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Only
One Way Out
Patrick
County is in a world of hurt. Jerry Baliles is
betting that boosting educational achievement across
the board, from students to adults, can attract
investment.
Four
years ago,
Gerald L. Baliles hosted a breakfast for
community leaders at his newly renovated, ancestral
home in Patrick
County.
After pleasantries, the conversation turned to the
sad state of affairs in the bucolic county, set in
the Blue
Ridge
mountains on the North Carolina state line. The visitors lamented the loss of
jobs and the difficulty of attracting new industry.
They’d built industrial property and were erecting a shell
building, and U.S. 58 soon would be four-laned
through the county, but no one
was beating a path to their door.
Baliles, Virginia’s
governor from 1986 to 1990, had made economic
development one of his top priorities and had ample
experience recruiting industry to the state. What he
told his guests, he now recalls, probably smacked of
gloom and doom. “I told them things would probably
get worse before they got better” – if they ever
got better. As the aging manufacturing plants in the
region depreciated, many corporations were not likely to
replace them. Patrick
County
had one of the lowest educational attainment levels
of any
Virginia
locality; workplace skills were obsolete. It
wouldn't be easy, he said, to get manufacturers to locate
there.
The
dire prediction came true all too soon. Unemployment
in Patrick
County
edged up over the next couple of years, then shot into double digits
this year with the closing of textile
plants in the neighboring employment center of Martinsville.
But the breakfast chat did produce one positive
outcome: It set into motion one of the boldest
philanthropic experiments in rural Virginia:
The Patrick County Education Foundation.
Under
Baliles’ guiding hand, the Foundation has set the
goal of lifting the educational metrics of this
remote, blue-collar county from one of the lowest to
one of the top five among rural
Virginia
counties – within a single decade. If successful,
the’ project may crack the code for one of the
most difficult ciphers in rural economic
development: How can poor, rural counties justify
investing more in K-12 education when the brightest
students just end up leaving for jobs elsewhere? The
Foundation's solution is to
raise educational attainment across the board, not
just in the schools but in the adult workforce. By
creating a critical mass, a small community like
Patrick
County
may be able to attract industry -- and create more
attractive job opportunities for everyone -- than it could
through
conventional economic development strategies.
The
Patrick
County
project is not a program that be dispensed from
above. It requires a commitment from the entire
community, based on a deep cultural transformation.
Says Baliles: “Education is their insurance policy for the future.
Education has to be regarded as a lifelong process,
[not something that ends at high school or college].
And it has to be incorporated into their public
decision making.”
It’s
way too soon to judge the results, but already
people are pointing to the experiment as a possible
model for rural transformation across the state. The
Virginia Tobacco Indemnification Commission, charged
with using tobacco-settlement funds to revitalize
the economies of Southside and
Southwest
Virginia,
has invested $81,000 to help get the program
started. Carthan Currin, executive director, is
watching the program to see if it has the potential
to be replicated in other Virginia
jurisdictions.
Baliles
is flattered by the attention, but cautious. No one
knows if the goals can be met, he says. And even if
they are, no one knows if they will attract
industry. “No one is stating that this is
guaranteed to produce results,” But without a
thorough-going cultural transformation, he
contends, Patrick
County
has little hope of competing in the global economy.
“Considering the consequences of inaction, the
risk is worth taking.”
If
nothing else, a community-wide effort to upgrade
educational achievement across the demographic
spectrum will make the county stand out. Baliles
hopes that the publicity generated by the endeavor
will at least put the county “on the radar
screen” of industry looking for rural locations.
The
Patrick
County
educational initiative has been a near-obsession for
Baliles, who has suffered no dearth of opportunities
since leaving the governor’s mansion. As head of
Hunton & Williams’ International Practice
Group, he has worked extensively with the aviation
industry, chairing the National Airline Commission,
developing noise standards for next-generation
aircraft, and conducting negotiations to open up
airline flights between Japan
and the U.S.
He’s also served as president of the Virginia
Historical Society and on a number of corporate and
educational boards.
As
Patrick
County’s
most celebrated native son since Jeb Stuart, the
civil war cavalry commander, Baliles draws upon a
vast wealth of experience and a broad network of contacts to
carry out his vision. He sees three components to
the initiative: (1) sending more students to
college, (2) getting more high-school drop-outs to
complete their GEDs, and (3) upgrading general
workforce skills.
The
model for college access came from a Hampton Roads
program he learned about as governor. About 13 years
ago, Baliles had helped
Norfolk
community leaders Frank Batten and Joshua Darden
kick off a program to make college education more
accessible to minority students. Then, three years
ago, he attended a 10th-anniversary
celebration. There, he learned that the program had
helped 18,000 kids make it into college, in part by
locating $60 million of scholarship funds.
Baliles
introduced a carbon copy of the Hampton Roads
program into
Patrick
County.
The Foundation hired Sandra Dales, a beneficiary of the
Hampton Roads program who went back to help run it. Working out of the high school, she
counsels students about college, encourages them to
take the SATs, organizes trips to college campuses
and helps find scholarship money. In one measurable
benefit of the fledgling program, the county has seen the percentage of seniors taking SATs shoot
from 32 to 62 percent.
Meanwhile,
Dale is working with 9th graders and
their parents to plan ahead for their education. She
makes a pact with the family: If the student
maintains 90 percent attendance, stays out of
trouble with the law, keeps up a 2.5 point average,
and participates in extra-curricular activities, the
Foundation will help him (or her) get into college
and find the money to pay for it. The Foundation
itself will kick in $1,500 in last-dollar awards, if
needed.
In
the first year, the Foundation found $450,000 in
outside scholarship money for college-bound
students. The goal is to find enough to assist up to 100 students annually. Ferrum
College
in nearby Franklin
County
has committed up to $50,000 a year in scholarship
funds for Patrick
County
students. Another Virginia
institution, which Baliles is not ready to identify
yet, says it will support another six to seven
students a year.
The
second goal is to persuade half of the 6,000 adults,
out of a total county population of 19,000, to compete their high school educations within the
decade. If 3,000 adults obtained their high school
equivalencies, Patrick
County
would vault into the top ranks of Virginia’s
rural counties. Trouble is, only 38 people completed
their GEDs last year, says Baliles. “How do you
get 3,000 through the system? It’s a daunting
task.”
The
county has a good GED program in place; there’s no
need to reinvent the wheel. The challenge, says
Baliles, is marketing the message. The commitment
must percolate down from community leaders to the
general population that people would be helping themselves
by becoming more employable, helping their children
by providing role models, and helping the community
by making it a more attractive place for industry to
invest.
Just in case moral suasion isn't sufficient,
the Foundation will provide GED earners up to $1,000
toward the payment of their property taxes or
continued education.
The
Foundation has hired Jerry Hughes, an experienced
hand in rural economic development, as executive
director. Hughes and Dale are meeting with local employers to
enlist their cooperation: If they can identify up to
eight employees willing to participate, the county
will take the GED program to the work site. They
also are building a network of preachers and
ministers to identify parishioners who might benefit
from the programs. To circumvent the stigma of
returning to school, the county is prepared to hold
classes in local fire departments or other community
facilities.
A
Foundation task force
is still working on the workforce-skills component
of the initiative. No one has a definitive
solution in mind yet, but Baliles has identified a source
of funds. Incredibly, the regional Workforce
Investment Council, responsible for funneling
federal training dollars to localities, is leaving a
lot of money on the table. Baliles would like to get
some of the $2 million in unspent funds to
underwrite the Foundation’s workforce-preparedness
activities.
Baliles
is
intrigued with the idea of introducing a
technology-proficiency certification to the county,
similar to a program developed by the Virginia
Foundation of Independent Colleges at the
instigation of Mark Warner before he became governor.
Baliles is thinking of creating a program that can
be introduced to the general population, culminating
with an exam that certifies to potential employers
that recipients possess competence in
computer-related skills.
The
Foundation is still in the building phase, Baliles
insists, but it is gaining momentum. Early on, he
ran ragged trying to administer the program from
Richmond
or, just as likely, from a cell phone in an airport.
With Hughes and Dale on board -- and a third
employee in the plans -- he is
more than happy to delegate operational details. He
sees his role as an "orchestra conductor"
coordinating the contributions of local players,
board members, interested Patrick County expatriates
and outside philanthropists.
Baliles'
chief job now is fund raising. Besides the contribution
from the Tobacco Commission, he’s picked up
$300,000 from the Reynolds Foundation, $100,000 from an individual with close ties to
the county, and a number of five-digit donations
from Virginia corporations. If the Foundation can demonstrate some
initial successes, Baliles believes he can pick up
ample financial support from wealthy national foundations.
All told, he estimates, the Foundation will need $5 million to $7
million over a 10-year period.
Education
was Jerry Baliles’ ticket out of Patrick
County
decades ago. He remembers the local librarian,
Louise Clark, who drove the bookmobile through his
community. His home was the only private residence
she ever stopped at: A voracious reader, he’d
check out 40 to 50 books a month. Baliles sees the
Patrick Henry Education Foundation as his
opportunity to repay an old kindness – with a
twist. This time around, education will be the key
to creating a future for the county’s young people
close to home.
--
December 2, 2002
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