Community education

Mike James / The Independent

RUSSELL July 27, 2006 11:20 pm

— The three school districts in Greenup County are joining to develop a community education program and hire a director for it.
The director will be based in Russell but the program will serve the three districts in the county — Russell, Raceland-Worthington and Greenup County — said Patti Lane, director of the Russell Family Resource and Youth Service Center.
The program will serve people of all ages and will encourage involvement by county schools in lifelong learning, Lane said.
A $25,000-per-year state grant pays to hire the director and start the program.
Some of the education areas the program will focus on are health, because of alarming trends in obesity among Kentucky children, and technology, to deal with ever-increasing demands for high-tech expertise among both adults and children, Lane said.
The first order of business will be to form an advisory committee from the education, health care, government agency and private sectors, including students from all three districts.
The board will provide some direction for the program and the director will confer with the family resource center directors, who already are attuned to community needs, Lane said.
The program probably will operate out of satellite centers in each district. For instance, Advance Memorial United Methodist Church in Flatwoods, which Lane attends, has dedicated a community resource room. Greenup County School Superintendent John Younce said his district is pondering use of the board-owned former Wurtland Volunteer Fire Department headquarters as a center.
The director also will explore the possibility of offering extension classes in conjunction with Ashland Community and Technical College, she said.
The actual grant is for $20,000 and the districts together have to match that with an additional $5,000. Ideally, by the second year, the program will be able to generate some or all of that. While many activities would be free, the program could charge fees for some classes, she said.
Across the state, 87 counties have received the grant, including Boyd County, which is going into its eighth program year. Boyd County’s community education program has been “highly successful,” said director Bill Burch.
Boyd’s program focuses on lifelong learning classes, service learning, in which students perform service projects related to subjects they’re studying, collaboration with nonprofits and the educational community and volunteerism.
The Boyd program also oversees First Book, which raises money and seeks grants to buy books for children. In the two years First Book has been active in the county, it has bought 5,000 books for 700 children, Burch said.
The multidistrict approach “gives the opportunity to try to meet some countywide community needs,” Burch said. “I’m really pleased that Greenup County has the grant now. I’ll be glad when every county in the state has this opportunity.”
MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.