Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Community Capitalism

Late yesterday afternoon I spent 1.5 hours attending the first of four meetings breaking down what our community needs to concentrate on for our community to grow in the right direction. This meeting was concerning education of which we are blessed with many great institutions and quality leadership.

Then a young lady stood up to speak, her children were quietly playing in the corner of the room. She brought a subject to the meeting that most would have been scared to mention to a crowd of 80 plus people.

She announced that the community needs help in raising and mentoring the parents. We constantly have mentoring programs for students, one on one sessions with business people and many people from different walks of live so the student know someone is concerned, but we need a mentoring program for some parents who need help in being a good parent. Someone for the parent to vent with their day to day problems of raising a child and encouraging the parent(s) to make sure the child grows up to become a responsible citizen.

Keith Richards of the Newark City Schools commended her for making the comment and then he added: Yesterday the Newark Schools held an expulsion hearing for an elementary age student who had brought a knife to school. Automatically there is an eight day suspension and possible 80 day suspension of which is decided during a hearing as regulated by the State of Ohio. Keith had more concern for the student than the parents, the parents did not attend the hearing.

We found one community problem.

Read the complete Newark Advocate article.

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