Episode 38 Keith Burton -”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Keith Burton, Chief Academic Officer for Caddo Parish Public Schools, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:

 

1:00 1. Keith, you are the Chief Academic Officer for Caddo Parish Public Schools. I believe you are a 31 year veteran of Caddo schools. Prior to serving as Chief Academic Officer, among other things, you served as the principal of Fairfield Elementary School, South Highlands and Caddo Middle Magnet.

 

I want to cover a number of different programs with you today.  Let’s start here.

 

You serve on the Advisory Council of Volunteers of America’s Community in Schools. Or CIS as many people know it.

 

I pulled this from VOA’s website:

 

“In Caddo Parish, approximately 70 percent of students live in poverty. A licensed partnership between Volunteers of America North Louisiana and Communities In Schools, the largest and most effective dropout prevention organization, is aimed at surrounding these students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life.”

 

Talk to me if you could about CIS, some of the programs it offers and why it is so important that we have organizations like it in our schools.

 

9:22 2. For the moneyed community of Caddo Parish that may not understand what life looks like at some of our schools or in some of the homes or neighborhoods of some of our students, can you describe it for us?

 

12:27 3. You are part of Community Foundation’s Early Childhood Education Caddo Fund Initiative Steering Committee. In short, this initiative seeks to create more equity among our Caddo Parish students by providing access for all our students to quality childcare and early education.

 

I recently had Clay Walker on as a guest who said that when 14 year olds come to him it’s too late.

 

In your opinion, programmatically, what are some things we can do for our 6-13 year olds that level the playing field in ways similar to the incredible work you have done for 0-5 year olds with Community Foundation’s Early Start Initiative?

 

21:10 4. Like some of our community’s other more complex issues, I fully realize that there is no one magic bullet that will quickly propel Caddo Parish to be one of the highest-ranked public school systems in the country.

 

But if money were no issue, programmatically what would be other major gamechangers to our system and students, like CIS and Community Foundation’s Early Start Initiative?

 

25:17 5. What are some areas that are more challenging today in Caddo Parish Public Schools than they have been at other times during your 31 year career?

 

28:22 6. What are some areas that are better today than they have been at other times during your 31 year career?

 

34:01 7. As I look around, one of our biggest challenges as a community is that we lose a lot of our best and brightest. From your perspective, what can we do as a community to do a better job of holding on more in the future to some of our best and brightest?