Many communities are being forced to take a hard look at how they are expending monies for community education, as well as other community services.
While, at the same time, community education programs are exploring ways of increasing services, so they can increase their repeat rate, as well as engaging new participants.
Rockwood Community Education (RCE) and Parkway Community Education (PCE), located in St. Louis County, Missouri, proactively and collaboratively partnered to form Parkway-Rockwood Community Ed. Each operated as a component of their School District and provided offerings for adults and children, but now, as Parkway-Rockwood Community Ed, they have combined resources and are offering more services with greater efficiency.
By partnering, RCE and PCE have a better product and program mix, provide greater combined resources, have improved overall services, combated competition, reduced costs of duplication, allowed staff, especially the director, to focus on the future, increased staff productivity, generated greater community support, permitted greater flexibility, and safeguarded future viability.
There is still work to do and a transition like this partnership can take up to three to five years.
The process of finalizing the partnership was not easy and, thanks to staff dedication and keeping what is best for the customer as the goal, RCE and PCE worked through many issues such as investment, leadership, fiscal agent management, structure, and so on. Both their School Boards were open-minded about the partnership, but challenged RCE and PCE to justify actions and build a realistic transition plan.
Although the partnership was rightfully staff-driven, a great deal of energy was dedicated to engaging members of the community to engender support, but also to grow awareness of community education. All staff participated in internal and external discussions, making the transition real and making them owners.
As community resources are decreased, more community education programs will be exploring partnering. Parkway-Rockwood Community Ed has developed a model that other School Districts can utilize and now, the staff is building a guidebook for how a community education partnership remains vibrant. Great work being forward-thinking, proactive, and patient, ensuring community education in both communities survives through improved partnership.
For their work, Rockwood-Parkway Community Education won the 2015 LERN International Award for Outstanding Management.
