School-to-Community Program

Caroline Morgan, Editor-in-Chief

High school prepares you for what? College mostly. But when it comes down to the business world, does high school really prepare students for what’s to come? SWR has been on the lookout for ways to improve this communication, and they may have just found it in the School-to-Community Program.

Hosted every year since 2017, the School-to-Community Program provides students with a way to communicate with local businesses in order to understand what the professional world outside of school is really like.

According to the company who instigates the program, CEO, “School Business Partnerships is a support program to enable school districts to develop and maintain a School Business Partnership and other Career events.”

The School-to-Community Program consists of roughly thirteen businesses with representatives at the meetings for each business. Students and teachers sit down with the local business representatives to discuss existing school programs and new ideas for possible connections between the students and the businesses.

“School Business Partnerships (SBPs) enable a district to have direct links to local and regional businesses and organizations for their students to intern, job shadow and participate in mentoring programs,” CEO wrote.

SWR has held many School-to-Community programs over the past few years with many local businesses. The most recent of the meetings utilized specific factions of the student body in the program, such as the business classes, the journalism class, and in the April 4th meeting, the AP Research class will be used.

There will be another School-to-Community meeting on April 4th using the AP Research students. The students will be presenting their year-long individual presentations to local community businessmen and women. The goal of the meeting being to give the students official practice with their presentations and to get constructive feedback and critiques from the business professionals.

There will be three School-to-Community meetings each year. Next year’s first meeting will be either in September or October, with two meetings to follow suit after that.