Hilco Redevelopment Partners today released the details of the Career Connected Learning system presented to the School District of Philadelphia to help prepare Philadelphia School District students for the jobs of tomorrow. The proposal supports real-world classroom readiness training for Philadelphia School District students and prioritizes preparing high school graduates to pursue careers and advancement opportunities. Hilco Redevelopment Partners, the real estate development unit of Hilco Global, remediates and redevelops complex and obsolete industrial properties.
Philadelphia’s Career Connected Learning system proposal lays out a large-scale plan to pair meaningful, high-quality, on-the-job experiences with classroom training to prepare all students to compete for good jobs and earn industry-valued post-secondary credentials.
“We commend the School Board’s considerable effort to ensure all young people graduate from high school prepared to pursue sustainable careers that pay a living wage and create ongoing opportunities to advance,” says Roberto Perez, CEO of Hilco Redevelopment Partners. “We believe this is a powerful and meaningful step toward simultaneously meeting community needs while providing broad inducements to attract world-class employers eager to tap a well-trained and prepared workforce.”
The Career Connected Learning system comes with a number of measurable commitments placed on Hilco and its contractors, starting with the company securing $1 million of services from Philadelphia Works to assist with the design and early implementation of career preparation activities. These activities include pre-apprenticeships to prepare students upon graduation to participate in apprenticeships and other post-secondary training necessary to secure permanent employment.
Other elements of the Career Connected Learning system include:
- The creation of virtual informational interview days to help students identify areas of interest for future apprenticeships.
- Partnering with the local youth organizations to develop and make available paid, career-connected summer internships to Philadelphia high school students.
- Direct involvement by Hilco Redevelopment Partners leadership to provide the School District of Philadelphia insight and guidance on the curriculum design and development of work-based learning experiences.
- Partnering with The Philadelphia School District’s Office of Academic Support and The City of Philadelphia’s Commerce Department to generate in-person or virtual career awareness activities, job fairs, and job shadowing opportunities as well as work-site tours.
“Through these and other commitments, we are confident that Hilco Redevelopment Partners and their contractors will become an invested partner in the City and District’s Career Connected Learning initiative,” says William R. Hite, Jr., Ed.D., superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia. “By engaging Hilco’s leadership, we see an enormous opportunity to create real-world career-based training that not only makes education more relevant but builds direct pipelines to permanent employment. Hilco Redevelopment Partners will invest its own resources and leverage the resources of its partners to achieve our goal and prepare our students for the jobs of the future.”
In addition to securing commitments from Philadelphia Works, the company is proposing partnerships with over a dozen schools and youth development organizations throughout Philadelphia to assist in ensuring District students and graduates have the exposure and preparation needed to join the Hilco Redevelopment Partners team and/or contribute as active members of Philadelphia’s workforce.
