The College of Education and Human Development held an educational summit on an array of topics, ranging from parenting skills to concerns for children in foster care, in the Kiva Auditorium in the Teacher Education Center on Nov. 1.
Dean of the College of Education and Human Development, Dr. John C. Fischetti, opened and closed the forum, with presenters including Southeastern professors and faculty. The forum lasted 12:30-7 p.m. and consisted of 23 segments, each sighting specific issues facing children, teachers, schools, and parents.
During his keynote, Fischetti emphasized the overall subject of the day, titling his address “From Silos to Solutions: Working Together to Address the Pressing Issues Facing Children, Families and Schools in Southeast Louisiana.”
“Louisiana will be short about 300,000 skilled workers in the next 10-15 years,” said Fischetti during his keynote address. “What’s happened is that we’ve been helping kids do better on tests and not helping them do better in life.”
Following the Dean’s keynote, a panel presentation and open discussion, titled “The Conditions of Children, Families, Schools, and Society in Southeast Louisiana: Possibilities and Promise,” featured Washington Parish Superintendent Darrell Fairburn, St. Helena Parish Supervisor of Special Education Shayla Guidry, Hammond City Councilman Lemar Marshall, Southeastern Student Teacher Marian Usey, Hogan & Hogan Attorney Lila Tritico, and Court Appointed Special Advocate Association (CASA) Chief Executive Officer Rob Carlisle.
Facilitated by Southeastern professor, Dr. James Kirylo, the varied panel answered questions from audience members and commented on continuous struggles facing Southeast Louisiana schools such as poverty, family problems and reforms in education.
“We know what the real issue is. We spend a lot of hours and time looking at results from our teachers and our schools,” said Councilman Lemar Marshall. “The bottom line is, the poverty element that we are confronted with every single day has more to do with the problem we have in our community than any school, any teacher, or any principal deals with on any given day.”
Rob Carlisle, CASA chief executive officer, gave insight into research concerning problems involving children and their family unit.
“What we’re finding is less families,” said Carlisle. “We’re thinking of a family unit as who’s specifically connected to that child and before they can really go to school [and] learn, we have to look at children and we have to look at the family unit completely differently than I think we’ve looked at it before.”
Carlisle also pointed out that Southeastern is the only university in Louisiana who has mandated their teacher education candidates be trained to protect and safeguard children.
Moreover, current Louisiana education reform, passed by state legislature and Governor Bobby Jindal, became the center of conversation.
“I started school in 1952. As far as I know, we still do the same [amount of] minutes [in the classroom] in 2012 as we did in 1952, but yet we’re required to do more things and we’re still trying to do it in the same time frame,” said Darrell Fairburn when commenting on the legislation. “The problem is the relevance in our curriculum in our secondary schools and they don’t know why we can’t fill jobs in Louisiana. We’re not addressing it with our curriculum.”
Audience member and Vice President of the Tangipahoa Parish School Board, Brett Duncan, followed up on Fairburn’s point.
“One of the things that we’re all dealing with, in every level of government, [is] what appears to be an insurmountable number and complexities of problems with a very finite number of dollars to address them,” said Duncan, referencing state education budget cuts. “So the trick in all of these things has been to study data and to come up with solving all of these issues.”
Dr. Fischetti commented, after the panel discussion, saying of the cuts, “Budget cuts that’ll happen in years will jeopardize everything. They jeopardize the future of public education, K-12 and higher education.”
Praising President John L. Crain’s handling of the severe $13 million in cuts, Fischetti added, “Southeastern is primed, with Dr. Crain’s leadership, to get through this time; others may not be so fortunate. It’s a very dramatic situation.”
With the aid of Entergy, who donated $10,000 to the College of Education and Human Development, Fischetti suggested upcoming spring semester forums would be affordable and would allow the department to broaden its audience.
“We’d like to share ideas across with different parishes and different counties around the country that are doing good stuff that may not cost a lot of money, but are showing results.”