This summer, a new director will step into the Brown County Career Resource Center when Dave Bartlett steps out on retirement.
Christy Wrightsman will transfer from her grant-funded job as Regional Opportunity Initiative Ready Schools coordinator to director of the CRC.
The school board approved her transfer in April. Starting July 1, she will work 215 days per year, earning $92,500 as the director.
Her salary will come from a separate CRC fund where all referendum dollars are held.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]The majority of any ROI grant money received will go toward programming at the CRC and in Brown County Schools with Wrightsman leading the initiatives, Superintendent Laura Hammack said.
Since last fall, Wrightsman has been working with teams of community members and educators to answer the question: How do we define success in Brown County?
Becoming the CRC director does not mean her ROI work is done. Wrightsman said it’s actually the merging of two jobs.
“The ROI job changes in the second year. Once the funding (from ROI) is established … then it’s about implementation of that design. That actual position of what the coordinator does changes (in) year two. It doesn’t go away,” she said.
Brown County Schools will submit a proposal to the Regional Opportunities Initiative this month in hopes of landing a $500,000, four-year grant. That money will help to start a course of action to “prepare and connect” students’ strengths and talents with the workforce.
As director of the CRC, Wrightsman will have more opportunity to make those connections.
The CRC was established with a Lilly Endowment grant in 2002, initially as a place where adults could complete their high school diplomas and further their education.
“When Dave decided to retire it was kind like, ‘Wow that’s really interesting,’ because we’re already communicating and working together. … It really became a seamless fit that the director of the career resource center would be able to implement what ROI decides,” Wrightsman said.
Wrightsman was hired as ROI coordinator last July with a $150,000 grant through the Ready Schools Initiative last summer. She was the principal of Van Buren Elementary at the time.
Since then, she and a local Education Workforce Advisory Team have been interviewing more than 100 people from the schools community and community at large about educational needs related to the region’s workforce.
At an April Education Workforce Advisory Team meeting, the group was able to create three pillars of a system that they hope the ROI will fund. Those pillars are: A “ready student”; innovative teaching and learning; and community and regional engagement.
“In these pillars, we will be establishing our graduate profile — for example, what do we want our graduates to look like? What do we want our educator profile to look like? What do we want our educators to be able to know and do? What do we want our community and the region to be able to know and do?” Wrightsman said.
“We will have multiple programs that fall under those three pillars that we hope ROI will fund,” she said.
The goal of the program is to ensure success for every student, from preschool to adult.
Wrightsman foresees the CRC continuing with the programming it already offers, as well as supporting and coordinating other programs “that will really leap pre-K to adult.”
One idea is making sure kids are exposed to more career and job opportunities throughout their time in Brown County Schools, like by creating internship opportunities, field trips to workplaces, and continuing the CRC Speakers Bureau at Brown County Junior High School.
Wrightsman said the CRC will have a focus on continuing education as well, and on linking higher education institutions with Brown County High School. “That (link) has been happening for a long period of time with dual credit (college-high school classes), but I think now with the regional engagement as well and this conversation of pre-K to adult, we’ll be able to further those higher education opportunities for students,” she said.
“What we found is that just does not stop at 12th grade. We really have to have that pre-K-to-adult conversation in order to help people in their educational journey at all ages.”
Hammack said she sees this change as a positive step for Brown County. “Having made significant connections to the Southwest Central Indiana region, Christy will be leading a revitalization and reinvention of the CRC into a thriving hub for post-secondary opportunity for the Brown County community,” she said in an email May 1.
The CRC is led by a steering committee, and those members also will play a role in the new era of the CRC. Wrightsman said she looks forward to “hearing what their goals will be and what they see as a need and vision for the future.”
Wrightsman and the steering committee will be revamping the CRC’s mission and vision statement.
“As the CRC director, personally, I really want people to know that the CRC is there for everyone. This is a location, an institution, a place within our community that fits pre-K to adult. It is a hub of resource for our community members.”
Wrightsman wants the community to know that CRC will remain the place for local people to go to further their education and, ultimately, find employment opportunities, whether it be obtaining a high school equivalency or earning an associate’s degree.
She said she would love to make opportunities for intermediate, junior high and high school students to participate in activities at the CRC as well.
“I think it’s important for the community to know that the services and the opportunities the career resource center has offered in the past will absolutely still be there; we’re just going to be uniting some other opportunities with those as well,” she said.
