Excellent opportunity for a sponsor

By: JournalNow Staff | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: July 16, 2011

Memo to North Carolina's major foundations and businesses: A very prestigious academic-enrichment program is on the brink of closing, but for less than a $1 million sponsorship, you could rescue it and, if you negotiated wisely, probably have your name attached to it.

The Governor's School, which for almost a half-century has sent some of North Carolina's brightest high-school students to Salem College in Winston-Salem and Meredith College in Raleigh for academic enrichment, will not be held next summer unless $850,000 in sponsorship money can be found.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson has rightfully decided that the program, which lost all of its funding for next summer and beyond, will not be operated on a fee-per-pupil basis. The legislature, in wrongly stripping the program's funding, had offered that wrong-headed option. But the school was designed to offer North Carolina's very best high-school students a summer of extra learning. Nothing in the program's history indicates it was only to be available to students whose families could afford what would be the $2,100 cost of attending.

So here is the deal that we suggest: North Carolina has a great many corporations that rely on a well-educated workforce, that hire from the very best graduates of our public and private universities. It could introduce itself to, and get a leg up on attracting, the very best and brightest employees of the future with a relatively small subsidy today.

Then there's the positive publicity. We can see notices in every community paper in North Carolina: Johnny Jones, top student at Nearby High, will attend the Governor's School, presented by XYZ Corp., this summer at Salem College in Winston-Salem. And then there's the positive exposure the business would get when Gov. Bev Perdue and legislative leaders hold a joint news conference to announce that a grand state institution, the Governor's School, has been rescued by such a fine North Carolina corporate citizen.

Sounds like a public-relations bonanza at a bargain price. Anyone interested?