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by Susan Tave Zelman, Ohio superintendent of Public Instruction

The business community can create the customers, employees and entrepreneurs of the future by becoming involved in education today.

Take the case of a young woman in southeastern Ohio who believes a partnership between American Electric Power (AEP) and West Muskingum High School paved the path to future opportunities that academics alone couldn’t have provided her.

Dana Workman, a sophomore at Wilmington College in the Department of Agriculture, said the real world, environmental projects she worked on through the AEP ReCreation Land program enhanced her love of science and deepened her commitment to pursue an agricultural education.

AEP’s program involves high school students in volunteer projects on restored land, once surface-mined for its coal decades ago. Today, this 40,000-acre tract is an Ohio haven for tourists and outdoor lovers who fish, hunt and camp.

The high school students painted fences, built picnic tables for the campgrounds, maintained Miners Memorial Park, built docks and paved trails for handicapped fisherman, constructed platforms for handicapped hunters and developed close relationships with the people they worked with and helped.

"We learned team-building activities – the strengths, weaknesses and differences among people," said Dana. Eventually, Dana graduated with a 3.7 GPA and was president of the FFA (Future Farmers of America). With a concentration in equine studies, she hopes to go on to graduate school in equine nutrition. "I want to be part of the development process of creating better feeds and improving the lives of horses and their owners," she said.

The AEP program also motivated some students who might not have made it through high school. "We had kids who didn’t have any home life. This program got them involved, pulled them into more projects and helped them learn about different kinds of people," she said. "Businesses have the ability and the resources to make a difference and give students something meaningful to do," Dana said.

Ed Miller, principal of West Muskingum High School, said the partnership gives students opportunities they ordinarily couldn’t access. "They learn essential skills like math, science, horticulture and hands-on carpentry," Miller said. "These kinds of partnerships can provide differentiated learning that allows students to have hands-on experience and develop good leadership skills."

Business involvement in schools is good for the community. Bob Daniels, the agricultural instructor says this business partnership benefits the local economy. "The students learn skills, meet professional people, do volunteer work, and the work they do helps attract more campers and tourists, and this generates money."

AEP provides a model for other businesses to follow. "Most people think AEP employees climb utility poles and fix wires, but there is another side of AEP that doesn't get the spotlight," said Dean Berry, forestry and recreation assets supervisor at AEP. "Helping teachers prepare students to achieve academically and become productive citizens in our communities is very important to AEP."

What’s the return on the investment? Essentially, there is a cost to all of us when students don’t succeed in school. Ohio has about 20,000 students who don’t graduate each year. If every student in our state graduated from high school, it would add $121 million more into Ohio’s economy annually. Recent estimates from the Alliance for Excellent Education show that if all Ohio students earned a college degree, the state would generate $390 million more into the state’s economy each year.

As superintendent of public instruction, I am asking for help from the Ohio business community. We need to educate and prepare students for college and the work force. Schools can’t do it alone. Educators provide the rigorous academic coursework, but we need businesses to provide students with real-world experiences – especially through tutoring, mentoring and internships – so they can become viable contributors to Ohio’s economy.

Businesses – large and small – can reach out to form partnerships with their local high schools. I hope you will partner now with a local school for the 2006-2007 school year to help propel Ohio youth into the 21st century.

Caption: State Superintendent Susan Tave Zelman interacts with high school students.