Graduating Students with Local Employment Opportunities

By Lori L. Kalika

Tying our educational programs to employment related skills will help ensure that we will retain and attract employers to this area and students will be able to work where they live.

I feel I have unique qualifications to push toward offering employable skills to our students. I work with, hire, train and discuss employee issues with a number of local area companies. I know their concerns about the skills, or lack thereof, that students are emerging with from our school system. I would be a champion of tying work related skills and expereinces to education at every opportunity in our school curriculums.

As we grow, in order to keep employment opportunities here, or to attract new employers, we need to demonstrate that we can offer a very employable workforce.

This would be an issue near and dear to my heart.