You may think my passion for helping children in low income areas comes from compassion and the desire for social justice. That is true, however there is also a strong business case for taking action to remediate the Silicon Valley opportunity gap,
The gap between the wealthy and very poor in the Bay Area is now greater than ever. Read the article in the link below to learn more… it starts out with a story about the rich/poor disparity in San Francisco… of course the school where I volunteer is less than a mile away from Atherton and Palo Alto.
If we do not take action to improve high school graduate rates, crime will go up. There will be an even greater drain on local and state budgets through increased social welfare and health services. There is also a GDP impact to having low income children not realize their potential – I heard this week a McKinsey study predicts the impact to national GDP could be +3-4 percent if we can provide children from low income areas with the same access to education opportunities as children from higher income families.
Coming from a business background, it would be interesting to create an ROI calculator around this issue…the return is so high it seems it far outweighs the resource investment. Of course a key question is what actions and interventions in education seem to be working. I heard a panel on this topic this week, so stay tuned for my notes from that in a future blog.
In our Citizen Schools Nutritional Cooking apprenticeship last week we made an egg scramble and caprese salad. Today we are making home-made guacamole and fajitas. I find the secret to great guacamole is lots of cilantro…
A Citizen Teacher's Experience 