CHARLESTON, W.Va. — President and CEO of the West Virginia Education Alliance Amelia Courts says their focus now lies in revitalizing decades worth of business partnerships with schools.
Courts gave a presentation Wednesday at the state Board of Education’s regular meeting about the partnerships at the Alliance’s Caperton Center and the launch of its new online portal.
Courts said on October 1, they will be launching the online portal for schools or businesses to be able to register their partnerships on.
She said the Alliance is encouraging all schools to take advantage of this new opportunity to easily register their business partnerships.
“And if they don’t have one this is a great nudge to go out to their community, invite someone to come into the school and talk about math, or talk about whatever their strategic plan is focused on,” said Courts.
She said currently they are piloting the new online portal in 11 schools across the state so they can provide feedback on how it’s working.
As part of the portal, Courts said schools and their partnering businesses will have access to a tool kit containing resources helping them get started on the partnerships, including anything from sample letters and needs assessments as well as give them access to a member directory.
As a way to incentivize the revitalizing program, she said they will offer the Partnership of the Year Award to the schools that have the best partnerships. The Alliance currently has $25,000 a year to offer for the awards for the next three years.
Courts said each region will have two partnerships they can select which will then advance to the state-level to be chosen for the Partnership of the Year.
In 1983, the Education Alliance was formed as a statewide nonprofit organization to help mobilize business and community partnerships with K-12 schools across the state.
Courts said by 1990, schools already had a 95% connection with various business partners.
“I was not there at the time, but I know that this is really an important era in not just the Alliance history but also in school’s history,” she said.
Courts went on to explain what happened with those partnerships in the early days.
“Schools would literally take a piece of paper and they would type or write in their school’s name, their business partner’s name, and talk a little bit about the partnership,” she said. “Then they would mail that to us, we would put it in one of these filing cabinets and would send them a certificate to recognize their partnership.”
Courts said the roomful of business partnership information they eventually had acquired unfortunately led to some getting put by the wayside and overlooked.
In 2020, the Alliance board established a dedicated and endowed fund called the Caperton Center which was designed to revitalize the partnerships.
Courts said many of the partnerships have simply consisted of a sign being put on the school’s football field, but the organization agreed that it shouldn’t stop there.
She said evidence shows that these business partnerships can do a couple things to impact students–number one being that it can enrich their educational experiences.
“Think about financial literacy, think about even a small rural community where a teacher is teaching financial literacy, how much better for the student if the local banker comes in to talk to students about financial literacy,” said Courts.
In addition, Courts said it can also improve student readiness for careers, internships, job shadowing and work-based learning.
However, perhaps most importantly, she said business partnerships with schools teach students to be good citizens out in the community.
“Businesses can help students learn problem-solving through capstone projects, they can help them be good communicators like making eye-contact and shaking hands,” said Courts.
You can learn more at educationalliance.org.