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Schools, Business and Our Future





Cool video, huh?

It raises an interesting point – computer programming lessons spur thoughts and ideas. Technology is moving so fast, our economy depends on it and the workforce needs to know how to keep up. Keeping up starts with our schools, which is where your future workforce is trained.

We help connect the business and education communities in ways that prepare for the future. At our annual Economic Forecast breakfast last November, Avista’s Chief Economist – Dr. Grant Forsyth – opined that our current education system isn’t preparing kids for our current economy.

We continue to work with business leaders and educators to change that through our Teaching the Teachers program, the Work 101 program, the establishing of the Riverpoint Academy and Spokane Valley Tech, partnering with Spokane Public Schools on career fairs, and a lot more. Changing the way our education system prepares kids also starts in Olympia. In January, 17 people from our 87-person delegation were from the education sector.

We also facilitate a K-12 roundtable where members of the business and education communities meet to talk about how to best prepare today’s kids. Our Higher Education Leadership Group (HELG) also tackles education issues at the higher education level. The leaders of our area colleges and universities make up HELG and work together to promote and enhance higher education in our region.

What do you think? Does this video get it right, in that more computer programming classes are needed in our schools?

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