Virginia Ed Strategies is seeking education and business partners to enhance existing or implement new innovative projects that focus on strengthening a community or region's talent pipeline. This brief application is meant to gather information about the challenges you and your partners would like to address and to ascertain your interest in collaborating with our organization to develop and refine solutions. All applications must be received this evening by 7 PM Monday, September 16.

Any school division, business, community organization, chamber of commerce, local government, regional council, foundation, college, or other entity is an eligible partner for the purposes of this application, but for the project or collaboration to be considered, at least one partner must be a K12 school division. The lead applicant is the organization submitting the project proposal on behalf of all project partners.

Proposals will be reviewed by Virginia Ed Strategies staff and partners.  Selection will be made based on evidence of the partnership/proposed project having as many of the following criteria as possible:

Existing, working partnerships already in place,

Partnership involves more than one K12 school division,

Partnership has diversity in types of entities - K12, college, business, chamber, economic development, local government, etc.,

Activities are being planned to address both technical and "soft" skills of students,

Employers are committed to providing work-based learning experiences for high school students,

Plan includes setting measurable goals and gathering data for evidence of outcomes; external evaluation would be ideal,

Some resources may already exist to begin project work, and

Consideration is being given to how ALL students will have access to programs and activities.



Selected partnerships/projects will be announced at 11am on September 17 with the Secretary of Education, Atif Qarni, and Chief Workforce Advisor, Megan Healy.