay five hours after school.”

After an hour, the attendees of the group broke up into individual groups and were given a series of questions to discuss. The large crowd meant some of the diverse groups had to move out of the conference room and into the hallway according to Ellen Daye-Williams, principal at Grant Wood Elementary.

“I think it's a conversation that's long overdue, we need to get all the stakeholders involved,” said Daye-Williams. “There were quite a few people representing private businesses, corporations, schools, students and parents.”

One of the reasons for the large crowd was the attendance of new Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass. Glass participated in the individual table discussions, but not the panel.

Pickering said that Glass did not want to have a major presence for his visit and wanted to experience the forum along the with the other attendants. Grant Wood AEA chief administrator Ron Fielder said they hoped to bring Glass back to the agency soon for a keynote speech.

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