Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack shared her plans to improve Iowa’s educational system when she spoke at Iowa State Tuesday afternoon. In her speech titled “A Vision for Literacy and Education for the State of Iowa,” which she gave in the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union to about 100 people, Vilsack detailed her plans for a new education proposal. She said the proposal consists of two major sectors: a statewide literacy initiative and a new teacher compensation program. She said her educational background as a teacher has spurred her efforts to improve the quality of both literacy and teacher relations in Iowa. “I grew up in what I would consider to be a `literacy’ community,” Vilsack said. “All of the people took responsibility for the fact that the children were reading. One of my goals is to help rebuild this sense of community.” Spending more than a year researching literacy projects from all over the country, Vilsack created the program “Iowa Stories 2000” to fulfill her proposal. The program will include a manual for literacy communities, of which Ames is one of the pilots, and the formation of an advisory committee, a media blitz campaign and several fund-raising efforts. The media blitz will consist of several broadcast public-service announcements with the message: “Please read to a child, it may be the best part of your day.” Vilsack said the more policy-oriented side of “Iowa Stories 2000” focuses on plans to help revise the teacher compensation program. Vilsack said three main problems face Iowa’s educational system now – fewer people going into teaching, a higher rate of teachers leaving after only one year in the profession and the potential loss of up to 40 percent of Iowa’s current teachers as they qualify for retirement during the next three years. “We are going into a real teacher shortage in the state of Iowa,” Vilsack said. “Other states are aggressively recruiting teachers from here. States such as Texas and California are attracting our first-year teachers with large signing bonuses and better benefits.” Teacher’s wages need to change more from year to year, she said. Vilsack pointed out that the starting wage of Iowa teachers is ranked 35th in the nation. She also said teachers are not being properly rewarded for taking leadership roles within their schools and they need more encouragement to develop their careers with further education. Increased pay for higher student achievement and plans to offer further education to teachers in the form of classes are ideas Vilsack said have been proven to improve teacher-student relations. “It would be good to start thinking about how we can implement this,” Vilsack said. “Right now we are at a competitive disadvantage with other states when we limit teacher compensation.” Vilsack said a potential downfall of the plans for the “Iowa Stories 2000” project are that no one is sure how much it is going to cost – it could cost as much as $100 million to get these programs fully up and running. She said the problem is compounded because organizers haven’t found a way to fund the projects. Despite some loop holes in the upcoming programs, Vilsack said her volunteer efforts will continue as she travels around the state promoting her ideas and speaking publicly on the topic of education.