The Cochise County Superintendent of Education and Fort Huachuca Garrison Commander are working together to advance education and workforce opportunities in Cochise County.
Fort Huachuca Garrison Commander Colonel John Ives and Cochise County Superintendent of Education Dr. Jackie Cray have begun a Fort-County collaboration to develop, retain and recruit young professionals in the area.
For Dr. Clay, a retired Army commander, it’s important to target K-20 students (kindergarten through college) and foster relationships between the school district and Fort.
“So somehow we’re going to collate and match what’s going on in schools across the county and partner with the Fort Huachuca organization so that students can be verified again,” Clay said. “They go to school now, because they have to see the world beyond those walls, beyond those walls.”
“Sustainability is what matters. Sustainability for our children,” she continued.
For Col. Ives, it is important to bridge the gap between school and workforce by drawing the attention of high school, college and skilled professionals to the civil service opportunities available on base, and by teaching professionals to guests at schools. .
“Fort Huachuca’s future is really in the realm of multi-domain operations, which means operating within the electromagnetic spectrum,” said Ives. “And when we talk about operations inside it, we talk about signals, we talk about physicists, we talk about electrical engineering.”
Colonel Ives explained that traditional military control extends beyond air, land and sea into cyber, space and the electromagnetic spectrum. This requires simultaneous control of cyber and space.
He combined it with the land of Fort Huachuca, the restricted airspace, and the Tombstone military operations airspace, allowing the fort to extend airspace for training to the New Mexico border, and military installations to be licensed. said to be the only multi-domain operational range training complex in the United States.
Colonel Ives said this will open up a variety of workforce opportunities that Fort is trying to fill.
Mr Ives said: “That means we’re going to be doing all sorts of jobs, from tourism and hospitality to everything. I’ll help you. I’ll do it in this range.”
Both sides say the partnership is in its early stages, so no formal agreement or funding has been allocated yet. Dr. Clay said he plans to survey local school district superintendents in June about what they would like to see from the collaboration.
“We’re working on a superintendent’s roundtable and we’re going to look at all the top five education concerns,” said Clay. “And what we’re going to do is get Colonel Ives to talk about what’s going on at Fort Huachuca at that roundtable.”
Colonel Ives said the roots of the partnership began when he saw the Fort’s strategic plan. He found a lack of information from educational experts in the field.
“Especially if you’re going to talk about hospitals, housing, fun things, education, things that draw people into a community,” Ives said. So… how do we expand beyond the Sierra Vista into Douglas, Bisbee and all the other towns that we don’t focus on right outside our gates.So build a community It’s about building a community, not just with Sierra Vista, but with Cochise County.”
