NEW YORK: More than 200 businesses are involved in a career-readiness program at the high school, which used a $65 million voter-approved referendum in 2015 and an annual technology levy of $2.5 million to blow up the traditional learning model and begin working with students as early as the ninth grade on career interests.

Corporate partnerships have been alive and well in high schools across America for decades. But a looming labor shortage and a growing urgency to address Minnesota’s unyielding racial achievement gap, is prompting changes in how businesses participate in hands-on learning.

The race is on to help students more quickly figure out their interests and aptitudes and then get them trained.

“It’s our imperative to help students understand what 21st century workplace skills are,” said Kathy Funston, who recruits business partners for Burnsville High School’s Pathways program. “We’re able to take your mom and fad’s vocational education class and turn it into a highly skilled pre-engineering program.”

The focus is no longer just on students who might be better suited to community college and the trades. Across the state, corporations are donating thousands of dollars and their employees’ time to teach students how to do such things as draw architectural plans, make replacement parts with 3-D printers, write computer code and create marketing campaigns.

Companies such as Polaris, Medtronic and Ergotron are helping to develop curricula at Wayzata High School and are working side-by-side with juniors and seniors through the school’s Compass program.

In northwestern Minnesota, businesses aligned with the Minnesota Innovation Institute have trained more than 40 students at Bemidji High School in mechanical fabrication, basic hydraulics and certified production technology to address the manufacturing skills gap.

The Burnsville school district is embarking on one of the state’s more comprehensive efforts to prepare its students for the work world.

“If you don’t get students involved when they’re younger, if you don’t allow them to explore the things that interest them, you snuff that candle out early on,” said Ryan Moffitt, director of service training at Walser Auto Group, whose foundation has given $275,000 to Burnsville High to upgrade the school with the same equipment used by dealerships.

Tribune News Service