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Week of Thursday, September 4, 2003
New Willow Run By DAVE
MELCHIOR Fifty days into his tenure as superintendent of the Willow Run Community Schools, Dr. Douglas Benit sees a lot of promise, a lot of challenges and the people - students, staff and community members - who can raise the educational bar of the district. In an interview last week about his thoughts on the district at the beginning of his first school year as its chief executive, Benit was specific about his goals for the district, and he was specific about the route to those goals. He talks about a whole host of issues, ideas and opportunities, but he brings them back to his central theme: Education. His recipe is a combination of goal-setting, positive thinking and activity and promotion. "You have to be out there," he said. "That’s your business. You’re not making widgets; your making citizens, educated productive citizens. "We have to raise our expectations, push everyone to expect more out of our children." Willow Run, Benit said, does a lot of things right, offers a lot of innovative programs and its students generally perform on a par with or better than students in other districts, but the word just doesn’t get out. "Educators don’t tend to toot their own horn, and they need to," he said. "They have come up with a lot of innovative programs, but they never told anyone about it. "Get out in the streets and let people know about your school." Coupled with a concerted effort to emphasize the district’s positives, Benit also said the administration and staff are going to improve the product: education. He characterized the current school year, which began this week, as one of analysis, evaluation, planning and initiating activities and changes that will enhance the educational programs. Ultimately, he said, he wants Willow Run students to achieve at a level that will allow them to compete for scholarships and admission to premiere colleges and universities. Willow Run students need to be able to get scholarships to a Harvard or a Yale if that’s where they choose to go, and they need to know they can do that, he said. "I expect to raise our level to that level," he said. At the same time, he said his goal is to improve the programs that prepare students who do not intend to go to college for a well-paying career in a technical field. "We need to look at how we can address the needs of students who want to get into the work force," Benit said. Willow Run teachers and administrators need to work with business leaders to meet their needs and also to find programs that work in the technical training arena. As an example, he cited auto technology jobs that can pay as high as $85,000 annually. Higher student achievement is the key to everything else, said Benit. "You can market a whole lot of stuff, but you have to put out a good product," said Benit. Despite financial constraints, Benit believes that can be done. For one thing, he is optimistic that the enrollment decline Willow Run has been experiencing for the past few years may have reached an end. He said preliminary figures indicate there might be an increase this year. And while that is not the only factor in solving the district’s financial difficulties, it will help immensely, since state aid is based in large part on the number of students in a district. The other way to deal with tight money is simply to be more frugal, Benit said, and he wants to enlist all of the employees, teachers and support staff, in an effort to make sure that the district’s resources are used wisely. "We’re going to take a very analytical approach," said Benit. "We’ll be breaking it down into the components, go through a lot more financial analysis, tightening our accountability in the financial area." And then there’s the image. Benit said he is aware of people’s concerns about Willow Run, but he believes a lot of the negative opinions are unfounded, or at the least, outdated. He said the effort to change the opinions is going to involve everything from improving sportsmanship among student athletes to inviting members of the community into the schools to publicizing district and student success stories. The biggest single thing on the list of programs to promote the schools is actually a huge one. The district has started planning for a three-day 60th Anniversary celebration of the founding of Willow Run as a one room school during World War II. A committee already is meeting to plan the event. "I was reading about Willow Run, and I thought, ‘Man, we have so much history that no one is talking about.’" Benit said the anniversary will highlight the district’s role in the community and the roles the community played in the union, the civil rights and the women’s movement. "What I want out of this thing is for the kids to understand the heartland of America; that’s us." |
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