City, schools ignore each other and Lexington’s most valuable asset: Our kids.

I was recently invited to a group discussion on the state of Lexington’s education. This discussion, along with many other discussions that occurred in Lexington, culminated in the Lexington’s Path to Shared Purpose report, which describes a new agenda for our education and community. Commissioned by the United Way of the Bluegrass, the report sought to provide an agenda for Lexington to leverage its local capital in order to push through our community’s growth stage. After reading the report and sharing some initial thoughts with other community members, I find it disheartening that education is typically left out of our city-wide 2018 Comprehensive Plan as we target the next 20 years of our development.

You would think that as expansive as Lexington’s agenda for growth is, we as citizens would also invest as much effort into building up our public education system. Any mention of education in our Comprehensive Plan is in reference to infill development or higher education; essentially, the public is educated on why growth is good. Students, it seems, are only valued after they’re able to pass their academic assessments and the tedious process of applying and being accepted into college. They’re then finally accepted into the class of full citizenship, where their ideas, concerns, and opinions on how we grow as a city become relevant.

There’s a large disconnect between how the city builds and how we prepare students to inherit it. Not to mention the fact that city and Fayette County school board planning completely ignores the voices of our youth. Our focus on building as a city doesn’t factor in their opinions or leave space for what they want. It’s only when news breaks about failing schools, or when a chain of emotional trauma and stress results in youth violence, do we see them. Even then, they’re only seen and not heard! There’s an overshadowing of their voices by a cumulus cloud of progress, by community initiatives, by the public posturing of adults whose candor truly reflects their dismissive attitudes towards these youth, and by community members who treat them as public nuisances instead of our most valuable resource.

In order to move beyond this posturing, we need a new agenda! Unlike the two separate development plans continually being updated by the city and the school board from two opposite ends of the spectrum, we need to successfully join the opposite poles of growth by directly identifying our community’s shared capital —the too often overlooked and unheard YOUTH. We need to align all our efforts under a common agenda that reflects the needs of all our community members, including those of youth and communities of color.

Lexington’s Path to Shared Purpose could serve as a backbone to rally around our youth in growing our city. The agenda outlined in the report can provide meat and substance to the efforts and work done by Mayor Gordon’s Commision on Racial Justice and Equality, and provide guidance on how we can achieve its Education and Economic Opportunity Sub-committee’s recommendations to “...Codify and ensure a collaborative system of educating children and strengthening families, fully utilizing current partnerships, programs, and other community resources.” The report can serve the purpose of aligning the school board’s plans into a more comprehensive city-wide plan that truly aspires to build a city our children can proudly inherit in 20 years.

In all honesty, Lexington is stuck in its ways and stagnating when it comes to true progress. We’re in our comfort zone of a scripted narrative of progress. But as the report intuits, Lexington needs more collaboration and less coordination. The only true progress, beyond our collective stagnated narrative, is to put the mic in the hands of our youth and to listen to what kind of city THEY want to live in in the next 20 years. We must ensure they can build the leadership and resources necessary to collaborate with each other in implementing their vision.

This would require a true collaborative initiative between the city of Lexington and Fayette County Board of Education in developing a joint comprehensive plan. One that genuinely includes the voices and perspectives of our youth and their families, in how they’re being educated and prepared for the future. This requires collaborating at higher levels beyond labeling our youth as public nuisances, or their parents as broken households.

Most of all, we need a shared purpose, a collaborative effort between our city, the school board, and community members which can leverage our local capital to afford our youth—EVERY student—with the opportunities they deserve.

David Laurenvil is a local entrepreneur that currently serves as a Co-Director of Kids MakeIt Institute, a 21st Century educational institution focused on exposing at-risk youth to Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) skills and careers.

This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 9:35 AM.