Van Buren schools, business community seek enhanced connections

More than 110 participated in a Wednesday event at the Van Buren High School designed to create connections between the classroom and the regional business community.

About 35 of those involved own or work in a regional business. The 35 worked with about 75 members of the Van Buren High School administration and faculty to share their thoughts about what qualities, skills and other factors are needed in today’s work environment. The event was jointly coordinated by the school district and the Van Buren Chamber of Commerce. (Editor’s note:The City Wire was a participant in the discussions.)

High School Principal Becky Guthrie outlined two goals sought in collaborating with the businesses:
• Providing teachers with the knowledge to better prepare students for the work place; and
• Doing a better job of actively involving students in the community of Van Buren.

“We want to build on those positive relationships between educators and the business community,” Guthrie explained.

Guthrie also explained to the gathered business owners what the school is doing to better educate students for the real world. The school district, she explained, is part of the national High Schools That Work initiative that seeks to generate “relevance” between what is taught in the classroom and what is required in the work place. Some of the “best practices” of that initiative, according to Guthrie, include having high academic expectations for all students, offering rigorous classes that contain real-world applications, helping struggling students before the fail and/or lose interest, and providing students with access to career/technical studies in areas of high-demand.

Following Guthrie’s comments, the business reps and educators gathered in small groups to generate a list of ideas/needs from which the school district may build a plan to address the ideas/needs.

The list presented to the educators included:
• A leadership course for high school students based on the Leadership Crawford County and Leadership Fort Smith programs.
• Business owners and managers need more employees with critical-thinking skills so they can better adapt in a fast-paced work environment.
• As part of the thinking skills, the business reps said employees with the self-confidence and ability to come to judgments about decisions to make. (As one business participant noted: “There is not always a clear decision. There is not always a clear right or wrong answer.”)
• It’s important for employees to have a passion about what they are doing and not just show up to do enough to not get fired.
• Schools might incorporate “Dale Carnegie-type” classes to teach students how to better interact in the business world.
• The business reps also said they need to do more to connect back to the classroom.

Guthrie said in a few weeks an “action plan” based on input from participants would be presented to the participants. She said the effort to implement some of the ideas could be a one- to three-year process.

Van Buren Chamber President Jackie Krutsch said the chamber’s goal is to build a long-term relationship between the school district and the business community.

“This is selfish on our part. We need to educate the students and then do what we can to keep them here. … We need to put more resources into developing students with those entrepreneurial skills and then they start a business and they succeed here,” Krutsch explained.