Both the Rockford Public Schools and the Rockford Chamber of Commerce came together Thursday to share their plan to start kids on the path to one day enter the Rockford workforce, as early as kindergarten.

“The Rockford Public Schools have 25,000 students in the district,” said Einar Forsman, President and CEO of the Rockford Chamber of Commerce. “These are our future leaders, our future workers, folks we need to pay attention to, in our community.”

Dozens of people gathered for the Chamber’s Education Outlook luncheon at the Radisson Hotel & Conference Center, 200 S Bell School Road, on Thursday afternoon, where Superintendent Dr. Ehren Jarrett laid out his plans to make the Rockford school system the ideal education destination for families considering moving to the area, while turning Rockford into one of the top ten communities in the nation.

“The long-term vision for the Rockford Public School [District] is to become – and continue to be – the first choice for families,” Jarrett said.

Jarrett says he hopes to do so by implementing a new scoring system for all 40 schools within the district, which he says will reveal what improvements students are making, rather than through grades and test scores alone.

“[We want to track] how far they have to go to be where they want to be, but also we want to be able to point out, are they making progress every year?” he said.

Jarrett says that starts with students at the very beginning of their school careers.

“[We want to] highlight the big investment in early childhood that we’ve made,” he continued. “We actually topped the state average in kindergarten writing scores.”

Jarrett says, moving forward, there will be no age limits within the district when developing a career path for students.

“For example, students that want to become engineers some day, starting as early as kindergarten or first grade with LEGO clubs, that will eventually become robotics clubs,” he said.

That means, starting at five years old, RPS students will be developing skills that district officials hope will prepare them to eventually join Rockford’s workforce.

“The students coming out of school, whether it’s high school or whether it’s college, are prepared for the workplace,” Forsman said. “Not just from the skills standpoint, but from the mindset of what it takes to come to work every day, communicate with your supervisors, follow through on your assignments, and so on.”

Jarrett said, “We want our businesses to hear that we’re working hard to make sure that they have access to great talent.”

Rockford Public Schools are also an economic engine for the city, as the school district is the second largest employer in Rockford. Leaders say the majority of their employees have Bachelor’s or higher post-graduate degrees, bringing higher paid residents to the region.