Business leaders from across Hillsborough County visited local elementary schools to get a glimpse of how they operate and to better understand what students experience every day.
The program, CEOs in Schools, gives them a short peek into tomorrow’s workforce, said Kim Jowell, CEO of the Hillsborough Education Foundation. The Hillsborough Education Foundation sponsored the program with assistance from Vistra.
“What they do during the day varies, depending on what is going on at the school they visit,” Jowell said. Although the exact activities are not uniform, she explained that participating business leaders would all see how teachers are juggling e-students and in-class students at the same time, what a day looks like in the life of a principal and the steps teachers are taking to support their students.
The program started last year with Vistra CEO Brian Butler, a mentor to former Mort Elementary School Principal Woodland Johnson, through the Council for Educational Change’s PASS (Partnership to Advance School Success) program. Butler spent a day at the school so that he could better understand its challenges and opportunities. Woodland put him to work teaching, planning, serving lunch and performing other duties around campus.
The experience impacted him enough that he now helps the Foundation recruit CEOs from other companies to have the same kind of experience. And Butler’s Vistra team still regularly volunteers at Mort Elementary, hosting student leaders at its headquarters, sponsoring teacher appreciation events and supporting other campus initiatives.
“It involves every size business from small ones to the big ones,” Jowell said. “I just left a school where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a senior leader, we have Andrew Warren, the state attorney and several leaders from Suncoast Credit Union and other banks, including USAA. Our positions were 100% filled. We thank all of our Chambers of Commerce for participating to help us accomplish that.”
