The  Battle Creek Educators Task Force is involved in many collaborative efforts within the Educators' Task Force itself and  with partners from around the Battle Creek Community. These partnerships involve working with other local eduation partners and with non-profit agencies like the United Way, Summit Pointe, the Great Start Collaborative, the Juvenile Courts, The First Tee of Battle Creek, Starr Commonwealth, the Advocates, the Regional Health Alliance, the City of Battle Creek, Battle Creek Unlimited and many others.

School District Collaborations

The Battle Creek Public Schools, the Harper Creek Community Schools, the Lakeview School District, the Pennfield Schools, and the Calhoun Intermediate School District have a long history of collaborating with each other. A formal collaboration began in 2007 when three teams, the Human Resources Collaboration Team, the Business/Finance Collaboration Team, and the  Technology Collaboration Team began working on collaborative projects. In 2008, the area of district curriculum (Curriculum Collaboration Team) was added to the collaboration, and in 2009 the Transportation Collaboration Team was added, with the City of Battle Creek joining in as a partner. Below is a brief summary of the progress made by each collaboration team.

Human Resource Collaboration Team (HRCT)

The HRCT has begun several collaborative efforts where the Battle Creek city school districts  and the Calhoun Intermediate School District are now working together. The HRCT implemented a substitute teacher staffing consortium using Kelly Services as the contractor. All substitute teachers are fingerprinted, contacted and paid by Kelly Services saving time and money for the districts. Currently, the HRCT is working on rebidding this contract to take advantage of favorable contracting conditions. The HRCT also implemented the Applitrac "on line" application program. This has morphed into a county-wide system where all applications for school districts are completed on line. Applicants need only apply once to be considered in applicant pools across all county schools. The HRCT reviewed hiring flow charts to ensure districts were following legal requirements and standards, to standardize procedures, and to determine steps for hiring an individual. The HRCT also alligned job descriptions, training, standards, and qualifications for support staff position such as secretaries, custodians, bus drivers, and maintenance personnel. Work for 2009-2010 includes cross department and cross district process (data) mapping. The HRCT will also be reviewing labor contracts for various support groups within the districts.

 Business/Finance Collaboration Team (BFCT)

The BFCT has also been hard at work during the past two and 1/2 years. They have worked together to set timelines and Deployment Estimates on Recommendations for Review; they have shared travel and PD policies, procedures, documents, and RFP's; discussed and shared procedures for NSF checks; put out a 403 (b) RFP for a third party administrator; put out a Bus Camera System RFP; they shared on-line purchase order capabilities, they reviewed vendor lists for collaborative purchasing opportunities; and are exploring many other areas for possible sharing of information and procedures.

Technology Collaboration Team (TCT)

The TCT has a huge job facing it. Their work is closely intertwined with the other collaboration teams. Some of their work included the completion of a comparison of finance and human resource/payroll features, promoting efficiencies through identifying and streamlining district process steps, and the sharing of document imaging strategies and solutions. A data warehouse with data population was implemented and is  ongoing. Other projects include technology leasing, group technology purchasing, focused knowledge sharing and learning from other district "lessons learned".

Curriculum Collaboration Team (CCT)

The CCT is trying very hard to make the curriculum offerings and pacing in the Cityof Battle Creek as similar as possible. This has largely been accomplished in elementary mathematics, language arts, and science. We are moving much closer in social studies. This is very important for children who are highly mobile and need these similarities to keep from falling behind due to transfering to new districts and having to learn a whole new system of procedures and language. The CCT is also developing a joint Report Card for the elementry schools in Battle Creek. Using similar assessments and reporting procedures, identical procedures will make it much easier to determine how successful we are being in educating students across the city. The CCT is also concerned with 8th and 9th grade failure rates, which lead directly to students dropping out of high school. The CCT and local schools are looking at many areas identified as triggers to student failure.

Transportation Collaboration Team (TRCT)

The TRCT began meeting in the fall of 2009. Partners in this collaboration team also includes many of our Battle Creek private schools and the City of Battle Creek's Transportation System. This team began its work during the beginning of a financial crisis for school districts in Michigan. Because of this, everything is on the table for this team. Although major changes like consolidation of transportation systems or privitization of all or part of our transportation systems are not the main goals of this team, these possibilities are part of the discussion. More likely work includes cost savings that can be derived from shared purchasing, shared maintenance, hub busing of students to outlying special eduation programs in Bellevue, Albion and Athens and  hub busing of Math/Science Center Students.

Educators'  Task Force and Community Collaborations

The Educators' Task Force has learned that much of what it takes to help students be successful in school is not within the control of our schools. Schools have no control over items like early childhood education and care giving, parental attitude toward school, homework completion, nutrition, substance  use and abuse, parental oversight of children, mental health of children, and other crucial factors. Schools have no control over these items and little expertise in helping children overcome them. It's important for the success of our children that their education become a total community effort. The Educators' Task Force has reached out to several community agencies, groups, and individuals to help make sure our students  getting all of the skills they need. to be successful in school and in life. 

Early Childhood Task Force (ECTF)

The Educators' Task Force conveined the ECTF in August of 2008 to discuss the development of an early childhood eduation and care plan for Battle Creek. The ECTF has been working with the Great Start Collaborative to develop a plan. After agreeing on what it would take to have children ready for schools the ECTF developed a formula which states that Ready  Families + Ready  Health Care + Ready  Early Childhood Care and Education + Ready  Communities + Ready Schools = Ready  Children. A ready team, developed for each of the areas named above, has been created to recommend their portion of the early childhood plan.

Youth Support Group

The youth support group was founded jointly by the Educators' Task Force and Calhoun County Prosecutors' Office under then Prosecuting Attorney, John Hallacy. This group later merged with the JPA but retained the name of Youth Support Group. This group includes representatives from the Coordinating Council, the Juvenile Courts, the Prosecutors' Office, the Juvenile Probation Office, the Calhoun Intermediate School Distirct (CISD), the Educators' Task Force, Summit Pointe, Starr Commonwealth, the WK Kellogg Foundation, the Advocates, the Calhoun County Juvenile Home and the Battle Creek Public Schools. This group has worked to eliminate issues that prevent students from being successful in school as a result of behavior that occurs outside of school which cause students to run afowl of the legal system. Some successes of this group include increased access for probation officers to student records and increased communication between probation officers and school officials; improved communication between the juvenile home and home school of the student; training for all school counselors in the Youth Assessment and Screen Instrument (YASI); the assumption of the Advocates program by Starr Commonwealth; the use of the Advocates for long-term suspended students; Lakeview School Truancy Pilot (joint effort between juvenile courts, Lakeview Schools, and CISD which has now been adopted by other Battle Creek Area School Districts); Truancy Diversion Program (in development); and other projects.

Youth Mentor Program

Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Battle Creek, HandsOn Battle Creek, Junior Achievement, and The Educators' Task Force are parterning to provide mentors for two high poverty elementary schools in Battle Creek. These groups are identifying mentors and linking them with students at Ann J. Kellogg and Prairie View Elementary Schools. These mentors will meet with children who are close to being successful, but need a little help. Although small to start (about 28 mentors), we hope to grow this program to over 50 mentors in each school.

Dolly Parton Imagination Library

The Willard Library, the Felpaush Foundation, the Educators' Task Force, and the WK Kellogg  Foundation have partnered to bring the Dolly Parton Imagination Library to children born after May 1, 2008. Children registered for this program receive an age appropriate book each month until their fifth birthday. Currently we have nearly 1,000 children from the four Educators' Task Force districts signed up for this program.

Community Literacy Collaborative (CLC) www.battlecreekliteracy.org

The CLC is a joint collobrative effort of the Greater Battle Creek United Way and the Educators' Task Force. The CLC was established in 2006 to bring order to the over 50 literacy programs in Battle Creek, none of which was linking with other literacy progarms. The CLC developed work teams for schools, adults, work force and pre school. These groups worked with literacy groups in their areas. Recently the CLC has refined its work to concentrate on workforce and family literacy.

Teaching American History

Teaching American History is a grant funded project that began as a Battle Creek Educators' Task Force project and has now expanded to much of Calhoun County. The purpose of this project is to deepen the knowledge of teachers of American History, while also challenging the pedagogy these teachers use. The goal is to bring alive the study of American History for our students, while also making it  more challenging and more relevant. Our partner in the project is Michigan State University.

Other Historical Collaborations:

Project TIME

Project TIME was a five year federal grant funded project ($5.7 ) whose work was the integration of technology into social studies and science in the public schools. The partner districts explored the best ways to integrate technology and develop several instructional strategies and ideas (including the MLToolbox) which are impacting how we educate children in Battle Creek today.

Staff Development Team

This group effort of the curriculum directors from the members of the Educators' Task Force led to many cooperative ventures within the Battle Creek Educational Community. Through this team we began explorations into work which led to the adoption of the Teaching and Learning Cycle throughout Battle Creek. This group also got us started down the common curriculum path in our elementary schools

Profesional Develoment Consortium

The Professional Development Consortium is still in existance today and provides professional development to all members of the Educators' Task Force at little or no cost. If a district or entity is offering professional development to its staff, then that opportunity is also offered to other members  of the Educators' Task Force on a space available basis. Sign up for the offered PD is electronic.

Our Vision of How Battle Creek Might Look in The Future 

Education in general is a very proprietary endeavor. In most places, there is little substantive cooperation between community organizations and the public schools. Schools are increasingly expected to be a panacea for all the social ills of society. While there are many very good organizations whose mission it is to work on those social ills, most do not work very closely with their local public schools. The schools themselves share much of the blame for this as they have been somewhat closed organizations. In Battle Creek, we have begun to change that paradigm, and the schools, both individually and through the Educators' Task Force, have begun to reach out to our community organizations. We envision a future where the children of Battle Creek are the central focus of many community organizations, including the schools, working together collaboratively for the good of Battle Creek's children. In essence, that is the Battle Creek Compact for Children.

The Battle Creek Educators' Task Force believes that the following quote from Margaret Wheatly describes what needs to happen in Battle Creek to bring this vision of  how Battle Creek could look in the future...if we can do what Wheatly describes.

"In our observation, clarity at the core of the community about its purpose changes the entire nature of relationships within that community. These communities do not ask people to forfeit their freedom as a condition of belonging. They avoid the magnetic pull of proscribing behaviors and beliefs, they avoid becoming doctrinaire and dictatorial, they stay focused on what they're trying to create together, and diversity flourishes within them. Belonging together is defined by a shared sense of purpose, not by shared beliefs about specific behaviors. The call of that purpose attracts individuals, but does not require them to shed their uniqueness. Staying centered on what the work is together, rather than on single identities, transforms the tension of belonging and individuality into energetic and resilient communities."