Town Hall Mtg in Colorado Springs 12/3 on Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness

Town Hall Meeting in Colorado Springs Wednesday, Dec. 3 on Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness

The Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Department of Higher Education will jointly host a town hall meeting in Colorado Springs on Wednesday, Dec. 3 as part of the ongoing effort to establish a description of “postsecondary and workforce readiness.”

The meeting will be held from 5 – 7 p.m. at the El Pomar Foundation’s Penrose House (1661 Mesa Ave.) in Colorado Springs.

Educators, students, parents, business and community members and interested citizens are invited to the meeting, which will be facilitated by David Skaggs, Executive Director of the Department of Higher Education and Dwight Jones, Commissioner for the Colorado Department of Education.

The gathering in Colorado Springs will be the second of 10 statewide meetings planned to solicit a broad spectrum of community thinking. The work was launched by Senate Bill 08-212, the “Preschool to Postsecondary Education Alignment Act” also known as the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids (CAP4K).

The town hall forums will focus on such questions as:

• What do students need to be workforce ready?

• What do students need to be postsecondary ready?

• Are there special considerations for the workforce or higher education in your region of the state?

S.B. 08-212 requires that the Colorado State Board of Education and the Colorado Commission on Higher Education adopt a description of “postsecondary and workforce readiness” by Dec. 15, 2009.

Further, S.B. 08-212 seeks to establish a seamless pathway from preschool into college or the workplace. Essential to that pathway is an understanding of what it means to be ready for education or the workforce after high school and a plan to ensure that students take the necessary courses and master the content to do so.

“If Colorado successfully implements this legislation, we will lead the nation in preparing our children to be successful and competitive in the global economy,” said Commissioner of Education Dwight D. Jones and Department of Higher Education Executive Director David Skaggs in a joint letter asking community leaders to spread the word about the meetings and their significance.

The description of postsecondary and workforce readiness will provide a bookend to a description of “school readiness” due to be adopted by the Colorado State Board of Education in December, 2008.

These descriptions of school readiness and postsecondary and workforce readiness will guide the final selection of new statewide model content standards, which are being revised for the first time since they were adopted 13 years ago.

Similar community meetings are scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 27, in the Denver Metro Area (location is to be announced), Thursday, Feb. 12, in Fort Collins at the Colorado State University’s Lory Student Center (4—6 p.m.) and Wednesday, March 4, in Grand Junction at the DoubleTree Hotel.

Meetings are also tentatively planned for 2009 on Tuesday, March 17, in Alamosa; Thursday, April 16, in Pueblo; Wednesday, April 22, in Sterling; Thursday, May 14, in Glenwood Springs; and Tuesday, May 19, in Durango. Precise locations and times are to be announced.

For more information, contact Mark Stevens, 303-866-3898, or Megan McDermott, 303-866-2334, in the CDE Office of Communications, or John Karakoulakis, 303-866-4742, at the Department of Higher Education. To sign up for the CDE e-mail news service, please visit http://www.cde.state.co.us/Communications/index.html.

# # #

Colorado Department of Education – Communications Office
201 East Colfax Ave.
Room 103
Denver, CO 80203
Phone: 303-866-3898
Fax: 303-866-6938