Happy New Year!

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SEVERAL STEPS FORWARD

Educational Leadership Development

Unit 5 of the Beat the Odds Educational Leadership Academy was held on December 5th-6th. Several educational leaders from FUSD made the video below illustrating their take-a-ways from the experiencs so far.

The Academy is the result of a collaboration between LAUNCH Flagstaff, the Center for the Future of Arizona and Northern Arizona University, with major funding from the GEAR-UP program.

Location hosting and lunch sponsorships would not be possible without the help of:

We are still looking for more community partners to sponsor lunch for the upcoming units in 2020. Reply to this email if you would like more information.

The alignment and coordination of several workforce development and economic vitality conversations continued to align in 2019 producing two major milestones that will accelerate these conversations in 2020.

Coconino Community College hired Marty Johnson to serve as an internship coordinator for CCC students, and Flagstaff Unified School District hired Tom Safranek to serve as Career Exploration Coordinator and Instructor for middle and high-school students.

Both of these positions will serve keystone roles in funneling work-based learning and career exploration opportunities for students to discover and refine career pathways that align with their individual passion and interest.

Here are some additional highlights

Law Enforcement Career Day

Financial Literacy Training

Scholarships for Students Interested in Aeronautical Sciences

Community Literacy Resource Coordination

In September 2018, Flagstaff was designated as an “Acceleration Zone” by Read-On Arizona which provides support, training and strategy implementation to LAUNCH Flagstaff for its work toward improving literacy proficiency in the early grades.

With this support, LAUNCH Flagstaff is convening representatives of community literacy resources to discuss, plan and implement efforts to improve coordinated alignment with K-3 school literacy strategies.

The team has been spending time developing a map of the programmatic landscape of community literacy resources to better understand what programs currently exist in Flagstaff and how they are demonstrating success. Still many questions remain unanswered and new questions continue to surface in their work.

One of the fundamental data points that is driving the teams efforts are the fact that only about 25% of Flagstaff community literacy resources were recognized by name among parents of kindergarten students.

Next week, a group of team members will attend a workshop hosted by Read On Arizona in Phoenix on the subject of Reaching Hard to Reach Families.

Here's another highlight.

Thomas Elementary Pilots Literacy Center Program

High-Quality Preschool Expansion

Each day we are making significant progress toward our goal of expanding access to free, high-quality, full-day, year-round preschool for 4-year-old children living in households between 101% - 250% of the Federal Poverty Level. Click to see more detail.

CAN YOU HELP?

Communications Volunteers Needed

Do you have strong communications skills? I am looking for volunteer Communications Assistants to work with me to produce communications materials (like this newsletter) across all distribution channels.

Learn More

If this sounds interesting to you, simply reply to this email and we'll chat.

Paul Kulpinski
Partnership Director

WHAT WE'RE READING

A new report from the Brookings Institute has found that low-wage work is more prevalent than expected.

“Labor market conditions are not acts of God or inevitable. They are shaped by policies, investments, institutions, and norms. Nor are citizens, workers, government, and businesses helpless against impersonal market forces. They have agency. Policies, investments, institutions, and norms can be changed- although, admittedly, it is rarely easy or quick to do so.”

Click on the report cover to read more.

LOOKING FORWARD

VIEW THE ENTIRE EVENTS CALENDAR

1515 East Cedar Avenue, Suite D-1 Flagstaff, Arizona 86004 928.773.9813 <<Email Address>>

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