On Sept. 4, the Fairfax County School Board named one of its centers the Plum Center for Lifelong Learning recognizing Del. Kenneth R. Plum as "a skilled, effective, and highly respected director of Adult and Community Education," who "developed Fairfax County’s adult education program from a small initiative to a world-class program with unparalleled breadth and depth." According to the resolution passed unanimously by the School Board, "this center will serve as a classroom campus for adult and community education in order to meet the essential lifelong learning needs of the community." Following are Plum’s remarks to the School Board.



To paraphrase a recent nominee for President of the Untied States, it is with profound gratitude and great humility that I thank you for the great honor you have bestowed upon me and my family in naming the Plum Center for Lifelong Learning. I could not be more honored.

When this great honor was mentioned to me as a possibility a few months ago, I was especially pleased to learn that I did not have to be dead for it to happen.

Just think! Now our region has the Washington Monument, the Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, George Mason University, and the Plum Center for Lifelong Learning.

Let me tell you what the name means to me. First, Plum will always have an asterisk beside it in my mind. And the asterisk will footnote the dozens of creative men and women who contributed to putting together one of the largest and certainly the best public school adult and community education program in the nation. For almost 30 wonderful years I held position titles that suggested that I was manager of the program; the truth is that I was the enabler. Time would certainly not permit me to name all those individuals with whom I worked, and I would certainly invariably leave someone out for there were so many. While my name is on the building, I read it as the leader of a team of professionals that were dedicated, innovative, entrepreneurial, and caring and who made my career with Fairfax Schools one that I truly loved.

For the remainder of the Center name, Lifelong Learning, I commend you, the School Board and the Superintendent, for agreeing to this language. "Lifelong learning" means to me that an education is not the simple acquisition of facts and information at a point in time but is the development of skills of creative thinking and problem solving that will help our students to survive in a future world about which we only know is that it will be characterized by change.

In my nearly 30 years with the system, I worked with and sometimes around many school boards and superintendents. I always said and still believe that the first responsibility of a public school adult education program and of a lifelong learning center is to assist the regular school in its mission of educating children. With my staff I always promoted the idea that teaching a child can sometimes be aided by appropriate intervention with the parents. Children from homes with parents who cannot read are highly likely to have trouble learning to read. When a language other than English is only spoken in the home, a child may be slower in learning English. Children of the unemployed and the underemployed can face special challenges. In all these instances, adult education intervention with parents may help the children learn. And adult education programs provide a return for taxpayers who are paying for the schools but may not have a student in them.

It is my hope that the Plum Center for Lifelong Learning can serve as a model for raising the educational level of adults and children and increasing support for public education in our community.

Most humbly I once again thank you.

— Kenneth R. "Ken" Plum