By John Horner
John Horner
We must get beyond the “politics as usual” mentality in order to get important issues solved. During the past month your Chamber of Commerce has been active in two significant opportunities to interact with our elected representatives.
The first was the South County Legislative Summit organized by the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce. Our thanks to Gilroy for embracing Morgan Hill in this effort.
This event brought business people together with U.S. congressional members Zoe Lofgren and Sam Farr, California Assemblyman Luis Alejo, California Senator Bill Monning, Santa Clara County Supervisor Mike Wasserman, Gilroy Mayor Don Gauge and Morgan Hill Major Steve Tate.
Major topics included water (or the lack thereof), business vitality, job growth and how to best meet the basic needs of our residents in a time of rapidly escalating housing costs. Building lines of communication amongst the many levels of government represented and the local community is an essential part of getting things done. This summit was a great piece of the connection puzzle, and we look forward to the next one.
Shortly after that event, we went to Sacramento with the many hundreds strong California Chambers of Commerce Legislative Day.
Morgan Hill was represented by Board members Rich Firato, John Varela, Tim Hennessey, Sam Kabert and myself. During the course of the day, our Silicon Valley Chamber Coalition had meetings with 25 different elected representatives and/or their top staff. Interestingly, the most common discussion was about the urgent need to radically improve educational results in California.
A key element of the required shift is to re-imagine and reinvigorate that which was once called vocational education or career-technical education, but now is best called linked-learning opportunities.
Many of our high school students in particular need these options. In recent decades many of the practically-focused programs were dropped in the belief that our priority should be on things which show up on the SAT/ACT college entrance exams. In doing so, we lost both the ability to engage many of our students and the opportunity to prepare them for meaningful, well-paid careers. The business and education communities absolutely must rise to the challenge of implementing the education our youth need today
I’m thrilled to know that our elected representatives and fellow business people know this. Let’s get to work.
John Horner is the CEO/President of the Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce. He can be reached at (408) 779-9444 or at www.morganhill.org.
