How's this for a mayoral campaign theme? "Time for Cleveland to invest in our brains, not just our buildings."
Jane Campbell is using Empowerment Zone funds to pilot "CLIMB", a computer/Internet skills certification and financial literacy program that aims to get low-income adults back on the education ladder. Her office has spent two years devising the CLIMB strategy in cooperation with Tri-C, the Cleveland Housing Network, community technology centers and IBM. The Mayor wants to take it citywide and include more than 30,000 people.
Meanwhile, Frank Jackson has called for making Cleveland "a place where the first two years of college education is free".
Both proposals directly address the most important cause of Cleveland's chronic poverty and economic stagnation -- the city's very low level of educational attainment. (That's Census gobbledegook for too few college graduates and too many people without high school degrees.)
But either program would cost a lot of money. The projected price tag for 30,000 people to participate in CLIMB is more than $20 million. We don't have any details of Jackson's proposal, but sending (let's say) 10,000 people to Tri-C for two years would cost something like $30 million.
Which raises the question: If we really want the 21st-century workforce everybody says we want, isn't it about time for the city (or region) to figure out how to raise the money for serious, strategic adult education investments like Campbell and Jackson are proposing? Is that as important as financing a convention center?
There's one of my questions for the candidates who "Meet the Bloggers".