Listen to local elected officials long enough and you’ll hear a similar refrain.

For a number of people, that goes something like this: “We need more Rowan County natives to move back here after college graduation and others to stay here after high school graduation.”

While that goal is good for stimulating population growth and, potentially, the local economy, too, it may not be the right one for students. There’s value in broadened horizons and experiencing different cultures and communities.

Perhaps one stated goal among public officials hoping to stimulate growth should be to bring back early or mid-career Rowan natives. The truth is many young adults already are eager to explore new places if they’ve lived in Rowan County most or all of their lives.

Maybe we should aim for a refrain that’s something like, “Once college and high school graduates from Rowan County have the opportunity to gain work experience and cultural experiences elsewhere, we want to lure them back here.”

That slight shift also will produce better results in our community’s collective quest to become a better version of what we already are.

I’ve still got much to learn, but consider my experience as an example. 

Whether to get away from family, move back to a state where Bergeron is more easily pronounced, attend a school with a high-achieving football team that was fun to watch or simply have new experiences, I chose to attend Louisiana State University after graduation from a rural Alabama high school. I had briefly considered attending a nearby college with an enrollment of between 7,000 and 8,000 students. I would have received a nice scholarship to attend and likely would have graduated with debt. I’d be close to family, too.

But I chose to attend the much larger LSU instead, and the good news is that I graduated without any student loan debt and close to another set of family.

It was the right choice.

After graduation, I’d get my first reporter job in Natchez, Mississippi, a beautiful small town with a rich and thorny history. My second was in Selma, Alabama, well known for its role in the civil rights movement. And after working as a reporter in Salisbury for three years, I’d move to Kentucky’s state capital, Frankfort, to be managing editor at the newspaper there before returning to Salisbury to be editor here.

Those are in addition to the places in which I was fortunate to live and visit because of my dad’s service in the U.S. Army. I was born on Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville, moved around too many times to count on two hands. Now, I’m back in the only state I can reasonably call home.

The various cities in which I’ve lived and my experiences within them have provided a diverse set of encounters from which to draw when writing, reporting and editing news stories.

The same idea applies to the hundreds of high school graduates who received their diplomas this weekend and the many more who will graduate in the future.

There’s nothing wrong with choosing to stay around your hometown after graduation, but there’s no doubt that those who move away for college, work, the military or even a so-called “gap year” between high school and whatever comes next will have a wider breadth of experiences from which they can draw in making decisions at work and in their daily lives.

If those Rowan natives move back home at some point, they’ll be more valuable assets to their churches, civic groups, neighborhoods and broader community.

For those who choose to or cannot move away after high school for college and/or work, our public schools should be the place where we can open their mind to new experiences, whether it’s down the street, a few hours down the interstate or across the world.

So, our elected and appointed officials — from the legislature to small municipalities — should shift their thinking slightly away from the idea that we should cast a broad net to capture all Rowan natives and keep them here.

Instead, we should provide a firm foundation upon which they can build, allow them to explore the world and what it has to offer and welcome them back home when they are ready and the right job opportunities exist.

Diversity makes a community stronger, and that diversity includes personal experiences, too.

Josh Bergeron is editor of the Salisbury Post.