In January 2022, the Boerne Independent School District noticed that many businesses in our community were experiencing a post-pandemic challenge of filling their job openings. We could see the anguish on the faces of business owners as they struggled to keep their doors open or they had to drastically reduce their operating hours due to low staffing. As a district, we have hundreds of junior and senior high school students, and in our community we knew there were hundreds of job openings ready to be filled.
Boerne ISD took the immediate and decisive action to create an Adulting 101 program to quickly get our high school students job ready. In this program we taught our students how to create a resume, the importance of dressing professionally, interviewing skills, and budgeting tips. A few days later, we hosted Workforce Wednesday, a job fair at each of our high schools during the school day. We had over 40 businesses participate from many different industries: hospitality, restaurants, medical, dental, banking, engineering, technology, non-profits, and many more. Many of the high school students were hired at the job fair or a few days thereafter.
Boerne ISD’s workforce development initiative has made a huge economic impact in our community. Our students are learning job skills, earning extra money for college, and businesses are able to expand and thrive during these challenging times.
