Once Kara Hunt learned about a grant to help students develop in-demand employability skills that will help them prepare for careers after high school, she filled out the application and submitted it.

Earlier this month, she received a news release from the Indiana Department of Education that announced Medora Community School Corp. is among 58 schools across 40 counties receiving Employability Skills Innovation and Implementation Grant funding.

Medora’s allotment is $107,632. Another Jackson County school district, Seymour Community School Corp, received $20,256.84. Overall in the state, the funding totaled $10 million.

“As soon as I got the email from the state, I knew this was right up our alley, it’s what our kids needed,” said Hunt, principal of Medora Junior-Senior High School. “We do prepare kids for college, and we implemented more dual credit opportunities this year, but every kid isn’t going to college, and that’s perfectly OK. They can make a great living, and we want our kids when they leave here to have a leg up.”

In the spring, Hunt and guidance counselor Jessica Wischmeier visited Perry Central Community Schools, which has really focused on preparing students for career readiness.

“We looked at their program and we immediately knew it was for us,” Hunt said.

Then this grant opportunity came about, and Medora partnered with Equitable Education Solutions and talked to community partners to provide two types of training, a certification and a program. The grant funding will allow those to be offered at Medora starting in the 2023-24 school year at no cost to students.

One is OSHA 30 training. The 30-hour Occupational Safety and Health Administration program is designed to help create a safe working environment for workers by teaching the systematic approach toward preventing and eliminating any work-related hazards, according to oshatrainingschool.com.

“That is also something they were doing at Perry Central, and that just makes them more career ready, especially with a lot of industrial jobs in our area,” Hunt said.

Students also will be able to earn Microsoft Office Specialist certification before they leave Medora High School, demonstrating they have the skills needed to get the most out of the various Office programs, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

Also, Medora students will be able to receive training to earn a commercial driver’s license to operate large, heavy or placarded hazardous material vehicles.

Finally, a micro-credentialing program will focus on communication, collaboration and work ethic that students can take with them across industries.

“A lot of those tie up to the employability standards, which are a big part of that STEM certification that we have for the elementary, so just pushing that on through so that they are continuing to learn about those things through junior high and high school,” Hunt said.

Employability skills will be added to the current curriculum, she said.

“A lot of those are already embedded in what we do with Project Lead the Way in the elementary, and also this year, what they’ll do in middle school is three or four Project Lead the Way units, and in high school, they’ll do two,” Hunt said. “It’s just getting those employability skills to make them more marketable for when they leave high school.”

The state partnered with All4Ed and BloomBoard to pilot a set of micro-credentials, which also could be known as skill development badges, that signal student mastery of career-readiness skills needed for success after high school.

The pilot will launch this fall at Mitchell High School in Lawrence County, Purdue Polytechnic High School-South Bend in St. Joseph County and Irvington Community High School in Marion County.

IDOE will work with state and community partners to evaluate the success of micro-credential completion and determine whether to scale the program to students statewide upon conclusion of the pilot.

For Seymour’s grant funding, it partnered with Jackson County Industrial Development Corp. to benefit Seymour High School. Details about how that money will be used were unavailable.

Grant funding is allocated as part of the state’s federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief II plan. Originally slated for $7 million, an overwhelming number of high-scoring applicants expanded the total award amount to $10 million.

As part of their grant proposals, schools detailed how they will leverage these funds to help students showcase proficiency in Indiana employability skills and how they will work with partners to help blur the lines between pre-K-12, higher education and the workforce through career exploration, engagement and experiences.

Successful proposals included a strategic plan to evaluate program implementation and report data on student outcomes.