Workplace Learning Connection asks Iowa County for $1,666 to sustain school-to-career programs

Christine Wolf, director of Workplace Learning Connection at Kirkwood, presented the program nnual update and asked the Iowa County Board of Supervisors for continued funding at a rate of $0.10 per county resident (based on the 2020 census), which equals $1,666.20 for Iowa County.

Wolf described the program s a regional effort covering sixth through 12th grade to provide career speakers, hands-on middle-school sessions, an eighth-grade career-interest inventory and financial-literacy fair, high-school job shadows and internships, mock interviews and larger events such as career fairs and career-discovery tours. She said the program assigns a single point of contact to each school building (roughly 108 buildings in the seven-county region) and business liaisons to reduce duplication for employers.

Wolf reported that, so far in the year, the program served about 30,000 students out of roughly 37,000 students in grades six through 12 across the region; she highlighted that participation correlates with students taking concurrent-enrollment credits and increased likelihood of postsecondary training and local employment offers after job shadows and internships. She noted the program was named by the U.S. Department of Education as one of the top work-based-learning ecosystems in a national selection process and that Kirkwood—ollege provides dual-credit internship pathways used by the program.

Wolf said the program continues to rely on multiple funding sources and that the county contribution helps maintain services that are otherwise costly for small rural districts to run individually. She closed by asking the board to consider the consistent per-capita contribution again this year; no board action on the request was recorded in the meeting transcript.