The focus group was “education,” but members found themselves talking about food.

Paul G. Pittman Jr., executive director of Head Start of Washington County, pointed out that some students receive two of their three meals a day from the school system and questioned whether those students had access to food on nonschool days.

“He said, ‘I came very quickly to learn that you feed them too much on Friday and too much on Monday because they didn’t eat on the weekend,’” United Way of Washington County Executive Director Leah Gayman recalled.

For Gayman, who is a parent, the statement was at once eye-opening and heartbreaking. And in the big-picture approach of the Strategic Community Impact Plan, it could not be ignored.

The Strategic Community Impact Plan, or SCIP, is a long-range, strategic plan to improve the quality of life in Washington County, developed by more than 200 volunteers over the past two years. It includes 44 goals in 11 focus areas, along with strategies for each.

Education

The education focus group’s conversation about food led to a recommendation to develop partnerships to offer nutrition programs when school is out of session. It was one of the strategies toward reaching a goal of providing all students with access to social and emotional supports, and physical- and mental-health services.

That was one of nine education-related goals in the plan — more than any other focus area.

The education goals “span the spectrum, from ready to learn to adult literacy,” said education focus group member Donna Hanlin, who is assistant superintendent for curriculum, school administration and improvement for Washington County Public Schools.

Many of the education goals in SCIP are already major focuses for the school system, Hanlin said, but their inclusion in the plan could open the door for more assistance from outside agencies, she said.

“Once this gets launched, I’m sure that there will be a lot more community collaboration to look at, ‘How can we accomplish some of these things?’” Hanlin said.

The plan encourages community organizations to partner with the school system to embed community programs and resources within schools, and suggests the development of a structured weekend and summer program leveraging the community’s many cultural, arts and educational assets.

It also calls for outreach to parents to encourage them to “be their child’s first teacher” in the preschool years and to be committed participants throughout their children’s education.

Washington County’s current four-year high school graduation rate is 89.8 percent, Hanlin said. The rate of enrollment in college for 2010 was 58.9 percent, she said.

The SCIP sets a goal to increase the high school graduation rate 1 percent each year, with a long-term vision of 100 percent, and to have at least 75 percent of high school graduates enroll in full-time, postsecondary educational opportunities.

In the next decade, nearly eight in 10 job openings in the U.S. will require postsecondary education or training, the SCIP report says.

Jobs and economic development

The SCIP focus group for jobs and economic development picked only one goal: to create jobs through the development and expansion of small business and entrepreneurship. Their recommended strategy is to “create a Small Business and Entrepreneurial Resource Center to focus strategically on programs and services, marketing and outreach, and organization integration.”

The focus group felt that other areas of economic development were already being addressed, while this was an area that needed improvement, said focus group member Robin L. Ferree, deputy director of the Hagerstown-Washington County Economic Development Commission.

The SCIP report quotes a statistic from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that 60 percent to 80 percent of new jobs come from small businesses.

“The group felt the best strategy was to recommend a Small Business and Entrepreneurial Resource Center to coordinate and support the community’s many service providers and ensure that clients receive the available support they need,” Ferree wrote in an email. “The group also felt that if the center is a private, nonprofit organization, it could attract available funding from private foundations, as well as government grants.”

The focus group issued a “request of interest” to find out if any nonprofit organizations in the community were interested in taking on the role, Ferree said.

“While no formal responses were received, it did generate interest from a few organizations,” he said.

Transportation

The transportation focus group, too, arrived at only one goal. That goal was to create a countywide transportation database system to improve and coordinate medical transportation.

The group ruled out goals related to the “bricks and mortar” aspect of transportation — building and enhancing roads and bridges — and focused instead on the “human services” side of transportation, said focus group member David Jordan, executive director of the Washington County Community Action Council.

That led the focus group to the topic of nonemergency medical transportation, such as rides to doctors appointments and dialysis treatments.

While Washington County offers a ride-assist program that provides vouchers for taxi or sedan rides for those purposes, passengers in remote areas cannot always find a transportation provider that serves their area, Jordan said.

Agencies such as the CAC and the Washington County Health Department sometimes get calls from people seeking help with rides to appointments, but they have no way of following up to see if the person was successful in finding a ride, said Bradley N. Sell, director of the Community Foundation of Washington County.

“Anecdotally, everyone was saying that medical transportation is really a problem, but we couldn’t measure it,” Sell said. “The goal then became, ‘How do we quantify it?’”

A goal to measure a problem might seem like a “soft goal,” Gayman said, but it is an essential first step to getting grant funding to address the issue.

“In the service world, what gets measured gets done,” she said.

The SCIP plan recommends using an Internet-based software program called Service Point, already in use by many service providers, to track requests for help with medical transportation.

Learn more about Washington County’s Strategic Community Impact Plan at www.strategicwashingtoncounty.org.

 

SCIP Goals for People:

 

Education:

• Within five years, all students entering kindergarten will be fully ready to learn based on standards set by the Maryland Model for School Readiness.

• To help reduce learning loss, within three years, school-aged children will have access to extended school year, summer and weekend learning opportunities, regardless of socioeconomic situation.

• Increase graduation rate 1 percent each year with a long-term vision of 100 percent of students graduating school each year.

• Increase percentages of adults who have a high school diploma or its equivalent by 5 percent in the next five years.

• Each year, at least 75 percent of county high school graduates will enroll in full-time postsecondary educational opportunities.

• Within five years, increase the percentage of adults with associate and bachelor’s degrees to meet or exceed the percentage in Maryland as measured by census indicators.

• All students will have access to social and emotional supports, and physical- and mental-health services.

• Within five years, increase the number of adults who enroll in and complete a formal career training program, such as licensing apprenticeship, certification and degree programs.

• Promote full adult literacy to address the literacy needs of adult English language learners, adults with learning disabilities and others who are challenged by a lack of literacy skills.

Jobs and economic well-being:

• Create jobs through the development and expansion of small business and entrepreneurship.

Transportation:

• Create a countywide transportation database system to improve and coordinate medical transportation.