News-Record.com

The Community Dialogue on Education and the Guilford County Council of PTAs will co-sponsor a Town Meeting on a Community Agenda on Sunday, March 30, from 3-5 p.m. at Gillespie Park Elementary School, 1900 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, Greensboro. All Guilford County groups and individuals, who are concerned with local education, are invited to attend.

Following is the text from the invite:

"With the transition that will occur following the exit of the School Superintendent, there is an opportunity now to engage the Guilford County community in a discussion of our goals for education in this county. Any search for a new superintendent needs to be informed by the highest hopes, dreams and aspirations of our friends, relatives and neighbors from the community and the young people who will be responsible for moving us into the future. Much of the current discussion of education policy includes the dire warnings about American competitiveness, but we must also include a sense of purpose and direction that is linked to the full realization of the humanity of our youth. Many of the current policies and procedures, while having the expressed intention of improving education for all young people, have had very different results. We, as a community, need to develop bold, creative and effective ways to resist the damage to our young people by any policies that we see which do not meet our standards for the full development of our youth. Any such dialogue would be incomplete if it did not include the voices of young people themselves in expressing their needs and desires.

"We encourage all who will participate to engage with their organizations and friends prior to the meeting to think through the most important things that should be included in setting forth the agenda for our schools' future. We would ask them to think through what they consider to be the main problems, what might be solutions to those problems, and what ought to be the goal of education here in general. This discussion will be the basis of future discussions and an ongoing involvement of the community in guiding the work of any new superintendent. We look forward to seeing you on March 30."