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The Education Center Reinvents Itself... Again, Part One |
Bill Hudson | 5/2/08
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Archuleta County High School students take a break from their studies at the Education Center. Photos courtesy Archuleta County Education Center. |
A couple of years ago, a new sign appeared in front of the blue stucco Education Center at the corner of Lewis and Fourth Streets. From its somewhat coarse workmanship — and judging from my experience as a former sign painter — the sign appeared to be the work of some talented high school students: it was clean and easy to read, but showed telltale signs of an amateur hand.
It read, simply, “Education Center.”
The new sign had replaced a nearly identical sign — the same size and shape — which had included the words “Archuleta County” to make it read: “Archuleta County Education Center.”
I knew, as a former employee of the Education Center from some ten years ago, that the Education Center has always had a somewhat confused identity in the Pagosa Springs community. Because its name included the words “Archuleta County,” some people mistakenly assumed that the Education Center was a department of the Archuleta County government.
In fact, Archuleta County Education Center Inc. was founded in 1989 as an independent non-profit corporation, with no direct connection to the Archuleta County government, the Town of Pagosa Springs, nor — for much of its existence — the Archuleta School District.
Nevertheless, the Center has served a wide range of educational needs, from adult continuing education, to high school dropout recovery, to after-school and summer enrichment classes at various Pagosa Springs public schools.
Funding all of those varied activities — often without local government support – has been a constant challenge to the Center. Operational and capital improvement funding have come from private foundations, federal and state grants, and also from local supporters, such as the 150 or so prominent citizens who attended the Education Center’s annual fundraising luncheon last Wednesday at Centerpoint Church — at $50 a plate.
 The availability of funding, in fact, has often played a major role in determining the activities of the Education Center over the years. The Education Center had started out in 1989 providing adult education classes — mainly business classes, GED classes and English as a Second Language classes. But in the mid-90s, for example, then-Director Tom Steen started offering a range of after school enrichment and tutoring classes in the Pagosa Springs Elementary and Junior High Schools. Those classes were made possible by new research showing the importance of after-school programs in reducing delinquency in young people — and private foundation funding based on that research.
Meanwhile, various other programs — and the staff to support those programs — have some and gone, as available grants and funding sources have changed with the changing winds of educational and political opinion.
In 1997, for example, the Education Center joined forces with the Archuleta School District to develop a dropout recovery program that eventually became the Archuleta County High School. That alternative high school — which has offered a highly flexible educational option for young students who already have families, or jobs, or who otherwise don’t fit well within the traditional high school structure — has been financed partially by School District funds.
To accommodate the alternative high school program, the Education Center conducted a capital expansion program that doubled its floor space.
But this year, the School District announced plans to stop funding the ACHS and to develop its own alternative high school program located within the Pagosa Springs High School.
It’s time for the Education Center to reinvent itself, again. And current Director Don Goodwin may be just the person to direct that transformation.
Art teacher Tessie Garcia demonstrates an art project during an after-school enrichment class sponsored by the Education Center.
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Education in America is a strange animal. Although we Americans expect to pay good money, out of our own pockets, for nearly every basic human need — we pay for food, housing, medical care, clothing, gasoline — we expect our children to be educated at the government’s expense. As a parent, I expect to pay for my child’s drinking water, but not for his or her schooling.
How did this seemingly odd expectation come about?
In the late 1800s — at a time when most American children still received their education at home, from parents and siblings — education pundits began to express concern about the influx of European immigrants being allowed into the United States to work our growing manufacturing industries — our steel mills, mines, railroads, and textile factories.
These immigrant Europeans, though necessary to economic growth, needed to be both educated and assimilated, the pundits decided. These immigrant children could not be allowed to grow up speaking their parents’ native languages and holding foreign political beliefs — they needed to be educated and trained in the English language, and in the American way of life. America needed a system to convert our foreign immigrants into Americans.
By the 1920s, free — and compulsory — education for children was the accepted way of life in America. All across the country, local school districts sprang into existence and funded themselves by new property tax levies. Children of the poor and middle classes marched off to school, side by side, where they received the training necessary to work in our American factories, offices — and schools.
The very wealthy, of course, continued to send their own children to privately-funded schools, where those children could learn the skills necessary to oversee the factories, offices and schools.
Meanwhile, secondary education — in the form of colleges and universities — remained out of reach for the lower and middle classes. Looking back on my own mother’s and father’s families, out of ten siblings, only my father attended college — and his education was due mainly to college funding provided to World War II vets.
Fast forward to 2008, Pagosa Springs.
We are now all accustomed to free education for our children, and over the years we have begun to expect access to — if not free, then at least affordable — secondary education for the lower and middle classes. We even want education for mature adults who are looking to improve their economic situation. We want every person with an honest desire for upward mobility to have a chance to better himself or herself.
At the same time, we are not terribly excited about paying more taxes.
This is the world in which the Education Center finds itself — a world where education is assumed to be a public need, but where funding for education is a moving target.
Education Center Director Don Goodwin has some ideas about where that target is headed.
Part Two on Monday… |
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