Build Momentum for Education - K-12 Superintendent Series

S04E06 - Rural Innovation Series | Jessica Morrison, Executive Director, The Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative

Sarah Williamson and Chad Bolser / Jessica Morrison Season 4 Episode 6

In this episode of Build Momentum, we are joined by Jessica Morrison, the Executive Director of Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative, one of the partners in the newly established Career Launch Southwest initiative, which serves as a vital link between employers and the workforce of the future. She was previously the Director of Career and College Counseling at Animas High School in Durango for six years. In June 2021, the school won the Individual Career and Academic Plan (ICAP) Award from the Colorado Department of Education for its Sophomore Inspire Week program.

This episode concludes our series focusing on rural collaboratives that are developing opportunities for students in specialized career pathways.

This is the final episode in a four-part series focusing on rural collaboratives that are developing opportunities for students in specialized career pathways.


Some Questions I Ask:

  • Tell us more about Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative. (01:21)
  • How do you create partnerships? (04:39)
  • What are the challenges and successes in working with higher education partner institutions? (07:50)
  • What is your funding model and how do you make it work for school districts? (11:51)
  • What are the credentials you are currently offering to high school students and what are the outcomes of the program? (15:22)
  • What advice can you give to leaders about starting the collaboration process? (24:30)
  • How are you sharing your success stories? (30:14)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

  • All about the Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative (01:34)
  • Southwest Colorado Educational Collaborative’s partnerships (04:56)
  • Challenges and successes in higher ed partnerships (08:14)
  • Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative’s funding model (12:07)
  • Credentials and outcomes of the program (15:53)
  • Advice to leaders interested in collaborating on workforce development(25:17)
  • Strategies for sharing success stories and elevating thought leadership in education (30:40)

Quotes:

“I want all of your listeners to understand that these pieces take time—this is not for a school district that is faint of heart. I've worked in K-12 institutions as well as on the federal government side, and I know how important data is. What are the numbers? How many students are earning industry credentials? But laying the groundwork takes years, so it's looking at all of the different components to then determine what are the steps that need to be put in place along the way.”

“As you're building out this dream of consolidating resources in order to do more or bring more to a region, you can also be doing some more low-hanging fruit like priming students to be ready, which pushes your partners to get to the place of shared courses.”


Stay in touch with Jobs for the Future:
Career Launch Southwest Website
Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative Website
Email: info@swcoedcollaborative.org



Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
Free Case Study Guide
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

Sarah Williamson:

Hello and welcome to Build Momentum, a Podcast where we explore thought leadership and education. I'm Sarah Williamson, the Founder of SW PR group.

Chad Bolser:

And I'm Chad Bolser Chancellor Ivy Tech Community College in Richmond, Indiana. This season, we will launch a series exploring global workforce development and K 12 school districts and the leaders who are bringing this work to light.

Sarah Williamson:

We hear from CTE directors, superintendents and thought leaders on the topic of workforce development, how it shifted throughout the last several years, who is employing strategies that are making an impact and how they're sharing those stories with the broader education community. We explore how to leverage key partners, your constituents and the media to authentically impact your organization and the leaders who champion them. We can't wait to get started. So let's dive in. Today's episode, we continue our global workforce series with Jessica Morrison, the executive director of Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative. We're excited to spend some time with you today, Jessica, to explore some of the great work you're doing in the traditional career and technical education space. Welcome to the podcast.

Jessica Morrison:

Yeah, thank you, Sarah, and Chad for having me on. I'm so excited to talk about all the good work that's happening in this Southwest Colorado.

Chad Bolser:

Yeah. So with that in mind, tell us about the Southwest Colorado Educational Collaborative, what schools are involved, what kind of opportunities you provide your students just give us an overview of the operation.

Jessica Morrison:

Yeah, sure. And I can even start in on a little bit of the history. So the collaborative started, we call ourself the collaborative for short. The collaborative started about three and a half years ago under a rice grant that was awarded to leaders in our region to try on this idea$3.6 million largest rice grant in the state of Colorado out of Governor Polis office. And pretty much what these leaders sitting at the table focused on was, hey, our students in our rural communities deserve to have the same access to career and college resources as our students in our metro areas in the state of Colorado and across the nation. And so when they started looking at what those resources were that students deserve to have access to, and how they would be able to provide those resources independently within their rural communities, they really realized that they weren't going to be able to do it alone. And so they came up with this vision about sharing resources, so breaking themselves out of their silos, and sharing across districts and higher ed partners and industry to build the same access for students, which is, you know, innovative in itself. Right. So we started off with five school districts Bayfield, Silverton Archer ledit, Durango in Ignacio. And our two higher ed partners for it was college and public community college. And we started in on two pathways, building trades, and environmental based off of economic data for our region and student-student voice student choice. And then what was already happening within our districts and our higher ed partners as far as programming. So what resources did we already have available. And so taking that idea and accelerating it very quickly to where we are now, the collaborative is now partnered with nine school districts across the entire region. We still have our higher ed partner, Fort Lewis College and public community college. We've expanded into five career and college pathways. So we still have our original two building trades and environmental. We have also encompass Health Sciences, Education, and hospitality, tourism. And then we facilitate across all three of the sectors. So the third sector is industry. And so now we hold a place in the center of facilitating conversations between industry K 12 and higher ed. So that is our large overall model.

Sarah Williamson:

That is fantastic. Shout out to Karen Cheser from Durango. Love that woman. She Yes, I've met her a few different times. Do you know her? Jen? She's amazing.

Jessica Morrison:

Yeah. Yeah. She is amazing. It looks like it's on mute there.

Chad Bolser:

Yeah. We were on a panel together.

Jessica Morrison:

Oh, fantastic.

Sarah Williamson:

She's out.

Jessica Morrison:

So Dr. Cheser is actually our board chair.

Sarah Williamson:

Shout out to Dr. Karen Cheser. There we go. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we have become familiar with the work of the Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative through some of our friends at Empower schools. Fair how those schools came together, how you created all these partnerships?

Jessica Morrison:

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So and I can also talk about a little bit about the work that we do as well. So what does that mean for a career and college pathway and the partnerships had. so Empower schools, we work with many technical support partners, one of them from the beginning has been Empower schools, and they are integral to this work. They one they were running our hiring process for the executive director. That's how I first engaged with them. But then every step of the way, when I stepped into an organization that didn't even have a 501 C3 registration yet to how do you structure a board that is a cooperative? How do we place ourselves as paid collaborative members as facilitators of a vision, because that's the strength of the collaborative, is that the partners of the collaborative or the collaborative, I am not the collaborative, I am paid by our partners to facilitate their vision and help support them along the way with curating what that vision looks like, right? And Empower schools has been integral in that process with us they have helped support me specifically within my role with how do you corral nine school districts with nine different priorities and potentially like needs that are all different across our region to come into or to come to a shared vision of how they are going to move forward? How do we execute MO use where there are shared equipment that students and teachers are using across districts? What does that look like? Well, we're moving equipment across mountain passes. And so Empower schools has been a huge asset to our region, and to our organization to help keep us on that larger vision as we are working out the details. So we're really, really fortunate to have them at the table, and their commitment. I think the other thing that Empower schools does really well is is that they give us resources, they provide us feedback, but they have always focused on the fact that it looks different in every rural community. And so they focus in on providing behind the scenes resources to collaboratives. But then understand that we understand our communities best. And so then therefore, we're going to work in partnership with them to explain what we actually need, because it looks different. It looks different across different communities, as well as if you're in a metro area versus a rural area. So I've always been impressed with Empower schools, and their ability to also understand that the power really comes in having our rural leaders lead the way.

Chad Bolser:

So Jessica, I'm a part of the community college system here in the state of Indiana. And so I'm always interested, you mentioned your higher education partners before and some of the really cool programming that you're doing. What successes have you seen? And what challenges do you have working in that space with the higher education institutions?

Jessica Morrison:

Yeah, absolutely. This is so brilliant, because I was working on shared courses this morning was at Fort Lewis College. So I think that there is always there's always going to be challenges to and roadblocks to anything that has not been mapped out. Right, and has been done and has proven success. And that is very much true in the higher education. I used to work in higher education. I have a background in that. And so I think what we have really gotten right is that we have higher ed partners at the table that understand that some of this work, needs to have an individual that's willing and committed to jump, identify challenges, and work on a solution focused way to create a roadmap that doesn't exist. And that's actually the whole piece of the Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative. We are the first ones in Colorado, there is eight additional world collaboratives since us, but we are the ones that are the furthest along and providing this building and implementation of a roadmap. And there's been a lot of what people would call failures along the way. And so that can be really tricky for partners, especially higher education. But we have been really fortunate that both Fort Lewis College and public community college understand that we need to be working collectively together to figure out what those solutions are to those barriers. Some of the barriers that I would say that we currently face is for example, we've run an education pathway and it's really exciting the teacher Ed pathway student that moves through our teacher, Ed pathway could potentially leave with 12 collegiate credits that they could use towards becoming an educator. Right? Which is exciting, because that is, you know, a full semester off of their tuition for four years. And so but what that looks like the devil in the details with that is how do you share a course where you can put a professor in nine different school districts. And so we have to identify professors that are willing to teach in a hybrid format, hybrid synchronous, but that takes a different skill set. Right. So identifying a teacher or a professor who is willing to teach in a hybrid format, identifying or working with admissions to understand that it's not just filling the class, because we know that seats equate the dollars, but how do we backfill in timelines to ensure that there is representation from multiple school districts so that it's shared and accessible to all and not just maybe the school district that has the most resources. So that has definitely been a challenge in itself, and then determining how many students need to be in that class in order for that seat, that class to run, because we are building out shared Course Guides, and providing all of this counseling and information out around the community. And then if only five students sign up for that course, that's a loss of revenue for that collegiate institution. And usually, that collegiate institution then want to just run the course. But then that can stop the pathway. So those are definitely some significant challenges and barriers that we have to work through with our two year and our four year. But being committed to that, which has been fantastic. Right?

Sarah Williamson:

Yeah, that's great. And then kind of on that note of challenges, we know that funding, of course, can be an issue when you're sharing students. We're curious to know how, especially in the K 12 education space, what's your funding model? And how do you make it work for each of those school districts?

Jessica Morrison:

Yeah, so that's a great debt. Yes. Whenever you talk about money, right, like at the dinner table, it's an issue and you're talking about and you're not family?

Sarah Williamson:

Oh, yeah. Right.

Jessica Morrison:

So our funding model, there's a couple of different components to it. So overall, the collective collaborative, the partners that are sitting at our table and have a signed MOU, provide a district contribution. And that is that district contribution is determined by an annual budget that I create, and I say, Okay, this is how much grant funding, we have to cover our robust programming that I'll talk about. So and then this is how much I think I'm going to be able to get but then these are the things that I am not going to be able to build to a grant, for example, like insurance for our board members, if I'm fundraising, my fundraising time towards my salary, you can't build that to a grand and a private funders most likely not going to give that to you. So we make up what is that general operations budget that we are not going to be able to fill grant wise. And then we calculate that out across student numbers and school districts, and then our school districts pay a contribution. So our smaller school districts, one of our school districts only has 84 students in the whole district. So Silverton is obviously paying less than, you know, Durango high school that has 3000 students, right? So it's not during goes not that many, but it's just it's a higher number, whatever that is. So we have our K 12 institutions that pay and for general operations, in addition to that, our higher ed partners provide in kind. And so what that looks like is Fort Lewis College provides office space in kind to us. So that drops the general operations budget down to lower the costs for K 12 institutions. And so that has been and then from the executive director head on, I am able to when I'm writing grants or talking to private funders say every single partner that's at the table has not only a shared investment and commitment through an MOU, but they are putting dollars behind this shared commitment. And that has allowed us to bring in now at this point in three years, $7 million into our region, basically, like through specifically the collaborative, right. And so it's all of these different pieces that work. And then I'm really proud of our K 12 partners, because the superintendents all last March got together in a room and they said, Okay, if we're doing shared courses, we need to come up with a cost model. So they came up with a cost model with each other that if there's a student from Ignacio, that takes corse in Bayfield, then Ignacio pays a flat rate for that student and then depending on the class a certain amount for the amount of consumables that are needed in that class, like, if it's a culinary class, there's a high amount of consumables, right? So that is the model and empower schools was intrical in helping us trying to figure out that model as well.

Chad Bolser:

That's really, really cool that you're able to generate that much support. And I love the in kind sort of way that that's higher ed isn't invested there. So to kind of continue down that path, what what credentials are you offering high school students currently? And what outcomes of the program have happened in the last couple of years that would be notable to folks listening in trying to figure out how to get this going? What are the outcomes, then?

Jessica Morrison:

Yeah, well Chad, I can send you over that annual report that we have just off the press two, which is great. So there's a lot of different components. And I think the first thing that I want to say to all of your listeners is to understand that these pieces take time. And so this is not for a school district that is faint of heart. I've worked in K 12 institutions as well, also on the federal government side. And so I know how important data is, and like, what are the numbers, how many students are earning industry credentials, but laying the groundwork takes years. And so it's looking at all of the different components to then determine what are the steps that need to be put in place along the way. So as I say that we are two and a half years in we are in our third year of serving students. And so I'll give some highlights and then I'll talk about what that looks like. So one of the biggest pieces that we did very quickly is we started to engage in work based learning. So we built half day job shadows that engage have three to four hands on, or brains on activities that students get to engage with industry and to learn about their job. And so we built the model of the half, half day job shadow, we then went out and recruited industry leaders to be able to showcase their work. And then we go over to the K 12 institutions, and we recruit students to participate in those job shadows. So those were easy wins, right? For a couple of reasons. One are industry leaders love to actually talk about their work and showcase it in a way where it's not a stand in deliver at a traditional college fair that we've all attended when we were in high school, and then you have students standing across from you on their cell phones, not listening to anything that you're talking about. Instead, we have students that are learning very specifically how to actualize insurance policies, right or things to that nature. So based off from those job shadows, and garnering that interest, we also collect survey data from students after, and that's really important. So we asked students at the end of it, were you interested in this type of career? You are great. Are you currently taking a class? In this type of career? You're currently taking a building trades class, you're not? Would you like to in the future? Would you be interested in an internship in the future, we take all of that data, and we bring it to the counselors at the school districts. So then instead of blindly putting students into courses, they are now doing a whole student advising on this is what a student's interest is. They've done an experience with industry. And now they're going to be able to start entering into a career and college pathway. So that was like the first thing that we got. Right. And that was done really well. The second thing that's also focused in work based learning as a quick add in, or initiative was that we built summer Institutes. So our longest serving Summer Institute is ECI. It's the Environmental Climate Institute. It's a week long program residential program at Fort Lewis College. It's actually all in kind from Fort Lewis College. And we bring industry leaders from environmental like, Forest Service is one, Mountain Studies Institute is another one, Tree Coring things to that nature. And students spend five days with industry learning, again, in an immersive format about those different types of careers. We then take that data at the end and let them know hey, there's this entry level, environmental science course Concurrent Enrollment that's free to you here at Fort Lewis College if you're interested. So again, those work based learning components are actually the things that get the entry point into the courses for for the credentials, and industry certifications. Some things that we didn't realize that came out of the summer Institutes was really exciting is that we have a mantra that we are going to serve the student in our individual communities. That's furthest from opportunities, because when we've tapped into them, then we know that we're supporting everyone else. And one of the things that came up with the Summer Institutes is that middle class and upper class students are actually the ones that can afford to go to summer programs. And so that didn't work for us. So we made the summer Institutes free, and then we stipend students to attend those summer Institutes because a lot of our low income students, they have to have summer jobs to support themselves and their families. So we just removed that barrier. And so from ECI, we found out in our building trades summer or building trades, creating college pathway, that economic data for Southwest Colorado, the top three jobs that have the most vacancies are HVAC, electrical, and plumbing, with a 2% growth in that industry every year for the next 10 years. Not a single one of our K 12 partners have classes in any of those three industry areas. And none of our higher ed partners here are right across our state line run programs. So it was a desert. So we're like, well, we have to do something. So we built a behind the drywall summer institute that focuses specifically on a track electrical and plumbing. We piloted it for the first year brought industry and industry was so excited about it that they were like, we're just gonna start hiring students directly out of this program. So the students would go for five days through the building trades behind the drywall summer program, they will be hired in by industry, we have students that are on a pre apprenticeship path right now. Because they went to the Summer Institute, the industry leader met with them, gave them a summer job at the end of it said, hey, you know, what do you want to do an apprenticeship, I will pay you to be to go through this program, I'll pay all of your fees, and then I'm going to pay you to work. So now we have like a senior who's doing a half day at DHS, and he's making $38,000 as a plumber and getting his certification along the way. But then we'll also happen with that is that now we have a school district that's interested in piloting an HVAC course in their high school. And then our two year partner was like, well, actually, maybe we should run an electrical journeyman certificate. And so this is where when I'm talking about these work based learning components, it's like that's the start. That's like the low hanging fruit, but then it pushes into what you're talking about with credentials in certifications. So all to say, Chad, that was like a very long example. And so specifically, to answer your question, I'm like, what is the data, the data is, is that the hardest part is shared courses. That is the hardest part. And when we started in our first year, I had this grand vision that we were going to have hubs across all nine of our districts. And we were going to be moving students in buses, and the, you know, from Silverton to Archuleta. And that's like a two and a half hour drive over four mountain passes, right. And then we're like, that's not going to work that's doing east side and west side, that's not going to work. And now we're in this final iteration, where we narrow down shared courses between two districts on two pathways. And we're seeing a lot of traction that way. And so the why I'm saying that is because you can still, as you're building out this dream of shared courseware, this dream of consolidating resources in order to do more or bring more to a region, you can also be doing some more low hanging fruit that is priming students ready and then pushes your partners to get to the place of shared courses. And that's what we did with that workplace learning.

Chad Bolser:

Yeah, so I love what you're talking about here. And I appreciate and for those who folks who didn't catch that statement before, as they're listening, this takes some time, right? Like there's lots of time that is spent in developing all these ideas, and some of the ideas will work and some of them will be a struggle. With that in mind. We will have folks who will listen to this to say we love the idea of a rural collaborative, maybe even will inaudible You know, on some other topics somewhere else, if you were talking to leaders in community or schools, and you said, give us some practical advice about how you begin this process, you know, what would be the things that you would outline as a starting place?

Jessica Morrison:

Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. So I think it's almost like a SWOT analysis. But in the sense of facilitating a process with really the first agreement of being, hey, look, let's be honest with each other about what's on the table right now. And what could potentially be on the table in the future, and things that we're just not willing to engage in at the moment, because that saves everyone a lot of time. And when you have, and, you know, school districts and higher ed partners, they do at the end of the day, they want to serve students they want to give people do not get into education, for the money that you make, right? It's about serving the future generation. And we also know all of the challenges of physical budget cuts and things to that nature. And so I think the first piece is getting really honest with like, what are we willing to collectively agree on to do in the moment, and for our collaborative, it was work based learning, right? Like that was the this makes sense. And so you focus in on that, and you start to build some energy, you see how it impacts students, and then you come back to the table? And you say, Okay, what's next? Because, again, that work based learning component really started pushing into, oh, now we need your courses, we have all of these students that just went on this health sciences, job shadow, they want classes, and we don't have any, that we don't figure this out. Right. So some of that is just understanding that data around those pieces, you also need to really focus on building your infrastructure. And I can't say that enough. And what I mean by that is, where are you putting resources to get other people excited about this work, we have a professional learning community of counselors, because you could have the best courses in the world all laid out. But if your counselors do not think that it's going to serve their students, and or don't know about it, and know how to advise, it doesn't matter. So we generate a professional learning community of counselors, we generate Professional Learning Communities of educators specifically in the pathway, where they are sharing professional development with each other that's relevant. They say, hey, this shared equipment that the Collaborative has brought into our shop, actually, I have this really great lesson plan on how to use this laser engraver that industry bring. Let me show it to you. And then they start sharing with each other, that also builds that collaborative spirit. So you need to do that. It's a rough analogy, but like the top and the bottom, you need to be serving both sides, you need your administration on board, you need your superintendents and your CTE directors and your principals to agree to share the vision. But you also need to cultivate the people on the ground who are actually implementing, because if you don't have both ready to go and understanding and communicating, then it's not going to work. So those were some of our successes, we have over 41 Professional Learning Communities that we've executed this year, sending people to conferences, having them share collaboratively together. And then that also helps support individual structures, as well as that collaborative piece. So I would say that work based learning, like figure out what your low hanging fruit is, and elevate that, I would say focus on what you can do currently. And then what do you want to do in the future. And one of the things an example of that is, when I first started, we had never talked about a region wide Work Based Learning database system. Now, I'm in my third year, we just launched career launch southwest, it is a region wide Work Based Learning database system, where any student in our region or educator can go online and see opportunities from all of our industry from around the region to engage in, and it's all free. And that came out of the vision of this collaboration of Hey, there are some rural school districts in our community that their students don't have access to industry and internships because there's not someone from our school district that we can pay to go out and cultivate that relationship. Well, that doesn't seem fair. How do we fix that? How do we align all of our documents so that it's easier on industry to access our students? Those are the conversations that we're having right now, where every single online districts are aligning the amount of hours they're reading hiring for internships to make it easier on industry that wasn't discussed three years ago. But now we have this $80,000 design system in our region for free to do that collaboration. So I think it's starting small.

Sarah Williamson:

That's amazing, Jessica. And you mentioned, it's almost like you knew my next question. You mentioned how you're telling the story and how you're educating people around you. Because, of course, you can't get anywhere unless people aren't supporting this program and understand what you're doing. So this podcast was actually created to elevate thought leadership and education, elevate those leaders, elevate how people are telling stories. Is there any other way that you're sharing this story that you want to talk about?

Jessica Morrison:

Yeah, sure. So I think whenever possible, we are doing this more and more as our organization grows, it is really bringing the individuals that are engaged in our work in the day to day to speak about how it has impacted their day to day. So we've had building trades teachers, environmental science teachers, health science teachers, go to conferences, sit on panels, talk to other school districts that are about to come in, talk to their board at their schools to say this is how this work is impacting me as an educator. This is how it's improving my practice. And then this is how it's actually making a lot of change in our classroom. So when we obviously you have to educate around the vision first and make sure everyone has a solid understanding of that vision. But once they have those success stories, it's really us providing the platform in order for those educators to be able to talk about the work. Our board chair, Dr. Cheser that we mentioned as well as Chris deKay Superintendent of Ignacio, our superintendent Rhys Blanco, out of the Lower School District, they have all sat on multiple panels and conferences across the nation for us to talk about this work and how it why they are bought in as a leader of a school district. And then we've recently implemented this year a student advisory we inaudible 14 students from across our nine districts to sit and advise on work that needs to be completed. And now where that advisory it's is in its infancy. And we are talking about how do we provide student advisory leadership opportunities to learn how to grow and to speak about work, the vision is by next year that they would be out as ambassadors talking about the impact and why the collaborative is important. So really, providing the leadership and the resources and the opportunities to your partners is the best way for that work to be able to spread.

Sarah Williamson:

That's awesome. Well, this has been so helpful and informative. Thank you so much for your thorough responses and thoughts on this. Jessica, we appreciate it. Where can our listeners learn more about you and connect with you?

Jessica Morrison:

Sure, yeah. So our website is www.swcoedcollaborative.org So you can go there, and you can look at. There's now a team of nine of us. And so you can look in our bios and see who you want to reach out to, if you will, to talk about very specific work. We have a phenomenal team. If you're interested in our specific work based learning database platform. It is called Career launch southwest. And you can access that at www.careerlaunchsw.org And then there is an info@swcoedcollaborative.org email that goes to an intern that will answer any questions about that platform.

Sarah Williamson:

Well, this has been so great. Thank you.

Jessica Morrison:

Thank you so much for having me on.

Chad Bolser:

Thank you, Jessica. The work is important, and it's great to hear all about it.

Jessica Morrison:

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.

Chad Bolser:

Thanks for joining us for the Build Momentum podcast today. If you enjoyed listening, we would love to hear your feedback, and would be grateful if you would leave us a review.

Sarah Williamson:

This helps us to share these powerful stories with even more people. If you liked what you heard, we would be honored if you could share this episode with someone in your network. We look forward to seeing you next time on Build Momentum.