A partnership between the Pleasure Ridge Park High School Manufacturing, Engineering, and Design Academy and a local manufacturer is creating internship and job opportunities for JCPS students.

"We're not only teaching them how to be workers, we're teaching them how to be professionals. If you bring them in and treat them correctly, you can really fill your pipeline needs, your employment needs, and you can watch these young kids grow with your company."
- Chad Anglin, WireCrafters

Jeffersontown High School students worked with the city's Chamber of Commerce, helping them recreate the map it uses for the annual Gaslight Festival. It's an experience that gave students real-life, hands-on experience with skills they've learned in the classroom.

"I started it because I liked hands-on and designing things.  We went over with the rough draft of the map I had and we walked J'town to make sure everything (was) where it was."
- Joseph McCoy, student at Jeffersontown High School 

The Waggener High School IT Academy has partnered with LEAP Agency, a local web design firm, to mentor students in web design and help them code a path for the future.

"This is our upper-level capstone course for the web development pathway. We developed a partnership with Leap Group. It was good because [the students] weren't just hearing from me, they were actually learning from real web developers."
- Debra Robinson, Waggener High School

Students in the Academy @ Shawnee’s Graphic Design career pathway got real-world experience producing a billboard for a Baptist Health campaign targeting teen vaping and cancer screenings through an educational partnership with The Academies of Louisville and local marketing firm, Ovare Group.

"By being able to connect in the classroom, we took this as an opportunity to let students really get a hands-on approach to the work that we do behind campaign creation"
- Jaime Bell, Ovare Group

Chef Nikkia Rhodes is the Academies of Louisville Culinary Instructor at Iroquois High School.  Through a partnership with the LEE Initiative, Rhodes and her students are serving the community while getting real-world business experience.

"It makes me feel good about myself. It makes me feel like I'm doing something positive towards the world. Chef always told me to use my talents and help the community."
- Zyrann, Iroquois High School Student

"The high schools are very important to us from an industry-wide standpoint. We have such a great need for help in the workforce. From carpentry, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, brick-laying, you name it! There's a need across all categories."
- Pat Durham, Building Industry Association of Greater Louisville

“We are so excited to partner with Seneca High School! There are so many reasons why these partnerships with schools are very important, especially in healthcare. There’s a significant dip in the pipeline; there aren’t enough workers out there to fill the jobs that we have. We are growing at Masonic Homes, so we look for opportunities to link in with students that want to be part of healthcare. [The partnership will] help us build our pipeline as a workforce and find employees that share our values.”
- Trasee Whitaker, Masonic Homes of Kentucky

Norton Healthcare and UPS launch a new program that will allow students to graduate with little to no debt and move toward careers in healthcare.

"We have pathways working all across our city, but this is the first time that two partners, two different industries [have collaborated to say how can we work together to pipeline our students onto the next level."
- Christy Rogers, JCPS