#5: What do we want out of our educational system?

Troubleshooting issues within our educational system feels overwhelming. A spotlight is often on crisis points, such as kindergarten readiness, third grade reading scores, and graduation rates; but, what if we zoomed out and flew over the entire system at 30,000 feet? What if we thought about the big picture, and determined what exactly we even want out of the system? This episode will help shift our mindset to thinking about systems-level approaches to improving education in our community.

This episode covers:

• What is a theory of change?
• How do our students feel about their educational experience?
• How does a community school work?
• What is the Orange County Public School’s new cell phone rule and what are its impacts?
• What is place-based philanthropy?
• What do we want out of our educational system?

Guests:

• Eddy Moratin, Co-Founder and President, Lift Orlando
• Student Guests: Michael, Reagan, and Naej

Central Florida Foundation Team:

• Mark Brewer, President/CEO
• Sandi Vidal, VP of Community Strategies and Initiatives

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As our region’s community foundation, Central Florida Foundation serves as a launchpad for high-impact philanthropy. Championing the collective power of head, heart and dollar, we coordinate the commitment and investment of philanthropists, nonprofits, and community partners to target today’s most critical challenges and those on the horizon to truly transform our community. The Foundation also offers expert giving advice, a personalized approach to managing charitable funds, and the capacity to convene collaboration across sectors. Learn more at cffound.org.

Transcript

 CFF FYT Podcast Ep 5 [00:00:00] Laurie Crocker: Welcome to Central Florida Foundation's First You Talk podcast. Here, you'll gain a better understanding of society's toughest issues. At the end of each episode, we'll summarize the main points and offer deeper dive options if something piqued your interest. So, ready to demystify a complex issue and up your knowledge game? [00:00:25] Let's get started. [00:00:30] Episode 5. What do we want out of our educational system? [00:00:35] Mark Brewer: What we systematize. The other thing that's important is the crisis, right? So it's either third grade reading skills or high school graduation. So we take that to the systems level, like, Oh, this is terrible, this is a crisis. But we haven't really thought about what might have caused that particular bad point in the system. [00:00:55] Sandi Vidal: The other thing that's thing that I think is important is [00:01:00] there's national standards, but then local control on the education. So education isn't always equal everywhere that you go. [00:01:09] Eddy Moratin: All the way to making sure, you know, 70 percent of of first generation college students, regardless of supports, grand scholarships, don't finish college. [00:01:21] It's hard to go do something you haven't seen others close to you do. It's hard to do it and then feel like an alien compared to your friends and their backgrounds and families. [00:01:29] Sandi Vidal: We begin at the end because we want to know what the desired outcomes are going to be. We want to think about the end product or the goal that we're trying to achieve. [00:01:40] And so we have to look all the way to the end to be able to determine all of the steps we need to get to where we're trying to go. [00:01:50] Laurie Crocker: As you may already know, this is Cindy Vidal. CFF's VP of Community Strategies and Initiatives. Here, she's describing an exercise [00:02:00] she does all the time in her world as she helps nonprofits figure out how they're going to achieve their goals. [00:02:06] The exercise revolves around a theory of change, which is a method of figuring out what action steps are needed in order to achieve a specific change. At the very beginning of the process, you actually. Start at the end to ask, well, what do we want as an outcome? What would be the ideal scenario [00:02:30] Mark Brewer: strategy for education? I kind of wonder if that's the case today. I wonder if what we've done is continually re engineered a process that we're familiar with, but we may or may not like, and it may not always give us the outcomes we're looking for, but we just doing it because that's how we know how to do it. [00:02:49] Laurie Crocker: This is Mark Brewer, CFF's president and CEO. Like Sandy, he specializes in understanding and tackling systems levels [00:03:00] change. And to do that, you must look at the whole system, not just points along the continuum. [00:03:08] Sandi Vidal: Right. It's kind of like the story of baking the ham and cutting the ends off, and then finally asking the question, why are the ends of the ham being cut off? [00:03:19] And it turns out because that's the way it was to put it in the pan. [00:03:23] Mark Brewer: I think we we talk about this often, a whole concept that education is a system that includes Birth defy brain development, K through 12, state college, university, career source is the retraining people who've lost jobs to become employed again. [00:03:41] But I'm not sure anyone ever looks at that as an ecosystem. They tend to look at the problems within the segments and then try to solve for those problems, which is almost always caused by something before that problem. [00:03:58] Sandi Vidal: Yeah. [00:04:00] In education, we're looking at it from the system level, we're looking at, like you said, just dividing into certain segments rather than looking at a whole person approach. [00:04:14] And I think the, the thing about education is it's really not meant to be individualized. It's meant to be more standardized. It's kind of a one size fits all. It's because there's not a way to really target into individuals because you're doing it in a classroom setting. There's a teacher for variety of numbers of students depending on what age level it is. [00:04:42] And then your classes when you're in elementary school and even in high school are divided into segments. And so you have a certain amount of time to teach math and then you have a certain amount of time to teach. English, and so you can't just. [00:05:00] Make that into a broad sweep of really educating somebody depending on what's going to be relevant to them when they graduate from kindergarten and high school. [00:05:13] Mark Brewer: Well, that's a good point. And what we systematize is the crisis. So it's either third grade reading skills or high school graduation. So we take that to the systems level, like, oh, this is. Terrible, this is a crisis, but we haven't really thought about what might have caused that particular bad point in the system. [00:05:36] And I, and so starting earlier is probably better, but I'm not sure we spend a lot of time in birth defy brain development. We just know later that we should have spent more time there, [00:05:47] Sandi Vidal: right? You know, they talk about even things like, you know, you can. determine and you know whether or not this is actually true or just kind of a [00:06:00] perpetual myth, but they say that you can determine whether or not somebody will go to jail based on whether or not they can read. [00:06:06] Mark Brewer: Right, right. It always strikes me that the, that whole concept of systematizing a crisis, here's a problem, is always so casual to me. It's like, well, nobody reads. At grade level in third grade, really? Well, that sounds like a systems problem, right? So we should have been paying attention to that earlier. [00:06:27] And that's not a child by child thing. That might mean what we're doing isn't appropriate. And it might be to your earlier point that we haven't kind of drawn out far enough to look at the system and say, what is it we need people to be doing other than just reading at a grade level that we arbitrarily decide is the right grade level? [00:06:49] Sandi Vidal: I think part of it is the complexity in predicting what the careers of the future will be. And so trying to think about training [00:07:00] somebody for something that may not exist right now is really kind of a big, hairy, scary goal. Oh yeah. But the reality is. There are some skill sets and some, even in the whole person approach, some emotional, the social pieces of it, the communication skills that are going to be important regardless of what you're doing. [00:07:24] Mark Brewer: And those might be the soft skills that we should start with instead of finishing with, right? I was in a conversation with someone the other day who was saying to me, well, you know, AI is going to be a big thing in the future. I don't even know how we teach kids to be prepared for that. In elementary school, and I thought to myself, well, I'm not sure you want to train kids to be prepared for that. [00:07:46] There are a whole bunch of issues around artificial intelligence that you could train to skill sets for and to broader critical thinking for without ever mentioning AI. [00:07:57] Sandi Vidal: I agree. I also think that [00:08:00] it's important to note that there's a lot that happens outside of the education system. [00:08:07] Laurie Crocker: Building our education around creating resiliency in our children isn't a bad idea. Knowing that we simply don't know what the world will look like When a kindergartner graduates years later is something we're not going to change. Therefore, finding skills that can be applied to any situation, not just the shiny new thing such as AI, might be a step in the right direction. [00:08:31] Now, let's turn our attention to two ways of thinking about education. A rounded or whole human education or one that's more career skills focused. [00:08:46] Mark Brewer: Kind of believe that we've been on this trend for many years away from having rounded education to having job skills education to the point now where some education is so [00:09:00] truncated that literally you come out knowing how to do a process you can get paid for. But you may not have the general education that you were talking about a while ago that would make you a rounded human being and a voter and somebody who could actually participate in the world we live in. [00:09:17] Sandi Vidal: Yeah, really understanding critical thinking, how to problem solve, questions, researching, making sure that we're able to understand the world around us and how it works, but also be able to think about new things that we could potentially do. I think when you're pigeonholed into one skill or another, then you're kind of stuck. [00:09:42] A lot of times, I think even With the way the education system works, we kind of fall into our careers rather than aspire to them. [00:09:52] Mark Brewer: Plus, maybe it's just me, but what I hear employers complain about all the time are people who don't have communication skills, right? They might [00:10:00] know how to do the job, but the whole concept of customer service is well beyond doing the job. [00:10:07] It's you being able to communicate and make decisions and then Take responsibility for things, and maybe no one ever taught you how to do that. A rounded education is not political. It's your ability to function in society. And so whatever that is, whatever set of skills you need to do that, I'm not even sure in the beginning we process for that. [00:10:33] Like if I was looking to prepare myself for a career, I might not pick the right things to learn in order to be successful in that career. I might be too textbook oriented and less human oriented in that process. [00:10:50] Sandi Vidal: I think that's true. It's, you know, in the beginning of time, in the beginning of our human history, education was part [00:11:00] of the family. [00:11:01] And then it became, you know, part of societies, and then eventually it led to schooling. But in the beginning, schooling was kind of chaotic. And so we've gone to a point where we've standardized. We have different curriculums. We have the no child left behind. And, you know, again, not to look at it from a political standpoint, but just really about education. [00:11:24] And the question I think would be, are we giving kids the education they need to be successful adults. And I think there's some components that maybe are missing things like those financial literacy skills, the social skills, even some of, you know, we talk about social emotional learning can be a politically charged conversation, but just, I think the ability to Self regulate is something that we talk about with kids and resilience. [00:11:56] You know, if you fail at something, how to pick yourself [00:12:00] up and be able to move forward is really part of life. [00:12:04] Michael Crocker: My name is Michael Crocker. I'm a freshman at. University of Central Florida. I'm an integrated business major, and I just graduated from Baboon High School last year. [00:12:14] Reagan: My name's Regan. I'm a senior at Oviedo High School. [00:12:18] Naej: Hello, my name is Naej and I am a graduating senior at the University of Central Florida, and I am a former recipient of the Brady Wilkin Scholarship. [00:12:29] Laurie Crocker: There are a lot of opinions about what is and isn't taught in school, and if anything is even working or sticking with our kids. So to get a sense of the student experience, we talked to three actual students who have experienced the public school system right here in Central Florida. [00:12:50] Michael Crocker: So I think that the connections that teachers themselves make with students can be some of the best experiences that you have. [00:12:57] There are definitely a lot of memorable teachers that, [00:13:00] like, I'll never forget that impacted me. I think it's always better when teachers try to make personal connections with you. It just makes learning, like, more fun, and it makes you more engaged in class. There are also, like, programs. I had the opportunity to take guitar class when we had a music requirement in middle school, and being able to do something like that that I was really interested in, again, it made me, like, want to go to school. [00:13:21] You want to learn, and I think generally it just makes you more engaged with the school itself. Part of the requirements of the housing and the car project, we actually had to like call and get quotes on like insurance and things like that. We actually had to like interact with real people. Being in that finance program in high school helped me to learn how to financially support myself. [00:13:43] Emotionally, like I think that there are a lot of things that you go through as you grow up and become an adult and you kind of get thrust into that role in society. That schools don't, like, really prepare you for. Overall, I think it did its job from the standpoint of, like, what I learned. Like the [00:14:00] content, definitely, I feel prepared for being in college and, like, I'm on the right track in terms of what I'm learning and the knowledge that I've acquired, but it's like a yes and no answer. [00:14:09] In some ways, I feel prepared, but in others, I do feel a little bit lost. [00:14:13] Reagan: Well, one, teachers should try and Connect with their students. Another thing is certain classes like life skills, and I'm taking a finance class right now, and I really liked that. Cause I learned about all the finances I'm going to have to deal with, like insurance and car payments. [00:14:31] I don't think I've had any teacher that has had like a topic in class or like even really talked about it for like a day about what we want to do with our like lives, what we plan to do. If we're going to college, I think maybe my finance class, we talk about that a few times. [00:14:52] Laurie Crocker: So just to put any rumors to rest that real world skills aren't taught in school, that doesn't seem to be [00:15:00] entirely the case. However, these classes don't seem to be required or at the very least experiences very greatly. Now these students were then asked to share some memorable parts of school and experiences that they'd like to change. [00:15:19] Reagan: I would say. Just some certain teachers were really sweet to me. I don't know, I had a lot of teachers that They kind of just felt like just teachers, which I don't know how to explain it, but like, there's certain teachers that like, try to get to know you as a person and like, relate to you and I don't know, just make you feel like you're welcome. [00:15:44] Whereas some teachers kind of just teach. And don't really, like, actually care about the students that they're teaching. So, when I had a teacher that was, like, sweet and actually tried to get to know me, I've, like, kind of got connected with them, where, like, even if I [00:16:00] didn't take their class anymore, I would end up, like, just sitting in their class, like, at lunch, talking to them. [00:16:07] Even if I didn't have them as a teacher anymore. I've struggled with anxiety for most of my life. And in my class, freshman year, we were doing a, like a, an assignment. And she asked me the answer for the question she was doing. And I didn't know that. And I looked at her and I told her that I didn't know that. [00:16:27] And she sat there and like pointed me out to the entire class, made me sit there until I. Could figure it out and I kept telling her I could I didn't understand the question and I didn't under like I did not know the answer and at that point because I was so anxious because everybody's staring at me. [00:16:44] I just start crying and I'm like having a panic attack and she's just sitting there with a little smirk and she's like we're just going to sit here until you know the answer and I end up just panicking and so I just run out of the class and [00:16:56] Michael Crocker: I went to a really highly rated high school. So that definitely was very [00:17:00] beneficial to me, just starting out sort of, I had advantages, definitely. [00:17:04] But so for the whole, like, applying to colleges process, they, you know, they help you a little bit and they sort of tell you what you need to do, but there's not a whole lot of, like, guidance in terms of how to do it or what to go through in order to do it. And I think that a lot of people can kind of get lost on that. [00:17:21] So if I had to, like, change anything, like, about the, like, school system itself, maybe just, like, helping people to get launched into whatever they're doing next after high school, I think that something along those lines would be helpful. I also, like, personally, I think that There are a lot of opportunities like I mentioned National Honor Society that could be extremely helpful for students and just in terms of leadership and advancing like as in growing as a person, and I didn't really take advantage of that. [00:17:55] of those so much, I do wish that if I could go back, I could sort of [00:18:00] see what that was like, because I'm, I'm sure I have a lot of people I know that did it, and I think that they really enjoyed the experience. [00:18:07] Naej: My best educational experiences were my hands on class. For example, in high school, I had my STEM classes, where it was focused on medicine. [00:18:16] And we would have lots of on hand interactions, such as dissections with the heart, and also like criminal court cases. And then in high school, in college, my favorite thing were my chemistry labs and pathophysiology, because instead of it being words on a paper, we got to see the science come to life. [00:18:34] And it also gave a deeper meaning to the words that we were saying when you could understand the root from where they were coming from. Well, when it comes to academics, I think it is not a one sized fits all. I think it's very important to try personally, my favorite method is the flipped classroom method in which students watch the lectures before coming to class, and then once they get in class, they do practice problems, and this helps us to not just [00:19:00] memorize the information, but to apply the knowledge that we're learning. [00:19:03] In college, actually, I had a chemistry teacher who would make us do that, and That's the only time I got an A in chemistry. The information just stuck with us so much when you learn it beforehand and then constantly apply it to real world situations. [00:19:17] Reagan: I might be really weird to say this, but I kind of like the new phone rule in school. [00:19:22] I mean, Everybody likes to go on their phone. Yeah, when I'm at home, I don't know. I'm bored. I go on my phone. But like when you're in class, I just don't see why you need to be on your phone while you're doing like an assignment. [00:19:37] Laurie Crocker: Reagan's referencing a new student cell phone policy put into place by Orange County Public Schools in July of 2023. [00:19:46] The policy states, In part, that a student may not use a wireless communications device during instructional time, except when expressly directed by a teacher solely for educational purposes. The [00:20:00] 2023 2024 Code of Student Conduct requires that wireless communication devices must be silenced and put away in a backpack or purse during the school day while on campus, including lunchtime and transitioning between classes. [00:20:14] Thank you. [00:20:17] Reagan: It's a law now that we can't have cell phones in class, but a lot of teachers don't enforce it. Some teachers just let you have it out. They don't really care. I feel like some students are more, like, engaged. I feel like compared to last year, I would be in class and everybody would be on their phones, but in the classes where the teachers actually enforce the rule, mainly everybody's doing the work. [00:20:41] They don't enjoy it, but I mean, they're doing it. I feel like a teenager in a classroom where you have your phone to distract you, you're, you're on your phone. You're not doing what you're supposed to be learning and stuff versus like, if they don't have their phone in the classroom, they have nothing else to distract them. [00:20:58] And teenagers [00:21:00] are so like, they always want to be doing something. So they're like, well, I'm bored. So I might as well just do the, do the work, you know? So I mean, they, they might not enjoy it, but they still are doing it. [00:21:12] Laurie Crocker: And finally, we asked them what they think should be the outcome of our educational system. [00:21:21] Michael Crocker: I think that beyond just like preparing people for life in general, I think that you want people to have had an experience where they feel compassionate towards other people. They want to help their communities and the world. Like they want to make a difference beyond just like being prepared for themselves. [00:21:41] So I think it's very important that it is taught like helping yourself and others. as you grow up. Beyond just education, there's things that people need. Like a well rounded family, which I had participating in other things in your community, such as like charity organization, like doing volunteer work, [00:22:00] that stuff can't really be taught. [00:22:01] So I think based on the fact that I had that coming from other places other than just school that helped me to achieve that better now to this point. [00:22:10] Naej: When it comes to the end result of our system, I think it's definitely on a spectrum. You can get many different things out of it based on your perception. [00:22:21] For example, some students may receive a failing grade in a class, and some of them see that as an end all, be all, whereas some of that see that as a chance to improve, and that can boost resilience and adaptability. And also on the other side of the spectrum, many students are very used to getting all A's and that can give them overconfidence and they go into the real world and think that it's like school and they get hit with a stump in the road and they don't know how to handle it. [00:22:55] They break because life is not like school. It's not something that can be graded. I feel like [00:23:00] life is something that You have to learn by trial and error and by experiences. [00:23:07] Laurie Crocker: From finance class being a hidden gem, to teachers being an incredibly impactful aspect to student experience, these three young adults are all navigating their way into or out of college right now, and right here in Central Florida. [00:23:24] Their experiences further exemplify the complexity and overlapping challenges and opportunities in this space. Now let's go back to the concept of a community school. Something that, if you listened in to episode 4 of the podcast, you might've heard Dean Grant Hayes talk about it. Now let's go back to the concept of a community school. [00:23:47] Something that, if you listened closely in to episode four of the podcast, you would have heard Dean Grant Hayes of UCF CCIE talk about, and the possibilities of that model here in [00:24:00] Central Florida. Just to refresh your memory, a community school is one based on the idea that the school is the center of the community. [00:24:08] They often provide wraparound services to students that extend beyond a typical school day and work in partnerships with other community resources. In other words, it supports children with more than just academic education with hopes to create resilient, well rounded members of the community it serves, thus lifting up the entire community in the process. [00:24:34] Eddy Moratin: So when we eventually decided This is something real. We need to try to pursue this notion of what now is called place based philanthropy. It's the idea that the most powerful kind of lever you have for transforming outcomes at scale are the environments people live in. Most of our work in the region was really focused on crisis relief, feeding people, clothing, people, housing people. [00:24:56] They were in crisis, but 95 percent of the folks who are poor [00:25:00] today are not in some acute crisis situation. In fact, many are in chronic, long term, sometimes generational poverty. And when that persists, it often has more to do with the environment people are confined to deal with than it does with their lack of willpower or the efficacy of a particular program by itself. [00:25:22] Laurie Crocker: This is Eddy Moritan, co founder and CEO of Lift Orlando, a movement of business leaders working with residents and community partners to strengthen neighborhoods. But as you'll hear him say, Lift has a special focus right now on the 0 5 neighborhood of Orlando. This zip code might not ring any bells for you initially, but these names might. [00:25:46] This area, renamed by its residents as the Communities of West Lakes, is made up of neighborhoods west of Paramore and east of Washington Shores, or between Orange Blossom Trail, or OBT, and John Young [00:26:00] Parkway in Orlando. These neighborhoods have been rich in African American heritage, including many long term residents who broke through the barriers of racial and economic inequalities of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. [00:26:14] These neighborhoods have also experienced inequity in public and private investments that support the well being of residents. [00:26:24] Eddy Moratin: 95 percent of the folks who are poor today are not in some acute crisis situation. In fact, many are in chronic, long term, sometimes generational poverty. And when that persists, it often has more to do with the environment. [00:26:38] People are, you know, confined to deal with than it does with their lack of willpower or the efficacy of a particular program by itself. So we realized we have great nonprofits all over our region. How could we get them to work together around this new approach? And so for us, the idea of organizing a 501 C3 nonprofit organization that would independently [00:27:00] operate to really be sort of the glue that ties together some of the best work in our region, But through the filter of being place based, in other words, addressing a human scale, a size of an area, which is one neighborhood. [00:27:13] So if you imagine a magnifying glass, it takes the power of the sun and suddenly becomes a very, very hot source of almost like a laser that laser focus is what we try to provide for the people who live in the communities that we serve leveraging partnerships with the public sector, the business community, the for profit philanthropy individuals to accelerate pathways towards prosperity. [00:27:34] We have a wonderful partnership with Children's Home Society, who's been operating at Jones High School as a community school, and they are a fantastic organization, maybe the largest provider of community partnership schools in the whole state of Florida. And we've been talking more and more about how we might leverage that same model to serve the entire pipeline leading up to Jones. [00:27:51] Could we wrap supports around families, students and their siblings and parents at each of the schools that feed up to Jones. Could we create it so that [00:28:00] everyone in that pipeline is having needs met along the way? Their conversation often with us when we banter is the idea that if Orlando is trying to address that holistic systems wide approach to the well being of the child Outside the school walls where they're providing the intersections inside the school, what we're trying to do with housing, economic development and health care, really the two combined to create a multiplying effect of wraparound supports. [00:28:25] It's interesting when you think about what we're trying to accomplish, ultimately. The education system in America has been renowned throughout history for our leadership in providing free, high quality education to all citizens for a very, very long time. It was a ticket to financial stability and prosperity for families that you could predict that if you got an education, you would find yourself sustaining your family well into the future. [00:28:51] In fact, years ago, the Brookings Institute had a research study that got dubbed as the escalator effect, and they described the fact that they had proven that the American dream was [00:29:00] still alive today because research said that if you simply, regardless of how poor you started out, graduate from high school, Went to college, landed a job, and then started a family. [00:29:11] You were in the 90th percentile to join the middle class, and so they were saying like, so people shouldn't complain. They just need to do the right things and do them in the right order. Now, years later, Brookings came back and said, well, we've looked closer at the data and a. What is also true is that there are some places, some neighborhoods where that's just harder to do than others. [00:29:29] And in some of our neighborhoods in America that have been underinvested for so long, if you're a child trying to accomplish those basic things, the kind of focus and determination to not only show up every day, but avoid every temptation and obstacle. You need a, you know, a mentor, a great teacher who pays attention to you. [00:29:47] Praying grandmother and to make it out. And that's after 12 years of determination or 20, maybe the reality is that the way the American dream is supposed to work and the way we've done it so well for so long, just [00:30:00] not equally for everybody is if you Leave the 3205 zip code in downtown Orlando and go north of Colonial Drive. [00:30:07] You're in the 3204 zip code. Now you're in College Park, Country Club of Orlando. It's a wonderful historic neighborhood. They're quite predictably, children in those families going to school are graduating from high school. Going to college, landing a job, starting a healthy family, no superhuman effort required. [00:30:24] So we certainly know how to do this. We're just not doing it everywhere for everyone. And the goal is to just make the system work again for every child, regardless of their zip code. [00:30:37] Laurie Crocker: At this point, we've discussed the challenges and questions we face as a community trying to improve our educational system. [00:30:44] We've also taken a look at some systems level changes. such as the community school concept and how that's having an impact on some of our most underserved communities. And yes, if you're thinking tackling the prickly topic of our educational [00:31:00] system is sounding complicated, it is. However, let's recall the theory of change exercise Sandy mentioned in the beginning of this episode. [00:31:09] We have to start at the end in order to get those sustainable positive changes started in the first place. So stick with us. This part isn't supposed to feel easy, but we promise we'll end with some tangible key points to walk away with soon. Now, as a community foundation, Central Florida Foundation is constantly collecting data and talking with community leaders across the region to identify ways we can help invest in our community. [00:31:35] our head, heart, and dollars into this space, specifically through our Thrive framework, which you can check out more in our show notes. So let's return now to Mark and Sandy as they share some of the ways the Foundation has pushed for incremental change in this space. [00:31:55] Sandi Vidal: Well, I know that the foundation has done some really important [00:32:00] convening around things like the community school concept that brings together both the education system and some of the community facing things as in health and mental health and other components. [00:32:15] Mark Brewer: It doesn't seem like it would be too distant to think that if your school was a primary convening place where you could also. [00:32:24] learn about food, get medical care, be able to convene with people in your community around issues and problems, that that wouldn't be a good thing, right? That we close schools up at three o'clock in the afternoon and then don't open them up until seven thirty or eight o'clock the next morning. [00:32:41] Meanwhile, that building's empty for the rest of the day and it might be a place where we could bring the community together to get other things that they need. [00:32:49] Sandi Vidal: Right. The other things that we've done or or do on an ongoing basis is we have scholarships which help kids to be able to financially [00:33:00] provide for the education that they're seeking. [00:33:02] Mark Brewer: Right. And that education isn't always a university education. Sometimes it's job training or certification for something that you could get a certificate or a set of certificates and be able then to manage income for your life. Which is something else we don't teach in elementary school, [00:33:23] Sandi Vidal: right? I think on the other end, on the, the ends of. [00:33:28] the education system, the beginning, we've been very involved with the K Ready community, which was actually birthed out of some of the work of our 100 Women Strong Giving Circle, as we focused on education there, looking at different ways to interact with students who are getting ready for their third grade reading with Some classroom experience where they had some different seating and lighting and pets and things like that. [00:33:58] We've also brought back some [00:34:00] reading programs from the 70s that were shown to work. But then, as we do with many things, we abandon those for the new shiny object. Right. That is out there and then forget that we have something that actually works that we can build on. And then on the other side, we have. [00:34:18] I've been working closely with the Heart of Florida United Way and the Uplifted program, which really focuses on that, what happens after high school, looking at your career. I think one of the things that we've learned from that experience is we talk about things like post secondary education, but the reality is we're talking in words that people don't really understand. [00:34:42] And so we really need to focus on it as. your career? Where are you going? Whether it's continuing your school and getting educated in the college system, or if it's going to a trade school or getting a certificate or whatever that is. But really, what is that next step to [00:35:00] become a productive citizen? [00:35:01] Mark Brewer: So that's a great point. [00:35:02] The whole cradle to career system thought process, I know it makes people crazy because it sounds like something they can't get their hands around. But I am, I am particularly, this is just me, it just makes me crazy that we systematize language sometimes. So the whole concept that birth defy brain development is pre K and not birth defy brain development, right? [00:35:30] Like this is just somewhere else for you to be until you go to kindergarten. [00:35:35] Laurie Crocker: So it feels like at the end of the day, talking about our educational system isn't just about textbooks. At the core of this issue, children simply don't learn in a silo, and the success of our educational system interacts and depends on the success of so many other systems we have, from housing to health care and much more. [00:35:57] Let's turn back to Eddy Moratin [00:36:00] as he shares more about how these issues [00:36:06] Eddy Moratin: So Lift in many ways was born out of a concern for education. We were obsessed with the idea that if you wanted to yield different results than what we were seeing we needed to take the approach of understanding root causes, that we could not just get excited and pursue the solving of a particular problem without knowing if that problem was simply a symptom, a symptom. [00:36:24] So as we studied and learned, we began to dig deeper and we learned that there The old apartments in the middle of the heart of the communities of West Lakes on Orange Center Boulevard had been sort of swapped hands every decade or so with another absentee slumlord who would make a lot of promises to turn it into a great place, and eventually just forced the great families that lived around those properties to deal with another rise in crime and folks living in substandard conditions. [00:36:51] And so we had heard that What the crime rate was and we thought, Oh my gosh, that's alarming. We got to do something about that. And somebody was smart enough to say, Well, you know, 70 percent of the crimes are [00:37:00] committed by high school dropouts. Oh, okay. So maybe the crime is a symptom. Education, that's the root cause. [00:37:05] But then we toured the school and at that time the neighborhood school was dealing with a hundred percent turnover in third grade. And we realized that even though they had this amazing principal and these incredible teachers, and they were doing all these wonderful programs, there were instability and the classrooms are so great because the housing was so bad. [00:37:22] So then we realized we got to go address the housing. And then you realize, well, the parent families can't afford better housing without better jobs, and they can't do that without better education. And you're kind of back to square one. So we pursue our mission by investing in mixed income housing, cradle to career education, community health and wellness. [00:37:37] And ultimately. long term economic viability that people prosper and are doing well financially because then they don't need any of our interventions. They can provide for their own families. But at the core of it, the spine is that cradle to career education. So early childhood education, reaching children as early as six weeks of birth with our partnership with Advent Health and the Westlake's Early Learning Center the wider network. [00:37:58] of early [00:38:00] childhood education providers that are in the neighborhood that we help organize and then investing in our schools from K 8, K 12, scholarship opportunities for them to go to school and then really investing in the opportunities for them to finish, come back, start careers or businesses with family sustaining incomes that really launch them into experiencing the American dream. [00:38:18] If I asked you that, you know, to raise healthy children in your own household, you should just make sure they have a well balanced diet. Or you should just make sure they exercise or they like to read or they have, they talk to you about what's going on in their lives. It's all the above. In fact, any one of those things would fail as a silver bullet. [00:38:37] And so the same thing goes for education. Our children need Stable homes where parents feel that they're safe and hopeful and that they themselves are growing and setting goals and doing better year over year. That stimulates an environment where a child can feel like they themselves are worthy of more and deserve to work hard and be rewarded and see that happening all around them. [00:38:58] Then in those classrooms, they're kind [00:39:00] of. Pivotal moments in the development of a child, those early stages and the amount of the amount and kind of vocabulary children are exposed to to close that, that word gap that many experience. And, you know, we were talking earlier about third grade literacy, but there are a few things that are greater predicted predictors to incarceration rates in communities later on. [00:39:20] And so really investing heavily and children being able to read, read well, and love reading because if they can do that up until that point, the. way the world opens up to them. And today, most education in America is producing lackluster results when it comes to literacy anywhere in the country. And so there's, but there are solutions and working and investing in those solutions to train teachers, to know how to teach kids how to read, which is not actually taught. [00:39:46] And so there are opportunities for us to close those gaps all the way to making sure, you know, 70 percent of first generation college students, regardless of supports, grants, [00:40:00] scholarships, don't finish college. It's hard to go do something you haven't seen others close to you do. It's hard to do it and then feel like an alien compared to your friends and their backgrounds and families. [00:40:09] Maybe not have the same amount of money to go hang out and spend on the weekend. Or to, maybe even worse, know that back at home, you know, Your folks are struggling to keep food on the table or keep the lights on. And even though you may have a full ride and some support to make it to school, by the second year, most drop out and go back. [00:40:26] And so how do we create more supports to stick with them through college to make sure they graduate? And because this is a place based effort and we're focused on what's happening back in the neighborhood. If I was trying to do that for the whole region at the same time, it would be really hard, but with a neighborhood place approach, you're able to say, yes, we, we've got mom, we know what's going on back at home. [00:40:44] You're good. We had one student in college now say that the advantage of being able to know that she did not have to call mom for help for extra dollars because she knew mom was going through a tight season, allowed her to just relax and focus on school and not stress out about [00:41:00] that. And so there's a really important decision points. [00:41:03] Every step along the way, which is why we talk about that cradle to career continuum as an essential thing. [00:41:09] Laurie Crocker: As we close out this episode on our educational system, there are three key takeaways you can take with you into your day. Number one, a theory of change is a method of thinking. Figuring what tangible steps are needed in order to achieve a specific change. [00:41:27] At the very beginning of this process, you actually start at the end by asking questions like, what outcomes do we want? What would the ideal scenario look like? This helps us not to just treat symptoms, but to actually find the cure. Number two singular points in our educational system that get a lot of attention, such as third grade reading scores and graduation rates. [00:41:52] are actually representative of larger systemic issues. Zooming out and thinking of the system as a whole [00:42:00] more often will help us solve those points of crisis in a more sustainable way. Number three. Community schools are one way. promising solution to helping improve our educational system, brought up not only in our conversation on Education, but also on Episode four on Innovation. [00:42:19] Seeing our schools as a place of community connection and resources is at the core of this concept. We see this in practice in the West Lakes neighborhood, but also in others across the region. You can take a look at our show notes for more examples of local community schools. [00:42:38] Sandi Vidal: Education has to be formalized in some sort of way. [00:42:42] I mean, there are opportunities to homeschool. There's different types of school other than public schools, but the reality is that most of our children are in the public school system. Most of our children. Are going to experience that learning environment within the [00:43:00] classroom in those 50 minute or so segments. [00:43:03] And so I think the question is, I doubt we're going to be able to blow up the entire education system. But how do we really look at. Bringing the end to the beginning and thinking about that career from the beginning, from the onset of school. [00:43:22] Eddy Moratin: Sort of simple way of describing we want people to experience the promise of the American dream. [00:43:26] Our vision says we want to see neighborhoods where children grow up with hope. The hope that education and opportunity provide, but when they are doing well and they can choose to live wherever they want and they have the resources to do so, this would be such a promising place. Instead of it being the neighborhood you escaped from, it would actually be the kind of place you'd think about seriously when you're about to raise your own kids and you really couldn't find a better place in that same neighborhood. [00:43:49] You would then have Multiple generations of wealth and success in the same family, in the same neighborhood with the compounding power that that creates. [00:43:58] Reagan: Another thing is [00:44:00] certain classes like life skills. And I'm taking a finance class right now. And I really liked that because I learned about all the finances. [00:44:07] I'm going to have to deal with like insurance and car payments. So I, and nobody likes that class because there's a lot of like stuff to learn, but I mean, like we, we need it. [00:44:24] Laurie Crocker: Not ready for the conversation to be over? Neither are we. Find us on Instagram at First U Talk and keep the conversation going. [00:44:34] Mark Brewer: Thank you for listening to the podcast First You Talk as an engaged listener of this show, we encourage you to check out our podcast website at cffound. org/podcast to learn more about the complex issue. [00:44:51] There you'll find more context to the voices that you've heard today, links to any supporting materials mentioned during the episode and resources to help you [00:45:00] explore additional perspectives to draw a fuller picture of the issue at hand. Through curiosity and collaboration. We can all make our community an even better place to call home. [00:45:14] Laurie Crocker: A special thank you to Eddy Moratin of Lift Orlando and Michael, Reagan, and Naej for sharing their personal stories and experiences with us. This episode of Central Florida Foundation's First You Talk podcast was recorded in the Winter Park Library and edited by Diligent Mixing and Media