IT'S YOUR FUTURE: Group wants you to go to College

When a melding of minds meets monthly a reoccurring question can frequently be heard.

“Anything else for the good of the cause,” Sue Hess, vice chairwoman of the Imperial County P-16 Council, asked those gathered at a meeting Tuesday in El Centro.

“The cause” for the P-16 Council is to promote a college-going culture in Imperial County, where only about 11 percent of residents have attained bachelor’s degrees and a 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report estimates only about 13.2 percent of locals have graduated from a four-year college. “It exists to increase the opportunities for students to be better prepared for college,” Anne Mallory, P-16 Council chairwoman and county education superintendent, said.

What is P-16?

“The Imperial Valley P-16 Council is a preschool through higher education (grade 16) community collaborative promoting a college-going culture,” according to the group’s soon-to-be revised Web site, collegeisnext.com The P-16 Council, as it is known locally, tries to increase student eligibility, admittance and attendance in order to help students’ foster more post-secondary options in higher education and the workforce.

“The cause” of the P-16 Council, Hess said, is “that we are a community partnership of education and business that promotes a culture of educational achievement from pre-school through college.”

“I don’t see it as the council’s job to educate kids or provide jobs but its understanding how we all fit together and how we need to support each other,” she said.

“P-16 is kind of the overarching umbrella,” ICOE’s coordinator of higher education, Denise Cabanilla, said. “We work with the business community work force but also with our adminis-trators, faculty and counselors.

“(It’s) to make sure that we’re aware of resources and make sure that we’re utilizing them to make sure that our students pursue and succeed in higher education,” she said.

“Our idea is that we want our students to have a college-bound focus so that they have the opportunity to do anything,” Hess said. “The kids here need high goals and if they don’t have high goals they’ll have no goals. It is our role as a community to really support a culture of achievement.”

Who is part of P-16?

As the P-16 Council has been in existence in one form or another for more than 10 years, Mallory said, before the separate business and education councils merged about two years ago out of a natural next step.

For more on the Imperial Valley P-16 Council

visit its Web site at www.collegeisnext.com or on Facebook.

“I think it merged because many of the people who were part of the business council were on P-16 and they decided the conversations (in both groups’ meetings) were pertinent,” she said. “I think it’s been good to have them merged. The members of the business community who are part of P-16 truly want to do their part to support schools,” Mallory said.

Because of this, the council has five school superintendents representing small schools, high schools and unified school districts, the president of Imperial Valley College, the dean of San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus, five local business leaders, two representatives from the Imperial County Partnership for Higher Education and the county superintendent as members.

In addition, representatives from the Imperial County Workforce Development, the Imperial Valley Regional Occupational Program, Boys & Girls Clubs of Imperial Valley, First 5 California, Rabobank, the Imperial Irrigation District and others also attend meetings.

What does P-16 do?

“Creating synergy” is the best way to describe what P16 does, Cabanilla said.

“It’s a lot of strategizing on how to promote a college- going culture in the county so that we have a skilled work force,” she said.

“The P-16 Council is data-driven. We look at trends and current data to help drive the efforts at the school level so that we’re providing students access to more rigorous course work that will prepare them to succeed in college,” Cabanilla said. “I think part of it is looking at it and seeing where we are and how we can improve it,” Mallory said.

“I think that we’re working diligently to make sure that kids and their parents understand what it takes to go to college and discuss the cost of going to college and plant those seeds early,” she said.

What comes out of P-16?

The coordinating efforts that stem from P-16 meetings lead to various programs being im-plemented countywide. “There’s always been groups that come to colleges but P-16 is really the group that brought them together as one Higher Education Week,” Hess said.

Higher Education Weeks I and II are really just one example of countywide programs, which have either been developed or supported by the P-16 Council, Cabanilla said, including programs like GEAR UP, PULSE, summer math academies, College Begins in Kindergarten, the Imperial Valley University Partnership and others.

From some of these programs stems professional development for teachers and counselors in order to continue to help students, Cabanilla said.

“Some of the other things that we look at are P-16 alignment, looking at the transition of students from grade level to grade level,” she said. “Always a piece that is important is (college-going) awareness for students, parents, faculty and staff at the school level.”

What does P-16 try to accomplish?

Moreover, P-16’s challenge is “to ensure that students receive a rigorous curriculum and have the opportunities to make choices,” Mallory said.

“I think that we want all children to be able to have those choices and, whether or not they go to college, if they take the more rigorous classes in high school they will be eligible to apply and I think that’s very valuable,” she said.

“It takes a community to pull together and figure out how we serve every single child the way that we can,” Mallory said. “It’s a lot of effort but it’s a very worthwhile effort.”