Priority 3 of 5
Career readiness and workforce development
A diploma should open doors. Students should leave with skills, experience, connections and a plan for what comes next.
Bobby will expand partnerships between DPSCD high schools and Detroit employers across technology, the skilled trades, healthcare, manufacturing, construction, hospitality, finance, transportation and the creative industries — and strengthen entrepreneurship education so students can see themselves as owners, not only employees.
Detroit does not lack employers. It lacks the bridges between a sixteen-year-old and the people doing the hiring — the internship, the site visit, the person who says "call me when you finish".
The district is already moving on this. The $13.5 million High School Redesign begins with this year’s ninth graders, adding pathway choices and dual enrolment at Wayne State, U-M Dearborn, Ferris State and Wayne County Community College. Davis Aerospace has returned to City Airport with aircraft maintenance, flight operations and drone technology on site.
The board’s job now is to make sure those doors open for the neighbourhood high schools too, not only for the schools that already send students to college.
The goal: Every student should graduate with a pathway — not just a diploma.
What that means in practice
- More partnerships between DPSCD high schools and Detroit businesses
- Internships, apprenticeships, job shadowing and work-based learning
- Industry-recognised credentials and practical experience
- Mentors and professionals who open doors students would not otherwise find
- Entrepreneurship education, so students can see themselves as business owners
He already does this
College nights, scholarship events, university tables in a school gym. Getting an eleventh grader in front of somebody from Wayne State is not policy — it is a Saturday and a room and a lot of phone calls.
See the workThis is bigger than one seat
Parents who show up are the whole strategy.