Education & Workforce
College Access in McLennan County
K-12 to Post-Secondary
A high school diploma signifies basic education and is critical to adult thriving, but postsecondary education or training expands economic opportunities. Prosper
Waco is involved in several initiatives to improve local rates of postsecondary education and training.
Prosper Waco partners with Communities in Schools to create a streamlined path for students to transition from high school to college. CIS is tracking students throughout the college enrollment process during high school with the goal of increasing access to postsecondary options.
Prosper Waco partners with Baylor University, McLennan Community College, Texas State Technical College-Waco, Tarleton-Waco, and Texas Tech-Waco to develop collaborative ways of connecting families, students, and school district leaders to promote studies beyond high school.
Prosper Waco collaborates with local schools and Texas Impact Network to increase College, Career, and Military Readiness among high school students. We assist in pinpointing best practices schools are using.
Prosper Waco provides data services for Waco Foundation’s Duncan Scholars program, which promotes Hispanic education opportunities.
Opportunity Youth Focus
Prosper Waco is committed to building, supporting, and sustaining multiple reconnection pathways that achieve better outcomes in education and employment for “opportunity youth.” These are young people aged 16-24 who are disconnected from school and work.
Prosper Waco is serving as a backbone agency in partnership with The Aspen Institute to create systems-wide and community level changes to achieve better outcomes in education and employment for opportunity youth. The network provides technical and funding assistance to help partners strengthen collaboration, increase community/program expertise, and build capacity to leverage policy and funding to scale and sustain opportunity youth pathways at a regional level.
College Access in McLennan County
Prosper Waco is committed to equitable workforce development practices that promote
skilled talent for local businesses and family-sustaining wages for community members.
UpSkill Waco
UpSkill Waco is a collaboration to increase education-to-workforce system alignment and build McLennan County’s capacity to provide equitable workforce training pathways to underserved populations in high-demand, high-paying occupations. The initial courses piloted were construction core/industrial systems, medical office, and hospitality for adults 18+.
Training & Neighbor
Prosper Waco is partnering with Texas State Technical College’s effort to bring an industrial training facility to the heart of the Industrial Parkway. It would support the
training needs of existing employees and create industrial training offerings targeted at the skills gap of the growing industrial workforce.
Prosper Waco is setting up a recruitment team to work with partner organizations to leverage formal and informal relationships in target neighborhoods and create access points in those neighborhoods.
Teacher Pipeline
Alternative-Teaching Certification
Prosper Waco is committed to convening decision makers in order to improve the teacher pipeline for the betterment of students in McLennan County. The group is working to build a cohesive process in providing and maintaining a diverse, quality teacher and paraprofessional workforce to serve local K-12 programs. We are specifically promoting efforts that will help ISDs have a teaching staff that better matches the ethnic/racial student populations in their schools.