Washington Community Schools Selected for Ready Schools Initiative

Regional Opportunity Initiatives (ROI) has selected Eastern Greene Schools and Washington Community Schools for participation in the fifth cohort of its Ready Schools initiative. Through this keystone ROI program, each school district will receive a development grant to participate during the 2026-27 school year.

“I am incredibly excited about what this partnership means for Eastern Greene Schools,” said Doug Lewis, superintendent of Eastern Greene Schools. “This is about much more than preparing students for a job after graduation. It is about creating a seamless Pre-K through Grade 12 experience where students develop a sense of purpose, discover opportunities available to them, and graduate with a clear plan for their future. By working alongside families, local stakeholders, and regional experts, we can create meaningful learning experiences that connect the classroom to the real world and prepare every Eastern Greene student to contribute to their community and Indiana’s Uplands region.”

“Washington Community Schools is excited to be selected for the Ready Schools Initiative,” said Kevin Frank, superintendent of Washington Community Schools. “While we already have many strong programs and opportunities in place, this initiative will allow us to take a thoughtful, comprehensive look at how we can build on those strengths and better prepare every student for success after high school. We look forward to bringing together educators, students, families, community partners, and local employers to strengthen pathways that connect classroom learning to college, careers, and meaningful opportunities in our region.”

The Ready Schools framework is an immersive design thinking process that provides school districts with support and funding to reimagine and realign PK-12 curricular and programmatic offerings to meet the specific educational and workforce needs of employers in the Indiana Uplands region. The goal of this initiative is to enable school districts to engage business leaders, community stakeholders, parents, and students in meaningful dialogue about what success means within their community and to develop a strategic plan to obtain that success. The result is a collaborative approach and a comprehensive planning process designed to support students in achieving their academic and career goals through alignment with workforce opportunities in the Indiana Uplands.

Once school districts complete the first four Ready Schools phases (Discovery, Synthesis, Ideation, and Refinement), they are eligible to apply for implementation funding to activate comprehensive strategic plans.

“Through Ready Schools, districts take an active role in strengthening the region’s future by connecting student learning to the current and future workforce opportunities in the Indiana Uplands,” said ROI President and CEO Tina Peterson. “By engaging educators, employers, families, and community partners, this process helps school districts design strategies that better prepare students from their earliest years through graduation for meaningful careers close to home.”

An important component of the Ready Schools initiative is its emphasis on the workforce needs of the region’s leading industry sectors, helping schools and students develop pathways into high-opportunity jobs in the Indiana Uplands. ROI’s Occupational Needs Assessments, which analyze workforce trends and in-demand jobs, regularly identify three highly specialized industry sectors as drivers of the region’s economy: advanced manufacturing, life sciences, and national security and defense. All three sectors are seeing recent pronounced growth in physical presence, creating an even greater need to develop a pipeline of talent to support regional employers.