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Rosalyn Williams attended Thursday night’s ‘Saving Our Students Symposium’ to learn what she could to help guide her child’s chosen career.

“She wants to be a physical therapist,” Williams, a city resident, said of her daughter Amaris. “But she wants to go the distance. She wants to get a doctorate.

“I came here tonight because they have a lot of different programs out [in the lobby] for housing and utility help, and I wanted to learn more about that,” said Williams, [shown at right with Essesnce Magazine’s Mikki Taylor]. “And, there were a couple of colleges represented and I wanted to hear some particulars about what they are offering.”

The Symposium was sponsored by the Asbury Park School District’s College and Career Readiness Institute as part of a weeklong inaugural program.

“Anytime we have access to parents we want to make sure that all the resources and agencies that we partner with are here to provide them with support,” Director of Curriculum and Instruction Sancha Gray said.

And while the event’s vendor tables included representation by the Affordable Housing Alliance, Career Connections, First Constitutional Bank, Monmouth County One Step Career Center, Kean University, First Financial Bank, and the YMCA, it featured three guest panelists from the national landscape.

Essence Magazine’s Mikki Taylor, CNN and MSNBC contributor Dr. Steve Perry, and national parenting expert Dr. Deborah Tillman spent two hours sharing their journey, answering questions and participating in a book signing.

Local community activist Tyrone Laws moderated the event, saying it “is essential to recommit, to reassess, to reaffirm and to reestablish the fact that our youth is the most important resource that we have.”

Taylor, Editor-at-Large of the magazine, began the discussion speaking of the importance of being engaged in a child’s life.

“It is the decisive moment,” she said. “We here are privileged to walk in the dreams of our ancestors and with that comes a responsibility and an accountability to the generations that follow us.”

She spoke of instilling the value of education, saying “that it is the equalizer.” Taylor said we must replace a child’s values and their ideas of what having it all means with what having what matters.

“We must parent instead of friending our children,” she said.

Perry, the principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School, questioned Asbury Park’s revitalization to the school district’s record.

“Asbury Park I’m confused,” he said. “I’m confused by a town along the ocean…that receives more money per pupil than most schools in the United States of America, and in fact more than some prisons.

“I’m confused when I look around and I see over 85 percent of your children reading and writing and doing math below grade level,” he said. “I’m confused because I do not understand how something can occur such as this without somebody being responsible for it.

“See we can’t blame poverty for everything,” Perry concluded. “We can’t blame the circumstances of our children on the fact that we are not teaching the children to read, write and compute on grade level.”

Tillman, known in part for her Lifetime show “America’s Supernanny,” spoke of how she left her job after going through seven child care providers within a three month time frame. What resulted is a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Special Education from George Washington University and studies at Oxford University. She has presented child care workshops across the country and is the author of “Stepping Out on Faith,” a guide to creating a quality child care center.

“It’s not the children that is the problem,” Tillman said. “No child asked to come here. We brought them here as parents and in bringing them here we owe it to them a responsibility to lead by example.”

To the parents she said, “Thank you for showing up. It makes no sense that children should have to go outside the home to have a role model. They should find a role model inside the home.”

Led by Supervisor Brian Stokes, the College and Career Readiness Institute [CCRI] was created this year to help guide each student in establishing future goals.

“Starting in the 8^th-grade, we are creating success files for each student,” Stokes said. “We talk to them about what they want to do when they become an adult. If they don’t have an idea of what they would like to do then the goal is to find out what they like. We do explorations into the things that they like to start helping them to have the conversation early about their future. It’s not that we don’t want them to still be kids and have an enjoyable high school experience but we also want them to, at the same time, think about their future.”

CCRI also creates internship and job shadowing opportunities via relationships with local business owners, provides community service and volunteer possibilities, and college and career fair visits.

Through continued partnerships students attend Kean University’s summer field study program and Harvard University’s High School Debate Camp.

Last week’s symposium included student-only discussions with McDonald’s franchise owner Keith Manning of North Carolina; four-time Olympian, author, motivational speaker and business executive Joetta Clark Diggs of East Orange; local community activist Tyrone Laws; and Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs M. Tia Johnson of the Washington DC metro-area.

“The students have been very receptive and extremely engaged,” Stokes said. “Our approach was to get subsets of students so it was more intimate and the speakers could have a real connection with the students.”

For Superintendent Lamont Repollet the program is but one in an array of leadership initiatives launched this year to create an environment and a culture that is thriving to help students achieve their goals.

“We call this an educational renaissance and this is just one example,” he said. “I don’t have a crystal ball but I have an imagination, I have dream, and I have been successful.”

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