School-Based Business Alliances
One page document that describes the Business Alliance program.
Business Alliances Improve Career Awareness magazine article about Wake County's Business Alliance program in Techniques, a publication of the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE). If you are not already an ACTE member, you can create a guest account to view the article.
Business alliances are an integral part of the educational process in Wake County. Business alliances provide advice, contacts and service to thousands of Wake County students.
The work of volunteers on school-based business alliances is led by a group of business volunteers and educators. This group is known as the Wake County Business Alliance Leadership Team.
The mission of each business alliance is to provide support and workplace realities for teachers and students and to be a catalyst for engaging business and community organizations to prepare all students to be career focused and globally competitive.
Strategic Planning
Each school-based business alliance engages in a yearly cycle of strategic planning to ensure that alliance activities are helpful to the school. Each fall, the alliance meets with school leadership to review the school's 3-year school improvement plan. The alliance then draws up an alliance strategic plan. Every spring, each alliance reports on their success in implementing their strategic plan. Other than these two deadlines, alliances are on their own to design programs and activities that help their school and students.
Activities
Typically, alliance strategic plans contain some of the following activities:
- Staff professional development
- Technology support/training
- Resource speakers
- Student leadership training
- Shared use of equipment and facilities
- Career fair participants
- Tutor/mentor programs
- Student tours
- Teacher tours
- Alliance business expo
- Academic achievement recognition
- Classroom partnerships
- Student internship opportunities
- Job shadowing opportunities
- Apprenticeships
- Summer teacher internships
- Web site development
- Electronic mentors
Effective Alliances
Time and experience has taught the school system many lessons in creating and sustaining successful school-based alliances. Although there are many models for business alliances, the following overall keys lead to a successful school/alliance relationship:
- Leadership and commitment of the principal
- Dedicated coordinator at the school
- Support of the business alliance chair
- Action and goal oriented business alliance members
- Commitment to a "Win/Win" relationship
- Regular attendance at alliance meetings
- Commitment to the business alliance strategic plan
- Structure that will ensure focus, involvement and sustainability.
Who Does What
Alliances are also effective when those involved are aware of their specific responsibilities and work to meet their obligations. Following is a list of alliance members as well as their specific responsibilities. This is a general list, and may not cover the situation of every business alliance:
Principal
- Works closely with the alliance chair to provide leadership for the alliance
- Collaborates with the alliance chair on meetings, activities, and strategies
- Supports alliance activities, ensures alignment of alliance activities with the school improvement plan
- Attends meetings
- Appoints a school liaison (CDC)
- Communicates alliance mission, goals, activities to faculty, parents and community
Alliance Chair
- Works closely with the principal to provide leadership for the alliance
- Engages in the school/business alliance strategic planning process
- Works with and collaborates with the principal to call meetings and set agendas
- Facilitates the meetings
- Empowers the business alliance members to achieve planned goals
- Maintains the focus on implementing the strategic plan
- Communicates alliance mission, goals, activities to business and community
Alliance Members
- Attend business alliance meetings
- Provide input into the strategic plan
- Assume responsibilities for implementing the strategic plan
- Obtain resources necessary for implementation of the plan
- Build relationships with teachers and students
- Market with concept of business alliances with potential new alliance members
- Communicate alliance mission, goals, activities to business and community
Career Development Coordinator (CDC)
- Build relationships between the businesses, teachers, students, and PTA
- Collaborate with business alliance chair to develop the meeting agendas
- Provide support for alliance teams working on action items
- Facilitate the school/business progress at faculty meetings
- Promote business alliance opportunities for teachers and students
- Provide evaluation/feedback for completed business alliance activities
Business Alliance Rules
Each alliance is encouraged to develop their own school-specific set of bylaws that covers the following issues:
Regions
Each Business Alliance is in one of six regions in the county. This chart (PDF 20 KB) shows which business alliance is in which region.
Logos and Logo Usage
The following guidelines are intended to help with the proper placement of logos on alliance brochures, documents and websites.
WCPSS Logo
The Wake County Public School System has a logo that should be placed on every school system publication. In the case of websites, this logo should be should link to the main school system web site, www.wcpss.net. In addition, the school system logo should be placed on all school letterhead, as outlined by the WCPSS Communication Department Standards Manual.
Business Alliance Logo
Business Alliances should use the School-to-Career logo on all of their communications. This would include brochures, web pages, videos, posters, etc.
Wake County Public School System programs are staffed and offered without regard to race, gender, age, color, religion, national origin, citizenship status, political affiliation, or disability.