See this article from the Dec. 6, 2011 Martinsville Bulletin about the Patrick County Education Foundation model being expanded to other Virginia rural areas.
Source: www.martinsvillebulletin.com
Foundations partner to boost rural areas
Patrick County Education Foundation model to be expanded
Former Gov. Gerald Baliles
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
By AMANDA BUCK - Bulletin Staff Writer
The Patrick County Education Foundation (PCEF) is partnering with a statewide foundation to help Virginia’s rural areas become more economically competitive by increasing their numbers of college graduates.
Created in 2001 by former governor Gerald Baliles, the PCEF set a goal of changing the culture of Patrick County in 10 years by increasing the importance of education and making the locality more attractive to employers. Its goal was to elevate Patrick from one of Virginia’s lowest ranked rural localities to its top five in terms of high school and general equivalency degree completion; college access and attainment; and work force training programs, according to a news release.
The PCEF met those goals well ahead of its deadline and has been cited as an example of success by the Southern Regional Education Board and the National Commission on Adult Literacy, Baliles said Monday. Now, PCEF is partnering with the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education (VFCCE) “to replicate and export the PCEF ‘Patrick Pilot’ to other localities in Virginia’s rural horseshoe, an area stretching from the Eastern Shore across Southern Virginia and up alongside the Blue Ridge Mountains, over the next decade,� the release said.
The VFCCE, a statewide foundation that works with and supports the 23 colleges in the Virginia Community College System, focuses on increasing access to college, especially for first-time students and those from underserved populations, the release said.
Jeffrey Kraus, assistant vice chancellor for public relations for the Virginia Community College System, said the affiliation between the two foundations will use the strengths of each to expand opportunities in Virginia’s rural areas.
“It’s a partnership to take what Gov. Baliles has done over the past decade in Patrick County and use community college tools to carry that out in other rural localities,� Kraus said.
Together, the foundations will focus on rural localities that are served by 14 of the state’s 23 community colleges, Kraus said. Patrick Henry Community College, which serves Martinsville as well as Henry, Patrick and Franklin counties, is one of them, he said.
“No two localities along Virginia’s rural horseshoe are identical, but they share some common challenges such as low college attainment rates, low wages and high unemployment,� Baliles said in the release. “By working with our community colleges and their statewide foundation, I am confident that over time we can confront and overcome those issues.�
According to the release, leaders from both foundations will work together during the next six months to establish measurable goals for the foundations as they work to:
• Increase the number of people in rural Virginia who graduate from high school or earn a high school equivalency degree.
• Successfully convince more of those people to enroll in and graduate from college;
• Prepare the work force in rural Virginia to take advantage of “the competitive economic development opportunities of the 21st century.�
• Establish a think tank in Patrick County to identify and articulate the unique challenges rural localities face in increasing educational attainment and to craft solutions to those challenges.
Baliles said the PCEF will continue to work to make college accessible to students in Patrick County, such as by helping them find financial assistance and scholarships, and it will support efforts in the community to help adults earn general equivalency degrees and receive work-force training. The PCEF also will serve as a think tank for expanding the Patrick model into an approach for other rural areas, he said.
Kraus said the foundations will work together to use successful community college programs as tools to reach their goals. Among those programs are guaranteed transfer agreements with universities; Middle College initiatives, which serve young adults who didn’t finish high school; and career coaches who work in high schools — and perhaps in one-stop work-force centers — to help high school students and adults create personalized career and college plans, according to Kraus and the release.
Details will be ironed out between now and July 1, Baliles and Kraus said. Once that has been done, the foundations likely will launch a fundraising campaign “to raise money to make this work,� Kraus said.
He and Baliles acknowledged that the challenges facing the state’s rural areas are serious. But Baliles said the PCEF’s efforts have proven successful in Patrick County, where 86 percent of the last five senior classes have continued their education and the annual average number of adults earning general equivalency degrees has increased from 17 to 34.
Having that kind of educated workers is essential to economic development, Kraus said. Education alone will not create jobs, but without an educated work force, jobs will not come to rural areas, he added.
“People who put together economic development deals say the No. 1 factor for companies looking to expand or relocate is, what kind of work force exists there to support what we want to do,� he said. “If we are not successful in this larger effort to increase the number of people who graduate from college, the jobs will not come, I can promise you that.�
Each foundation will remain independent while working together on the initiative, Kraus said.
