Kaine visit well-received
Economic development discussion often turns to education
U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, the former governor of Virginia, made a stop in South Hill during his Route 58 tour on Wednesday, Aug. 19, and sat down with local leaders at The Colonial Center for Performing Arts for a roundtable discussion on economic development.
The conversation often shifted to education, with leaders from South Hill and Mecklenburg County asking a number of questions geared toward what the federal and state governments could do to better assist in areas such as workforce development and jobs and skills preparedness training.
Kaine, whose wife is Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton, had quite a bit to say during the 45-minute visit.
South Hill Mayor Earl Horne noted Southside Virginia Community College is an important institution in the region and asked how the college could be better funded.
“A lot of kids and others get two years of training there and go into jobs,” Horne said.
Kaine said it wasn’t until after he left the governor’s office that he realized there is a problem with the way Virginia funds community colleges. He said when the community college system was set up in the mid-1960s, the funding was based on the number of students in degree-granting programs. He said the state still reimburses based on the number of students in degree-granting programs.
“Now, people go not only for a degree but for a skill or credential,” Kaine said. “Do we need to change the way we fund community colleges to fund students who are not there for a degree?”
Kaine said another problem has to do with federal pell grants only being available to students in programs utilizing the traditional 15-week semester, which omits technical programs at community colleges that may be eight or nine weeks in length. He said a bill has been submitted that would change those rules.
“I think some of it is, we have to look at community colleges the way community colleges are functioning right now, rather than look at them the way they were functioning 25 years ago,” Kaine said.
South Hill Town Manager Kim Callis asked if there are opportunities for education and commerce and trade to better work together.
“Like many localities, we’ve lost jobs through affiliations, mergers, corporate headquarters moving elsewhere,” Callis said. “When we talk to business and industry, we find that there’s a bit of a disconnect between our high school students and the skills. They’re lacking skills. And our schools are held accountable for standardized tests and meeting certain things, but are we missing the target to have the kids prepared to move into solid jobs?”
Kaine said there is a disconnect, and some of the problem is at the federal policy level and some of it is at the state and local level.
Kaine said the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which was passed in 2002, was recently rewritten as the Every Child Achieves Act. While the original law designated math, language and science as the core subjects, the rewrite includes Career and Technical Education (CTE) as a core.
“We’re trying to take it away from just focusing on the standardized tests and give the states and locals more flexibility in designing programs that meet their own particular needs,” Kaine said.
He said three bills dealing with CTE were rolled into the Every Child Achieves Act.
“By adding that in as a core we think, from the federal funding standpoint and everything, will give a lot more emphasis to it, and that should help over time align the curriculum in schools across the country more toward these areas where there’s real need,” Kaine said.
The senator mentioned he had visited Emporia Wednesday morning and learned that the Greenville County school system emphasizes that every student receive a Workforce Readiness Certificate through the high school.
“Just as looking at community college a little differently, now we need to start looking at high school a little differently,” Kaine said.
Kaine mentioned his father was a welder and said the federal government brings in thousands of welders on specialty visas to fill needed jobs.
“It is a job that will pay well, and if you have the American Welding Society Certificate, you could move to Portland, Ore., tomorrow and get a job,” he said. “You couldn’t take your Virginia SOL score, in Tennessee they wouldn’t know what it meant.”
Mecklenburg County Economic Development Director Angie Kellett said Emporia/Greensville is somewhat of a pilot for the Virginia’s Growth Alliance region, of which Mecklenburg County is a part, for the Career Readiness Certificate program. She said among local businesses, about half are gung-ho about the certificate and half don’t think it would help them.
“We’ve kind of got to bring those others around to seeing why it’s important, even if it’s not a piece that they need,” she said. “Their issues are not so much the specific skills, but they see that they need work ethic and all of that, and they don’t see where this helps that. But I think it does, and we just need to educate them about that. So we are headed down that path.”
South Hill Chamber of Commerce 2015-16 president Holly Blackwell, a vice president at Citizens Community Bank, said other than the large employers, small business “is the bread and butter around here.”
“My opinion from where I sit is the community college is doing a terrific job with the trades and things like that,” Blackwell said. “It is the high school that the perceptions are not there to keep these kids here. It’s still the same old, you’re only going to succeed if you graduate and go and get a four-year degree, and most of those kids aren’t coming back here, or if they do it’s 12 years later.”
Kaine said hiring a full-time superintendent of schools who buys into CTE would be an important step for Mecklenburg County.
Blackwell said teaching students other skills, such as financial literacy, would be helpful.
“They’ve got to start thinking more for themselves other than what bubble they’re going to need to check,” she said.
Otherwise, Horne asked Kaine about recent developments involving Fort Pickett, which is located nearby outside of Blackstone.
Kaine said the State Department has purchased land at Pickett and has announced a plan to build an embassy security training center at the facility.
“We’re in a little bit of a tussle right now, and this is one of the things that happens when being in the minority party in both houses,” he said. “Georgia Republicans don’t want to build this facility at Fort Pickett, they want to build the facility in Georgia. Now it really doesn’t make sense to build it in Georgia because the whole idea of having it at Fort Pickett is all the State Department folks who need training can just drive there from D.C. And the Marine security guards that provide embassy security all around the world are trained at Quantico, they can just drive from Quantico. To do it in Georgia, everybody would have to fly, and they frankly just wouldn’t train as many people. So we are in a little bit of a battle right now, but we’re going to win that battle.”
Kaine said the Virginia National Guard utilizes the base and the Army and Navy also find the acreage conducive to training teams there.
Mecklenburg County Tourism Coordinator Justin Kerns noted the region has been developing trails such as the Southern Virginia Wild Blueway, which promotes lakes and rivers in Mecklenburg and Halifax counties, and the Tobacco Heritage Trail, a non-motorized regional trail that mostly uses old railway corridors in Mecklenburg, Brunswick, Halifax, Lunenburg and Charlotte counties.
Kerns said there is a problem with the federal funding for trails being filtered through the Virginia Department of Transportation, which requires that trails be built to VDOT specifications.
“We’re building roads through forests here for people to walk on,” Kerns said. “A million dollars a mile.”
Kerns added, “The trail is a very important economic driver. We’ve got these beautiful sections in the cities and the towns, but we’re not connecting them right now because we can’t connect 20 miles of trail. We don’t have $20 million.”
