Published: May 01, 2008 09:08 pm         

Pilot's Steenrod weighs in on education issues

As the senior vice president and chief financial officer of Pilot Travel Centers, Mitch Steenrod is a very busy man, but he took time out of his schedule to share some of his thoughts on improving education with a group of Crossville residents Monday evening.

The meeting was sponsored by the Best Education Support Team (BEST), a community campaign to support meeting the community's responsibility to provide all children with the best education possible.

Steenrod told the group he felt education was the connection to the success of the community. He also discussed the need for higher standards for education in Tennessee and the need for more financial accountability as a way to give taxpayers a comfort level when more dollars go into education.

Because his company hires a large number of people and has a 140 percent turnover rate in the hourly employees, Steenrod added applicants for positions at Pilot Travel Centers have a broad range of levels of aptitude.

Steenrod's interest in education led him to write a guest column for the Knoxville News Sentinel in February saying the “business community has voiced its concern over the quality and abilities of the area's youth entering the work force. The area's work force has been attractive for certain industries but struggles to attract the type of commerce that carries upper-bracket wages such as technology-based manufacturing and development... We must prepare the stewards of our economic prosperity to attract and flourish in the unimaginable advancements of the global commerce engine.”

When it comes to education, Steenrod said some pockets of the country do well and some do not. Because of his company's need for a large number of employees, he is participating in an education committee as part of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce. The group is encouraging the Knox County schools to raise the bar and institute higher standards for students' education. A workforce summit was held in Knoxville that brought out some 650 who attended a panel discussion trying to garner ideas to get public input for ways to improve schools.

Unfortunately Tennessee currently scores an F on instituting higher standards for education, eliciting the comment from Steenrod, “That to me is a challenge.”

Steenrod quoted statistics of high school graduation rates with the best schools graduating 91 percent of their students, the U.S. average is 70 percent and Tennessee graduates only 63 percent. Of those graduates, 57 percent from the best schools enter college and just 39 percent of the nation and Tennessee. Within six years, 28 percent of graduates from the best high schools have earned a college degree while only 18 percent of the nation and just 17 percent of Tennessee high school graduates complete their degree.

In Tennessee, Steenrod said 24.1 percent of the population does not have a high school diploma and in some counties that number is as high as 35 percent.

“There is a lot of opportunity to get better,” explained Steenrod. He added he also serves on the board of directors of Covenant Health Care and he thinks education can be more easily fixed then health care.

With some 76 million Baby Boomers expected to retire in the next several years, the current pipeline can't fill the needs of employers. “The soon-to-be retirees are one-third of the workforce,” commented Steenrod. “In 2014, we will need 9 million more degree holders then there are today and I'm not sure how we'll fill these.

One of the reasons jobs are being outsourced overseas is because some foreign countries have the college graduates that are not available in the U.S.

Steenrod wants to see a cause and effect from funding for public education. He said the Knox County school system is instituting a new accounting system that will allow them to know the total costs down to the building level to be able to determine the financial viability of the school operations. The program could be a model for other school systems. Knox County is also trying to integrate the value added scores from standardized test into the data reports to be able to look at educational success.

Steenrod added he felt If taxpayers can be shown the results coming from their investment, they are much more likely to be comfortable with their tax money supporting the school system.

“The business community is telling the schools what they want in their employees,” said Steenrod. “Those things are communications skills, decent math skills plus confidence and problem solving skills.”

Steenrod finished up saying, “Good things are going on in Tennessee's education system.” He added that the changes in education can also help with changes that are needed to help the health care system.