Episode 74: Preparing Students for the Workforce with Dr. Tracy Vitale

SHOW TOPIC
Preparing Students for the Workforce with Dr. Tracy Vitale

SPECIAL GUEST
Dr. Tracy Vitale, Seneca Valley Superintendent of Schools

Dr. Tracy Vitale proudly serves as the Superintendent of Schools for Seneca Valley, which is one of the largest public school districts in Western Pennsylvania. Prior to becoming Superintendent in 2011, she was an Assistant Superintendent, Principal and Teacher in urban, rural and suburban environments in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. She has a strong understanding and experience in community relations, public education advocacy, business partnerships and workforce development. She also has an extensive background in personnel selection, training & supervision.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE WILL REVIEW
• An overview of how SV is preparing students for the workforce
• The many opportunities SV has to help students prepare for the future
• Parent resources for college and career development
• Partnerships with local businesses and universities

Transcript

FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)

00:00:02:27 - 00:00:10:11

Welcome to Voices, a national award-winning podcast brought to you by the Seneca Valley School District. 

00:00:11:11 - 00:00:16:24

Jeff Krakoff: Today I'm with Seneca Valley Superintendent Dr. Tracy Vitale. Thanks for joining us today.  

0:00:17:18 - 00:00:24:07

Tracy Vitale: Thank you for leading these and moderating these podcasts for us. Jeff They've been great. 

00:00:24:14 - 00:00:53:04

Jeff Krakoff: They're always fun. I learn something new every time I do this. So speaking of something new, you can't look at the news without people talking about this workforce shortage. People cannot find people to fill so many jobs, not only here, but, you know, around the country. So let's focus a little bit about you and your role as superintendent in Seneca Valley as a school district. How is the school district involved in workforce development?  

00:00:54:08 - 00:02:19:23

Tracy Vitale: Thank you. Yes, the workforce shortage is certainly impacting every business and every sector, including schools. You know, we're very concerned about teacher shortages. We're very concerned about shortages with our essential workers in our cafeteria, paraprofessionals, custodian maintenance. So I don't think school districts are immune from this workforce development issue. And certainly we're working on a number of initiatives with our human resources department. They were actually at a um, it's called the Perk Job Fair yesterday, which is a Pittsburgh regional job fair to recruit educators for next year. And they attend many of those types of events across our region. But also I think schools play an important part when it comes to students and how are we preparing our students for the workforce. So I'm so glad that our communications department has decided to focus on this topic. I know that today I'll be kicking this off, but I know that our listeners will also hear from Darla Ramirez-Lightner, who is our coordinator of Collegiate and Career Affairs, to talk about her role in the school district and how she prepares students for the workforce, how she prepares them for college, and going to career fairs and taking students to those job fairs, apprenticeships and other types of career resources.  

00:02:19:25 - 00:03:55:19

Tracy Vitale: And then I know you'll hear from our high school principal, Mr. Bob Ceh, and he can talk more specifically about our co-op program, our career pathways, which is really exciting. I love the work that we're doing there and our Graduation Project, which has been going on for many years at Seneca Valley, even before I was superintendent, and what that means for workforce development and for preparing our students for the future, but all kinds of different ways that schools continue to prepare students for the workforce. But especially now and I know the other special guests that you'll be hearing from is our executive director of the Butler County Area Vocational School from Dr. Hiller, talking about the opportunities for our children, all children in Butler County, to experience hands on learning and receive vocational certificates before they graduate, and how we go about getting them connected to the workforce right away. And then you'll hear from Jess Pyle. Ms. Jessie Pyle is our coordinator of Transition Planning Career and Vocational Education. And you'll hear from one of our parents, who's also a librarian in our district. So I'm very excited about this topic. I'm very passionate about this topic. As a child of three and one of the children in my family went into medical, I went into education and my brother and went to be an auto mechanic. I think it's really interesting all the different paths that that students can take and be successful. 

 00:03:55:21 - 00:04:14:16

Tracy Vitale: So I'm pretty proud of the offerings that we have at Seneca Valley. I think that sometimes Seneca Valley can get a bad rap because we're so big, You know, what does this big school system do? But what I love about Seneca Valley being so big is we have so many more opportunities than maybe other districts could offer. 

 00:04:14:27 - 00:04:39:04

Jeff Krakoff: Right? So as you mentioned, we're going to dedicate future podcasts and a lot of more detailed specifics. But from a high level, you know, whether a student is interested in four year college, community college, the trades or vocational training or any other opportunities coming out of high school. What is Seneca Valley doing to prepare students? Just as an overview. 

 00:04:39:06 - 00:05:48:19

Tracy Vitale: Yes. So number one, we start with our whole mission of being a public school. You know, what is the mission and vision of Seneca Valley? And our main goal is to make sure that we prepare students to be productive and contributing citizens. Now, what does that look like in a global economy? What does that look like from a whole child perspective? So undoubtedly, our number one goal is academics and education. However, we recognize that that looks very different for every child, that they have different learning pathways, different career pathways and I don't want to forget about the military. We have recruiters that come in and talk to our students, right? We have typically every year we have typically 1 to 3 students that go to military academies. And so there are just so many pathways that our students can take. And so we begin preparing them at a very early age, talking about career exploration, even in our elementary schools. And then we begin to fine tune that a little more in our middle schools and making sure that they have many exploratory options. 

 00:05:48:21 - 00:07:37:06

Tracy Vitale: So we want them to get a taste of different types of preparation for. Different types of pathways after post-graduation, but also we want to make sure they have experiences in all of those different fields. Careers look so much different today than when I went to school, when others went to school, maybe even when our parents went to school, that the traditional pathways look very different. And, you know, medicine has really been specialized now to include things like biomedical engineering. And the students are very good here at Seneca Valley. When you talk to them about what are you thinking? You know, we don't get the typical doctor, lawyer, teacher military answers that we used to. They really have a great view by the time they're seniors of what it is they like, what it is they don't like and what they're passionate about. And I think if they can express that verbally and they've had experience in you know, I just watched a student panel last week with our leadership team and there were about 20 students from the high school talking about what they've done in apprenticeships, what they've done with job shadowing, what they've done at the Vo-tech, what they've done in our own technology department here in becoming certified welders. You know, we just have such a wide array of student interests. But what I love is it's not just about their interests. I listened to students talk about, well, you know, when I tried this, I realized I don't like that or I'm not good at that. And I think that kind of career exploration is just as important as figuring out what you like.

 00:07:38:04 - 00:07:57:26

Jeff Krakoff: So I know you do that as an early age with students, as a school district, but what recommendations would you give to a parent who wants to better prepare their child? What kind of conversations should they have? What kind of actions can they take to make sure that their children are best prepared for the workforce? 

 00:07:58:14 - 00:10:33:17

Tracy Vitale: Well, I'm certainly no parent expert. I don't know that any of us are. But I think that from a parent perspective, learning what are all the opportunities at Seneca Valley. Looking at our program of studies, which is almost as large, if not larger than many of our colleges and universities that they offer for post graduation. And so looking at what are the opportunities and then having a conversation with their student and their child when it comes time to schedule, you know, because they're it can become overwhelming. And then if the parent doesn't understand or the child doesn't understand using we have wonderful school counseling departments using that resource and calling the school counselor and talking about this is what my child's thinking about, this is what I'm thinking about. But most importantly, knowing that, you know, think about in my own house, you know, my husband's in the chemical business, I'm in education, and my son is very interested in science. And so that that is an area that I don't know as much about. You know, what are all the different career opportunities in science? I was an English teacher, so I understand those opportunities much better. So how can I use my child's school resources to help him and prop him up and support him in his choices? And ultimately saying, when a child says, well, I want to be a doctor, that's great, but what type of doctor? Have you job shadowed a doctor? What are all the different avenues in medicine? Have you taken Latin at Seneca Valley? Because we offer Latin as a world language and a lot of schools don't. That can really help you. Do you know how that helps you in pre-med? So trying to line up all the opportunities and making wise choices and guiding our children, but not necessarily making the choices for them. Having open minds about careers look different today, and there are many more people switching careers and careers look different because of teleworking now. And so are we open that the world that our children are growing up and is not the world where we started with career exploration. So how can we be supportive about all those different opportunities and help our children to take the step and lean into maybe opportunities that they wouldn't have considered otherwise? 

 00:10:34:14 - 00:10:47:18

Jeff Krakoff: Yeah, very interesting. I did want to ask you, I know as superintendent, you have a great working relationship with Butler County Community Development Corporation or their CDC. What's that all about? 

 00:10:48:05 - 00:12:58:20

Tracy Vitale: Yes, I have been on the Butler County Community Development Corporation. We call the Butler County CDC for many, many years. Think I'm serving my second term now. I was nominated by someone on the board community leader and I represent with another school superintendent in Butler County. I represent the K to 12 kindergarten through 12th grade perspective. And on that board we have community leaders, we have county commissioners. All three of our county commissioners are on that board. We have a staff of three. It's a 501 (c) (3), and there's a very small staff of three. We have an executive director, an administrative assistant and an accountant. And our job is to promote economic development in the county, the entire county. And how can we attract employers to come here to Butler County? And then how are we preparing our children to take those jobs one day and to fill those jobs? And how are we establishing partnerships with businesses? So there are quite a few business leaders sitting on this board with me. And we also take lighted properties that haven't been paying property taxes for quite some time. And maybe there's a reason we they haven't been developed and sometimes we will purchase those properties or take those properties over, get them back on. The goal is to get them on the back, on the tax books, but also to attract businesses to our county. And so the whole notion of community development, economic development, we work in partnership and none of us are paid to be on this board. We are volunteers were elected by that board internally. And then we, you know, talk about all the different things that are impacting our businesses, our workforce from the county level to even, you know, we have higher ed's sitting there. Representatives from Slippery Rock and Butler County Community College, they are a great partner. And we talk about how can we get work to come here and how can we keep the work here, keep the businesses here for our young people. 

 00:12:58:22 - 00:15:09:09

Tracy Vitale: And it's really been eye opening for me over the years to hear what is it the business world wants from our graduates and then for them to hear how can the business world support us as a K to 12 school? How can the business world prop up and support our community college and our, you know, our higher education institutions? So that has been a really great partnership with a number of different partners. And they have I can't tell you the amount of properties that the organization has put back on the books, working with partners like the Business Hub in Cranberry Township, like Duquesne University, Small Business Development Center, like Tri County Manufacturing Consortium, these are all really great partners. Butler County Tourism & Convention Center could go on and on with the amount of partners that come to the table. And some of our current projects include the Pullman Center Business Park Expansion in Butler, Victory Road Business Park, Pullman Center Business Park and the Christ Road Business Park. So if we can get those parks to have tenants and flourish in all of our communities, that's revenue for our school districts. But more importantly, from this broad consortia partnership, it's about propping up Butler County. And so the staff of three also offers really great services when it comes to okay, a business from the south is looking to relocate or open an office in the north or open a new business in the north. Then we work with them on site selection. Sometimes we work with them on financing small business loans. We work with them on site development. So that has been very interesting, I don't think. Many of our parents are constituents, sometimes understand or even our staff understand that the job of a school superintendent, especially in Butler County, is much larger than just making sure we deliver high quality academics to our children. 

 00:15:09:11 - 00:15:58:15

Tracy Vitale: We have curriculum experts for that and you'll hear from the front line as we go through this podcast, this series on workforce development. I have really great people that work at Seneca Valley that love children and really want to see them succeed after graduation, and that's why Seneca Valley is so successful. But I am on other boards in the community building partnerships to make sure that we can prop up Butler County as a whole. It's not just about Seneca Valley, but it's about attracting work to our county and keeping our children working in the county if that's where they choose. And if they choose not to work in the county, are they prepared for the global economy? Are they prepared to work in jobs anywhere in the world? That's our goal. 

 00:15:59:02 - 00:16:19:06

Jeff Krakoff: So Dr. Vitale, what a great experience of perspective this gives you. But you know, whether it's working with Butler County CDC, or being on the board of other similar organizations, what particular things have you learned about the importance and the role of a school district in developing the workforce? 

 00:16:20:24 - 00:18:11:06

Tracy Vitale: That we need to develop as many partnerships as we can because we're so much better when we connect the dots that a school district shouldn't be working and operating in a silo. It is a public school. It's a public commodity that, you know, we are as public schools, we are promoting democracy in this great nation. We're preparing all children from all walks of life to be productive and contributing citizens locally and globally. And so the more partnerships that I work on and the more people I work with, even outside of the district, in the county and in neighboring counties and in the Commonwealth, the more I learn about how to better prepare our children for their future world, whether that's military, vocational jobs, straight into the workforce, you know, how can we best like, you know, one dilemma we're working on right now, as many of our teens can work, they want to work part time jobs, but they may not have transportation. So how can we work on that? Sitting with community leaders in all of our townships, municipalities and boroughs, how can we get kids who want to work, who can fill these jobs, who are very mature? How can we get them to the jobs if they don't have a car, if we don't have public transportation for our children? So that's one dilemma we're working on right now. And that's not a challenge that a district can solve on their own. We need parents and business leaders to come to the table and talk with us about ideas they might have to help with the transportation issue and in many of our local communities. 

 00:18:11:19 - 00:18:30:17

Jeff Krakoff: Wow. You've shared so much great information about what the district's doing and just the role of a district and a superintendent of being part of the bigger community. But is there any additional information you'd like to share with listeners, whether we're talking students, staff or parents about workforce development? 

 00:18:32:21 - 00:19:51:27

Tracy Vitale: I think that Seneca Valley is a great place to prepare. I've been in other school districts and although my my the longest part of my career has been at Seneca Valley for 21 plus years, the other districts that I had been in would sometimes work in a silo. And Seneca Valley has never done that. In every day we're getting better and better. You know, public schools aren't perfect. No school is perfect. But what I'm so impressed with at Seneca Valley is the amount of opportunity students have if they choose to take the step in that direction. And when you hear from our front line folks moving forward in this series, I hope that our listeners will learn about new opportunities that maybe they didn't know about, that they can encourage their children at home to become a part of. Because, you know, we don't learn by listening. We learn by experience. We know this. And so if we want children to be off their technology and communicate, we have to give them more experiences in the current workplace, more experiences, job shadowing, more experiences in internships and apprenticeships. And those are all the things that we're working on every day to get better, to get better at and to connect children and students with. 

 00:19:51:29 - 00:20:16:28

Jeff Krakoff: Yeah. So from what you said is about learning. So last question. If I'm a student, if I'm a parent and you know, I want to learn more about what opportunities exist out there for me post-High school graduation, you mentioned earlier a good first step might be the school counselor. What action can parents take to find out all that's available to them? 

 00:20:17:08 - 00:22:16:03

Tracy Vitale: Well, definitely the school counselor. But also you'll be hearing from frontline folks like Ms. Pyle, who was the coordinator of our transition planning. She is an amazing resource. All of the people you will hear from are amazing resources and I think you know, sometimes we underestimate just the power that the classroom teacher has on our children when it comes to workforce development. You know, one example is our secondary science teachers. They know where so many summer internships and apprenticeships are for the students that are honing in on science careers, pre-health, pre-med. So reaching out to your child's classroom teacher Better yet, having your child have a conversation beyond the content lesson today with their classroom teacher. Because also sometimes our students will kind of overestimate what they have time to do because they're involved in so many different things sports clubs, activities. So what do they have time to do? Where are the paid internships? If that's what you want for the summer. Our classroom teachers get a lot of those notices from our research institutes in Pittsburgh and other places, so they're really great at connecting. But also, you know, our classroom teachers, even at the elementary level, know where there are really great summer camps for children. The district is always putting out a lot of information in our newsletter on our webpage, but I think sometimes people get overwhelmed. There's so much information that they don't know where to start and how to weed through all of that. It's always great to start with our front line our teachers, our school counselors, our principals. They know where many of these resources are and they can redirect you to, oh, remember the district put this in the newsletter two months ago. You might have missed it. Here's the link. So they're really great at connecting the dots for our parents as well. 

 00:22:16:05 - 00:22:23:16

Jeff Krakoff: Well said. So this was Superintendent Dr. Tracy Vitale. Thank you so much for your time and all the great information today. 

 00:22:24:05 - 00:22:25:27

Tracy Vitale: Thank you, Jeff. Have a great day.