Todays News

Building bonds

MCSD staff, business community collaborate through biannual CTE meet-up

Over the last several years, the Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) has expanded its Career and Technical Education (CTE) offerings at the high school level, and doing so has involved extensive collaboration with the local business community and Marshalltown Community College (MCC). On Wednesday, district staff and leadership hosted representatives from several companies for a biannual meet-up at the Roundhouse with a lunch catered by instructor Jules Wight's Bobcat Cafe students.

The purpose of the gatherings is to discuss opportunities for continued growth of the district's offerings for students who are either headed on to college or straight into the workforce once they graduate, and MCSD Curriculum and Professional Development (CPDL) Leader Jenny Allen has been pleased to see more and more participation.

"We have parents. We have members from our community college. We have partners from the Main Street Business District, Emerson and MARSHALLTOWN Co. (to name a few)," Allen said. "The main thing that we are going to get from our business partners and our postsecondary education partners is finding out what our kids need to know to be successful when they graduate from Marshalltown High School. We want them to have a plan, and we want them to have experiences. So a lot of our conversation today is gonna be about, as an industry partner, what is it that you want our kids to know before they come into your industry? What can we do to help prepare them so that when they go out the doors or across the stage, they're able to be successful in an industry or college, whatever that may be."

The focus is on students headed to the workforce or into education at the college level.

"So we really hope to get some advice from our business partners, our community college partners on what we can do to help prepare our students. We're also looking to build relationships with them to maybe get some work-based learning experiences for our students," she said. "So making those connections, seeing what we can do to get kids some hands-on experiences while they're still in high school to see if it's what they want to do."

Jaymee Mann, the senior human resources generalist at MARSHALLTOWN Co., said the CTE partnership is a great chance to promote the trades and potentially keep MHS graduates in the community after they graduate. She highlighted the fact that high school students from several area schools recently attended the Bricklayer 500 event.

"(We're) just showing them that there are other avenues to revenue outside of high school, and the trades are alive and well. And MARSHALLTOWN is the company to use for that," she said.

Pete Drury, the dean of Career and Technical Education (CTE) at MCC, added that it's important to have all stakeholders at the table in pursuit of common goals.

"Even at our table, we're hearing opportunities, challenges industry has, opportunities at the high school or collegiate level. We can help address that, but then also helping students see how this all lays out," he said. "In high school, you can kind of dip your toes in the water of these different programs, and you have, literally, right in the back door, whether you're going to workforce or a certification or diploma, we have all of that right here in Marshalltown. So again, (we're) bringing everybody to the table and helping us understand what opportunities we have here in our community."

MARSHALLTOWN, Mann said, is a company focused heavily on community involvement, and the meeting was an opportunity to learn about CTE programs at the school using tools the company has built itself.

"You're not on your own with this. It's a community effort, and there are resources available to help support you and work through something that we see is important," Drury said.

Kyley Leger, who runs her own marketing company, felt that the meetings are helpful in forming connections and providing real-world experience in the classroom while identifying workforce needs.

"It's just been really cool to see how they take our feedback and they apply it to the classrooms. Or they can tell us what a classroom experience looks like, and we can just add onto it and say 'Well, if you just tweak this a little bit, it'll be more like the real-world experience," she said. "And I think it's a benefit to both the community members who are here in the room, the staff and then ultimately the students. That's what we're all looking for. How can we prepare the future workforce, and what skills can we develop?"

She was encouraged to see that at her table of business leaders, they shared a common focus of building communication and problem solving skills. At the end of the session, each of the tables was tasked with sharing major goals and how they plan to achieve them in the near future, and the next meeting is tentatively scheduled for April.

Contact Robert Maharry at (641) 753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.