Rockford educators cooperate with local business to give students
a head start on careers
By Jeff Wisser
With the local economy in the Rockford area in growth mode, amid a tech-driven, fast-paced and ever-changing business environment, the question arises: As businesses evolve and job descriptions change on an almost daily basis, who is going to do the jobs of the future? And how does a local education community prepare next-generation workers for an employment landscape in transition?
That education community is charged with shepherding an estimated 28,000 students from kindergarten through graduation with an eye toward each of the 28,000 becoming productive and fulfilled employees playing a role in keeping a growing economy in go mode.
“I believe that career preparation is an essential part of
the work of (Rockford Public Schools) educators,” said
Dr. Ehren Jarrett, the district’s superintendent.
“I think the way we will ultimately as a community know if we are doing well is if we are attracting and retaining businesses, and if the K-12 students in our region, and certainly in the Rockford Public Schools, are finding opportunity here,” Jarrett added. “And that’s really what the essence of this work is about. Our highest performing students don’t have to come home or stay home. And our companies don’t have to be here. They are going to go where the talent is. So ultimately what this is, on the highest level, what this work is about is ensuring we maximize local opportunity for students, and we maximize local talent opportunities for our companies.”
Toward that end, the district has redoubled efforts to work with local businesses to monitor growth and anticipate changes.
“We’ve seen different industries continue to grow in our area,” said Bridget French, executive director for college and career readiness with Rockford Public School District 205. “And we want to be mindful and intentional of the growth of those industries, and ensure that we’re constantly taking a look at those programs of study and ensuring that we’re still meeting the needs of our industry partners.”
Those industry partners include entities in the health care, transportation and supply-chain management businesses, French said. Additionally, she lists the hospitality industry, pointing to the Hard Rock Casino, and manufacturing, including the Belvidere Stallantis plant.
Another growth area, French said, is education. Addressing changes in the local economy requires a more hands-on approach by educators in surveying the local jobs environment.
“We want to be responsive to that growth in our community,” French said.
District 205 has instituted its interest-based, themed academy program, in which students in their freshman year take a College and Career Readiness course, leading to work-based learning experience in their sophomore, junior and senior years through one of four academies, one each in the fields of business, health, production and service. Those experiences include site visits, job shadows, apprenticeships, and the recently launched work-study program.
The district has also begun work on a College and Career Exploration Center, in the building formerly known as the Stenstrom Center located near Jefferson High School, to accommodate the needs of students readying themselves for careers.
One of the parties involved in the development of District 205’s college and career readiness efforts was Alignment Rockford, a local, data-driven think tank that has sought to achieve a collective impact around education, according to executive director Emily Klonicki.
“We worked in partnership with the school district to develop the College and Career Pathways program,” Klonicki said, stressing that while Alignment Rockford may work closely with District 205, their work also has an impact on local students not attending public schools.
Another group that has taken a role in matching up the needs of Rockford-area students and local industry is Rockford Promise, an organization that aims to get students to college, through college and into meaningful work situations.
“I would say that Rockford Promise makes our city a more appealing, resilient, vibrant place to live, work and raise a family by making college and career a reality for our local students,” said the group’s executive director Kaylene Groh.
Working with Rockford University, Rock Valley College and Northern Illinois University, Rockford Promise has seen its scholarship program rise from five full-tuition scholarships in 2016 to 154 in autumn 2023. In addition, the group has added on-campus support services touching on matters ranging from financial to academic and social.
“It’s just to help students get through college,” Groh said. “Because it’s one thing to make that investment in a scholarship, and it’s another to see that investment more secured as we add additional layers of support for these local students.”
The endgame is to bring college-educated students back to the area to join the local economy.
“We think the Rockford region has so much to offer,” Groh said. “And we just want to make sure that students are aware and connected to those opportunities and have key contacts here locally so that they can make those connections as well. … It makes a lot of sense to match this new, growing talent pool with all of the opportunities that are open and available here. It fills a need, both on the side of our students who are looking for really fulfilling careers, and then it also really matches the needs of our community.”
As president of Boylan High School, Amy Ott has been working closely with local business leaders for several years to assess and address the needs of the community and determine how Boylan’s college prep educational program can buttress the work of local industry. Students, Ott said, have embraced the efforts.
“That’s what I see as the difference from many years ago, is students are trying to set themselves up for the best success possible. Not everyone – they’re still teenagers – but they’re trying to plan their futures a lot more at a lot younger age.”
Toward that end, Boylan holds an annual career fair. And the school brings in experts to prepare students for the fair.
“We have someone coming in from our local workforce development board, some of their staff,” Ott said. “They come in and talk about what you do at a career fair, how you prepare yourself, resumes, just to give them some pointers so they can be as effective as possible when they’re visiting with the 50 or 60 different employers that are in the gym.”
The Boylan team also works in advance with business representatives to prepare them for the fair.
“We give the people who participate in it, the vendors and the companies, we say, here are things to communicate with our students about. Here are things to ask them about, and have them ask you about what your education is or what do you like about your job,” Ott said.
And, Ott said, fair planners are diligent about staying abreast of changes in the local business environment.
“We try to make sure that the career fair incorporates all different industries and backgrounds. And we ask the students, ‘Hey, what do you think’s missing?’ So every year we can add more to that. … It’s been effective. It’s also a great avenue for summer internships or summer jobs.”
While Boylan, according to Ott, is “in essence, a college prep school,” she is quick to point out that while most students from the school may be on a trajectory for a four-year post-secondary institution, those educational arcs are not as cookie-cutter as they may have been 30 or 40 years ago. Today’s student may not be heading for a state university immediately after packing away the mortarboard and graduation gown, but time in the classroom is still a post-grad likelihood, according to Ott. As an example, she points to students who gravitate toward the trades.
“The plumbing trade? That’s still a five-year apprentice program. And guess what? You’re still going to class. You’re still learning a trade. You’re getting a certificate here or there, but it’s just not traditional. A lot of it is still hands-on, but some of it’s book learning. You still have to have some math skills. So, it might be that more of a hands-on job might be better suited to some young person, but they’ll have all the other skills they need in order to be successful there.
That’s music to the ears of Paul Nolley, whose Project First group seeks to work with 12 unions and six union contractor associations to focus on shared values of labor and management groups. One key area for Nolley is career and apprenticeship promotion.
“A lot of what I do,” Nolley said, “is make sure that … young people who are kind of coming into their own and figuring out their lives, that they know all about apprenticeships programs in the trades, what careers are like in the building trades, not only the wages and benefits that you earn, but how they stack up against some careers that would require a four-year degree, or even an advanced degree.”
One of Nolley’s areas of emphasis is to help the local building trades and their workers more closely resemble the demographics of the larger community.
“A big part of what I do,” he said, “is to make sure that kids, particularly students who are underrepresented in our field, so women, students of color, LGBTQ individuals, but not exclusive to those, but with the emphasis on trying to make our workforce more reflective of the diversity of our community. Diverse groups of kids are just not being as successful, are not as competitive to get into (apprenticeship) programs as, let’s say, a kid coming from a rural, well-funded school where they had the kind of upbringing where hand tools were used and you kind of had that model of a life.”
That, he adds, is going to be critical going forward in the face of a growing need for skilled labor in the trades.
“Our area in particular is very well positioned to have all sorts of great career opportunities,” Nolley said, pointing to increased private investment as well as state and federal legislation geared toward stimulating infrastructure projects as one facet of the anticipated upswing.
That expected economic boost has only made it more important for schools and industry to communicate, cooperate and coordinate in new and different ways, says District 205’s Jarrett.
“The ways that we engage community partners now is a little bit deeper than it was in the past.”
That deeper engagement, French adds, was something local industry sought from the district.
“Deeper engagement was something that they asked for, and we were happy to provide it. So, we are responding to the requests that we have been getting from the community.”
And as the world – and Rockford – emerged from the cocoon of COVID-19, the district’s business partners have continued to engage with schools and students.
“When we started having those conversations again with our partners (post-COVID),” French said, “they’re saying, ‘I want to do more than just come in one time to volunteer for this one event. I want to form relationships with staff and students. And, we’re more than happy to provide those opportunities.”
Boylan’s Ott is also enthusiastic about working to bring students, schools and business leaders together, and the private prep school has done much toward achieving that goal. But, she stresses, while preparing students for the working world is vital in today’s economy, it should not be done at the expense of the basics, the soft skills that come into play every hour of every day in offices and on worksites across the Rockford region.
“You need critical thinking, you need good soft skills,” Ott said. “You need to be open to learning. You need to know how to communicate. You need to know how to show up on time, how to follow instructions.
“What I hear most is, ‘We can train you in the function that we want you to do, but we need you to actually have all the other skills.’ That’s what they crave more sometimes.”
