SJSD partnership with community college seeks to provide more education, training options

By SARAH THOMACK
St. Joseph Post

A new partnership will bring more education and training options for St. Joseph residents to help meet the needs of the local workforce.

According to a press release, the Kansas City-based Metropolitan Community College (MCC) Board of Trustees approved a partnership with the St. Joseph School District to offer expanded education and training opportunities in St. Joseph.

“The St. Joseph community has asked MCC to support two-year adult career and technical education in the area,” said MCC Chancellor Kimberly Beatty, in a written statement. “We are excited to be partners in meeting workforce needs for the community.”

Kristi Bailey with the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce said the classes will be at Hillyard Technical Center. MCC will be taking over all the adult education programs and will be able to expand what’s currently available and add more courses. Through a partnership agreement with Missouri Western State University, MCC will also be able to create a path to bachelor’s degrees.

Bailey tells the St. Joseph Post, this partnership will bring more educational options to St. Joseph.

“For those kids graduating from high school and they don’t know exactly what they want to do yet, they will be able to get a community college education here in St. Joseph while they figure things out – if they want to go straight into the workforce into a technical field or if they want to continue to take classes to get a four year degree at Missouri Western,” Bailey said.

The Chamber was involved in the years-long process to make this partnership a reality, including providing results from a St. Joseph Workforce Survey and other data. Bailey said they also meet weekly with different businesses to discuss issues and find out how the chamber can help. Recurring conversations revolved around the workforce and not being to find the workers needed to fill open positions.

“The chamber has been working with educational groups and lots of different groups for about four years to try to get the right people at the table and make sure they were aware of what our businesses need and so it has been a long process but a good one,” Bailey said.

The transition will begin during the 2019-20 school year. The partnership between the SJSD and MCC is pending final approval from the SJSD Board of Education.

For more information, go to saintjoseph.com.