Bedford County provides a great example of what can be done when schools and local businesses work together on partnerships to improve their students' career opportunities.
In the Lynchburg area, Region 2000, businesses and economic development groups saw a need to convince students to stay and work for local companies. They decided to promote this with a campaign called Grow Your Own. The Bedford County Economic Development team responded to this need by developing a survey to learn about the career interests of senior year students in three Bedford County high schools. They hired a consultant to visit classes and conduct the survey with students.
In the meantime, two career coaches from Central Virginia Community College, Miranda Lowry and Josselyn Gregory, were already hard at work in high schools on a related mission — helping students define career aspirations and identify community college and other postsecondary programs that can help achieve their goals. When they heard about the survey, they saw right away that this information about students' interests would be valuable to them and the Grow Your Own campaign could be a perfect vehicle to connect their students with career exploration opportunities.
When they expressed an interest, the career coaches were invited to join the meetings of the Bedford steering committee, given survey results, and asked for suggestions on plans-of-action. Working with the economic development team, they developed plans to take student on tours of local businesses and to invite local businesses into the schools to showcase their opportunities at a Club Day, or career fair. The economic development team promoted this plan to employers and encouraged their participation. They produced flyers and other material encouraging employers to give tours to local students and participate in high school club days, and they promoted these student activities in the county economic development newsletter.
In the second year of collaboration, the survey was brought to juniors instead of seniors. This gave the coaches more time to work with students to develop their interests and increase their knowledge of employers and postsecondary training opportunities. With each survey, students received a copy of Get Set, a magazine developed by Region 2000 using a grant from the US Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration. The magazine connects students to local employers, and emphazises the math, science, technology, manufacturing, and other skills that Bedford's employers are seeking today.
Last winter, county high school students visited a range of employers, including Bedford Memorial Hospital, the largest employer in the City of Bedford, and Sentry Equipment Erectors, a high tech manufacturing operation where they received a tour lead by the company's founder, Adam Vinoskey.
Evaluation documents showed how powerful and effective these connections were for students. The business visits introduced students to careers and opportunities they did not know existed. As Josselyn Gregory says, "For some, the information was life-changing." In follow-up surveys, 70% of students said that they were more likely to stay in this area to work or return to work in this area later.
Not every locality is as fortunate as Bedford County, to have an economic development team that reaches out to schools to help build school-business partnerships. In many communities, CTE professionals themselves have to take the lead in developing these partnerships. If this is part of your job, consider engaging your locality's own economic development team in this process. These experts know local business; they know who is looking for workers and why. They can be ideal partners in your efforts to develop business partnerships.
