Fairview Park Schools joining Greater Cleveland Career Consortium

Originally published April 12, 2023, by John Benson, special to Cleveland.com

FAIRVIEW PARK, Ohio -- The end goal of the Fairview Advantage is for Fairview Park City School District graduates to have successful careers.

That’s why the district is taking a major step in focusing on career planning by joining the Greater Cleveland Career Consortium.

“My view in bringing the Greater Cleveland Career Consortium here is that I think that the sooner the students start thinking about what their strengths are and what skills they possess and how those skills might translate into employability skills the better,” Superintendent Keith Ahearn said.

“They can start planning a future for themselves where they can secure financial stability and plan a future to be contributing partners of our community and whatever community they choose to reside in.”

The Greater Cleveland Career Consortium boasts a mission statement that every student graduates with a career vision and plan, as well as attains the confidence, knowledge, education, skills and networks they need to own their future and contribute to a competitive regional workforce.

“This came out of Cleveland Municipal School District and they’ve just kind of expanded it,” Ahearn said. “They have an approach to career planning, exploration and decision-making for kids that comes along with a curriculum.

“Now they’re inviting inner-ring suburbs and other schools in Northeast Ohio to join this consortium to sort of level up the ability and leverage the resources in helping students find their career paths.”

Built to lead and designed with equity in mind, the consortium aligns public, private, education and nonprofit organization resources to measure outcomes for continuous improvement advance policy and mobilize resources for continued systems integration.

“The major piece of this is the Greater Cleveland Career Consortium has really worked on a grades 6-12 curriculum where students engage in what they should know and should be able to do about career planning,” Ahearn said.

“In the lower grades in middle school, it really focuses on what their strengths and weaknesses are, as well as look at career job family groupings of what potential careers are that are out there. It asks them to do a deep dive on required skills for careers they might be interested in.”

Fairview Park City Schools’ participation requires a $6,893 expenditure related to the implementation of Transeo, as well as a one-time implementation fee and high school transcript portion.

The superintendent called Transeo a one-stop platform for career planning with different modules assisting students on their journey.

“This partnership and their goals help us take the things we were already doing and gives us a platform to expand,” Ahearn said.

“Students hopefully in the fall will see some of that curriculum rolled out in the lower grade levels to support career exploration and curiosity around careers really early in the year.”