By Fritz Edelstein
January 10, 2005

The United States Conference of Mayors has received a three-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to establish an ongoing dialogue among the nation's mayors through establishing an annual Mayors' National Education Summit. The grant is entitled Improving America's Schools: The Critical Importance of Mayoral Involvement. The topic for the first summit being planned for fall 2005 is Changing the American High School.

Each Summit provides the single opportunity for a large number of mayors to sit down and talk at length solely on the issue of education in America and their role to make sure there is a quality education for every child. Because mayors realize that education is a critical component in the economic development and future of each city, addressing the issues involved in and needed to change high schools is of the utmost importance and the rationale behind the theme for the first summit. The Conference has existing policy in support of changing high schools to meet the needs of students and cities for the 21st century. The last national mayors' education summit was held in 2003 and was funded by The Broad Foundation. The intent of this grant is to make a summit an annual occurrence.

The Conference will not only be creating an annual mayors' education summit but also conducting research and collecting practical information that will enhance both the Summits and the mayoral role in improving education in public schools in their cities. Each activity of the grant has been judiciously shaped so it has significant value to mayors and will greatly add to the mayors' ability to be a leader engaged in education improvement.

An important product of this project will be a template for mayoral leadership and involvement in education. It is intended to provide guidance, information and examples of best practices to mayors and their staff as they increase their level of leadership and involvement in local education issues and problems, and possibly change the working relationships between education, workforce development and social services. The template is to be a resource and organizing tool for increasing mayoral leadership and involvement. A third piece of the grant is compiling information on best practices of mayoral involvement specifically focused on the topic of each Summit. The first set of best practices to be compiled will be finding the best examples of mayoral involvement and leadership in changing high schools in their city. Also, the Conference will be writing up lessons learned during each year to assist in the next year's activities and continuing to update the template.

The goal and objective of this work is to increase mayoral involvement and leadership in education in cities; increase mayoral participation in the national discussion on education improvement; expand mayoral awareness of strategies they can employ; and provide additional information to mayors to help make decisive decisions on education and related policy issues that improve the quality of life in their city, especially for children and families, and improve the quality of education in the schools including increasing achievement and graduation rates for African American and Hispanic students.

For additional information about the grant, contact Fritz Edelstein at fritz@usmayors.org.