(This is the 9th of 10 essays I’m writing before primary day on May 3.)
Public health, early childhood education, K-12 education, workforce development, economic development and crime.
These are many of the issues I’ve been asked about most often over the past five months as a candidate for county mayor.
But politicians have difficulty grasping that these areas of public policy are all inextricably interwoven. The status quo approach is to half-heartedly address each and as a result, many of our neighbors are being left behind. Our economy and our schools work well for some and provide little hope to many.
Let’s start with economic development. I’ll translate these political buzzwords: “Is your community a good place to start and grow a business or for a larger company to make an investment?”
Employers typically make these decisions based on the quality of the community’s workforce, which is a direct reflection of the quality of your public school system. Likewise, companies looking to make a sizable investment typically prioritize communities with quality K-12 education.
The quality of K-12 education is all too often measured by its ability to place graduates into a four-year college. In order to be successful in sending graduates to universities, students typically need to be reading on grade level in third grade.
Here’s where it gets complicated. Reading on grade level has much more to do with variables outside of the classroom and, for that matter, outside of government. Children whose parents spend time with them as infants, interact with them, read to them and sing to them are more likely to read on grade level.
Contrary to popular belief, public Pre-K is a disaster. A large-scale study released by Vanderbilt University in February showed that children who were accepted into a public Pre-K program in Tennessee lagged behind their peers in behavior and academics, who were not accepted into public Pre-K.
What’s invaluable, and underestimated, is that children get love and attention prior to Pre-K.
As the dad of toddlers for most of the last decade, I can attest to the critical importance of the toddler years in brain development.
This is where public health connects. The Hamilton County Health Department has an opportunity to proactively pursue new parents to share the lifelong consequences of the first few years of a child’s life. Further, our health department, county government and local nonprofits can help make sure parents, particularly single moms, have an adequate supply of diapers. Without diapers, you can’t send your child to daycare. And a good daycare can change a child’s learning trajectory.
Diapers and crime might not seem connected, but they are. The parts of our community with the highest concentrations of violent crime are also the parts with the lowest performing schools. Hopeless students often drop out of school and hopeless young men commit almost all violent crime.
It’s all connected.
There is no easy answer, but there are two obvious interventions we should forcefully pursue.
Leverage the Hamilton County Health Department to educate new parents on the lifelong implications of the first few years of a child’s life.
Recommit to vocational and technical education so that students who don’t read on grade level still have a realistic path to a great career. Our local technical college is amazingly proficient in training students at all learning levels. A stable income from a good job will empower young parents to break the cycle and spend quality time with their children, increasing the odds they read on grade level and go on to live productive lives.
The highest calling of the next County Mayor is to pursue a comprehensive agenda to raise the quality of life for “all” citizens of Hamilton County. Even as Chattanooga has become known around the country for its quality of life, the opposite is true in many of our neighborhoods. If we’re going to build a workforce that will ignite another generation of economic growth, we must understand that the path to a great career as an adult begins in diapers.
Weston Wamp