The Business and Education Partnership

“The Business and Education Partnership began when the ISD and the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce came together to connect Bay County schools and employers to improve career development opportunities for our students. We want to get kids into the right field and, hopefully, the right field here in Bay County. It’s critical that students understand what industries and employment opportunities we have here in Bay County, and what better way to connect the dots than for employers and educators to partner up?

Now we're going to take all of that to the next level. We do mock job interviews where employers volunteer to come in and help kids practice interviewing, but that was only present in some of the schools. This year, we’re bringing it to all of the schools in Bay and Arenac Counties to create a systemic change and so all of our students are getting the same experiences.

What if we took those mock interviews to the next level? for employers, too? An employer does a mock job interview with a student and sees something promising. Why can’t that employer take that student and give them further opportunities for development: job shadowing, a summer job, or an internship. They can develop someone from Day One who knows that it’s a career they want to pursue, and they’ve just created a pipeline of qualified candidates for future employment.

The BEP isn’t just for students—it’s a way for employers to build their own workforce.”

—Renee Courier Aumock, Bay-Arenac ISD and Marlana Cork, Director of Workforce Development, Hey, Bay City! & the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce

“A lot of people know the Bay-Arenac ISD because of the Career Center, where high school students leave their home school for part of the day and go to the Career Center to learn some type of trade or field. That is a very large part of what we do, but we also do things like go into schools and assist students in figuring out what they might be interested in and how to create a plan that will lead into a career they will enjoy and be good at.

One of the programs we offer is called Zello. It's a database that students log into from sixth to 12th grade, and they learn about themselves. It’s a database where, from sixth through 12th grade, students take assessments to learn about their personality style, their learning style, and how to advocate for themselves. Along with that, they get to search careers that they're matched with based on those assessments that hopefully lead to a work-based learning opportunity.”

—Renee Courier Aumock, Bay-Arenac ISD

“We don’t need to recreate the wheel, we just need to make it better. The Business and Education Partnership already existed, so the most important step was bringing all the necessary partners to the table. We need to hear from our educators, ‘This is what the students need.’ Then we need our employers to say, ‘Hey, we want to help them prepare these students and introduce them to our industries.’

Why not bring these two parties together, hash it out, talk about what our kids need, and then implement programming that's going to change their lives?”

—Marlana Cork, Director of Workforce Development, Hey, Bay City! & the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce