History

History | Who We Are | Board Members

Taunton Area School to Career (TASC) was created in 1995 as a business/education/community partnership called at that time the Taunton Area School to Work Local Partnership, with seed money for 3 years from the federal government. Actually the partnership was business driven, since nationally, businesses were saying they were not happy with the skills that graduates had or didn’t have as they came into the work world. In 1994 Congress passed the National School to Work Opportunities Act, which created business-education partnerships throughout the country in general and Massachusetts in particular.

In 1998, when the federal money ended, Taunton Area School to Work Local Partnership incorporated and became a 501©3, private, non-profit called Taunton Area School to Career, Inc. And we have been growing ever since. The Partnership is made up of many collaborators. We serve 3 school systems (Bristol County Agricultural High School, Bristol-Plymouth Regional Technical School and the Taunton Public Schools). We work with various businesses, business associations, municipal offices, and civic organizations as well as Bristol Community College, the Taunton Area Chamber of Commerce, the Taunton Career Center, the Bristol Workforce Investment Board and the other school to career partnerships under the umbrella of the WIB.

Basically we are about:
• Teaching academic, technical and employability skills to our students.
• Extending the classroom into the workplace.
• Connecting work and learning.
• Having students focus on transferable skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, decision-making, team building and leadership.
• Having all students able to make more informed career decisions.

Certainly, we are trying to deal with some of the workforce development challenges that exist now and will exist in the future:

• The typical person will change careers six times during his or her lifetime. This indicates the need for a workforce that does not have one specific set of skills but the ability to learn new skills as technology evolves into a greater part of our everyday lives.
• There continues to be critical workforce shortages in specific industries, especially health care.
• Employers are looking more for employees with soft skills (such as interpersonal relations, critical thinking and problem solving) more than hard skills (such as computer literacy, writing and technical skills). Many employers believe that hard skills can be taught if a person has the desired soft skills. In other words, applicants must demonstrate the ability to learn on the job.
• How can communities accomplish the goal of producing a workforce that can learn on the job? Reports suggest that experiential learning in the form of work-based learning (such as job shadowings and internships) can academically motivate students to learn.
• And how are work-based learning opportunities delivered? – through business-education partnerships such as TASC.

You’ve heard it before – it takes a village to raise a child. TASC helps the village to come together for that purpose.

Want more information? Call 508-821-2846 or email Nancy Antonucci at neantonucci@yahoo.com.


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