By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
Don Phipps tried the hard, nonpartisan sell, and he won applause.
Phipps, superintendent of Beaufort County Schools, rattled off a long succession of figures Wednesday night in his opening remarks to the Beaufort County Democratic Women.
It soon became apparent that the schools chief’s purpose in reporting the statistics was to build a case for enhancing the system’s investment in new technology.
Phipps, who as a doctoral candidate conducted his own research, cited facts mined from the Internet as he emphasized the need to keep American youth competitive on a global scale.
“China will soon become the No. 1 English-speaking country in the world,” he pointed out.
If one could take all of the jobs in the United States and ship them to China, the world’s most-populous country still would have a labor shortage, Phipps told around 25 listeners.
Shifting to his major theme of technological advancements as the key to successful competition in the marketplace, he added that the top-10 jobs in demand today did not exist in 2004, a nod to the expansion of information-technology jobs and their effects on business.
“There is no question that cell-phone technology and other things like that have put a computer literally in the palm of a person’s hand,” Phipps stated.
He said that one of the great challenges facing schools today is that, in many ways, 21st-century education looks much as it did when his audience was in school.
(Most of the Democratic Women’s audience tends to be over 50.)
“We have to embrace technology,” Phipps said.
Turning to specifics, Phipps declared his support for building on professional-development options that aid in teacher retention.
In 1997, it was thought that teachers who made it past their seventh year in the profession had a chance of staying in the field, he said; today, he continued, the “wall” is the three-year mark.
Phipps also advocated for identifying potential high-school dropouts before they reach the second grade. If teachers and administrators can turn around at-risk children before it’s too late, “then we’ve done our job,” he said.
He said the system must reach out to two groups: exceptional children, or those with learning disabilities or other special needs, and academically gifted children.
“So, we have to hit both ends of the continuum and in the middle,” he asserted.
He said a county commissioner, whom he didn’t name, had asked him to reveal the biggest issue he faces as superintendent.
Phipps said he told the commissioner that the system’s biggest challenge is “protecting the institutional day and time.”
He indicated that he wants to see teachers up, engaged and working with students when he walks through schools, and that he wants to limit distractions that steal time during the school day.
Phipps said he met with principals Wednesday to discuss that very issue.
“We also have to be accountable for the funds that we receive,” he said, winning an “amen” from Beaufort County Commissioner Ed Booth, who was seated in the audience.
(The school system is partly funded by the county, and conflicts over schools funding have been bones of contention with the commissioners.)
Phipps prescribed transparency in how the system spends money.
Late in his speech, Phipps said he wants to start an initiative through which more mentors can get into schools to work one-on-one with students.
During the question-and-answer portion of the meeting, Florence Lodge, an officer in the Democratic Women, queried Phipps about schools’ Black History Month programs, suggesting that all schools should observe the month and that some of them haven’t in the past.
Phipps said he had attended Black History Month programs at some local schools, and added that he hopes black history will be taught in all schools as a part of American history.
Lodge said she hoped that would be the case.