Partnerships with our Chamber of Commerce and some of our local businesses often provide students with an exposure to a variety of career or employment opportunities that lead to realistic career goals. These relationships often provide a real-world work application to theoretical classroom content and give students an incentive for staying in school. We hope that what will result is a long term improvement in work-readiness and in the productivity of the local work force. It is also a desired outcome that students have a better understanding of the free enterprise system. After all, our country is based on a free market capitalist system. Finally, we are very grateful for the strong support we receive through our Business/Education Partnership Committee.

Partnerships with some of our community agencies have targeted common goals and a sharing of resources. We have worked hard to keep open lines of communication so that we can work together effectively and support the students of our community. Through our Local Management Board we have partnered on several grants that have been targeted at issues students may deal with in school as well as in the community. There have been many initiatives dealing with afterschool programs, safe schools, mentoring, and family services that we have been able to implement through our joint efforts. Without the support of our Local Management Board and many of the Queen Anne’s agencies, many of these support programs would not exist.

I am very thankful that we have strong working relationships with our businesses and our community agencies and organizations. I know that working together, we can accomplish anything and I believe we must always remember that it is for our children and for their future that we need to keep these partnerships alive and well!