Austin Aspires is a new non-profit that has grown out of the Vision 2020 Education Leaders committee with this vision: “Austin will be recognized as a leader in education with a culture of educational excellence, cradle to career, embraced in every aspect of our community.”

Jennifer Lawhead is the organization’s executive director and she began work in July. She has been in a research mode about current thinking in education and best practices over the last few months — discovering both what other communities are doing to improve education outcomes for their kids and what folks in Austin are saying about education.

She recently shared some thoughts about the conversation that Austin Aspires has started, informed by input from many different individuals from inside the education system as well as community groups, parents, grandparents, students and residents.

In Austin, we know that our kids benefit from experiences outside the classroom including extracurricular programs, youth sports, summer camps, etc. Many people specifically commented on the excellent music opportunities at all levels in Austin. There is also a desire to make sure that all kids are able to reap these benefits which means overcoming barriers of culture, language, poverty and transportation.

Newcomers to Austin shared how valuable early childhood programs — including those at Community Education and the Austin Public Library — were to help them connect to other parents and families. Again, families that benefitted from such programs expressed a desire that they be accessible to all children and families in the community.

Parents from all income levels and backgrounds want their children to be challenged academically; recognizing appropriately challenging material feeds engagement and, ultimately, success. There is a recognition that our kids need opportunities to find a passion in life and that involves being exposed to many different experiences. This extends to exposing students to all kinds of careers including skilled trades.

There is also a lot of conversation around mentoring. People comment it is important for kids to have healthy and positive relationships with adults outside of their families. Austin offers some great mentoring programs through the faith communities, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and 4-H. Expanding these offerings to include more kids and across many different ages is desired.

I was happy to hear from Jennifer that much of what she is hearing is consistent with all the other vision areas of Vision 2020—we have great assets in education and we want to leverage them for even better results. I believe with the efforts of Jennifer and the Austin Aspires board, we will see that happening in Austin.

If you have thoughts about the education system in our community and what our kids need to succeed in the world, Austin Aspires would love to hear from you. Contact Jennifer at lawhead@austinaspires.org or 507-437-0920 for more information.