Career Connect NW Funding, Changes, and 2025-2026 Focus |
Like many education and nonprofit programs across Washington, Career Connect NW has been impacted by recent state budget reductions. With some funding sources eliminated and others reduced by over 90%, we have worked over the summer to carefully review our initiatives and revise our workplan.
While these changes have brought challenges, they also give us the opportunity to focus our efforts with renewed clarity. Guided by partner and school feedback, we are aligning resources where they will have the greatest systemic and regional impact —ensuring that students, families, schools, and communities across our 5 county region continue to benefit from high-quality career connected learning opportunities.
In 2025–26 we’ll continue supporting CTE Dual Credit, High School & Beyond Community of Practice, educator training and career pathway alignment, student events like the WAVE Toursm & Blue Tech by the Bay, the NW Education & Workforce Coalition, and the recently added LEADER initiative and educator pathways access.
Read here for more details about our updated 2025-2026 workplan, role changes on the team, and our commitment to students, families, schools, workforce, and you – our valued partners in this work!
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Career Connect NW connects industry, education, and
community partners to
meet career development
needs of Northwest
Washington’s youth in
an equitable and
accessible way.
We focus on increasing awareness and access to High Wage/High Demand
career opportunities in the 5-county region.
We use data to ensure we are connecting young people to careers in an equitable way, including people who are historically underrepresented in
STEM fields, students of color, women, students living in rural areas, and students living in poverty.
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What else you'll find in our newsletter: |
- More Credit Where It's Due: CTE Dual Credit Proviso Work Underway
- CCNW Digital Makeover!
- Meet 2025 Washington STEM Rising Star Maya Winkes
- ICYMI: Catching Up with CCNW - Event Recaps
- Upcoming Events & Professional Development Opportunities
- Career Spotlight: Manufacturing & Engineering Careers with Ermias Hagos
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More Credit Where It's Due: CTE Dual Credit Proviso Work Underway |
Washington State Legislature passed 2SHB 1273, reaffirming and advancing the state’s commitment to expanding access to Career and Technical Education (CTE) Dual Credit. This legislation authorized the continued implementation of the CTE Dual Credit Expansion Proviso — a regional initiative launched to strengthen dual credit opportunities — and supports a dedicated team actively scaling the work across the region.
Read more about the team tackling CTE Dual Credit.
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Over the summer, the CCNW Team updated our webpages to make it easier for you to register for events and clock hours, find resources, and learn more about our projects.
We invite you to explore our About Us page, which includes navigational tabs for our Initiatives, Upcoming Events, News, and Educator Resources. Read more about our new webpages.
Read more about the digital makeover and how our webpages can be a resource for you!
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Meet Rising Star Maya Winkes |
Congratulations to the 2025 Washington STEM Rising Star: Maya Winkes from Mount Vernon High School representing the Northwest Region (Island, San Juan, Skagit, and Whatcom counties)!
From winning first place for projects at the Washington State Science and Engineering Fair and NASA’s Dream with Us Design Challenge, Maya is making it happen. She also ran a STEM camp this summer for youth to create more opportunities and meaningful experiences for kids.
Washington STEM Rising Stars explore STEM in ways that will support their education, career, personal development, and the development and needs of others. Hooray for Maya!
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| Maya Winkes (left) with one of her nominators Calculus teacher Steven Kreft (right) at Mount Vernon High School. Maya was also nominated by Physics teacher Eric Engman.
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Donovan Tate (left), Mary Powers (right) and "Rosie the Riveter" (middle) at WorkSource Whatcom's Young Adult Mentoring Club.
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| Catch Up with CCNW! ICYMI - Event Recaps |
Check out what CCNW has been up to since the last newsletter!
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For Teachers, Educators, Community Partners, and Professionals:
11/05/2025: High School & Beyond (HS&B) Community of Practice. Virtual event at NWESD 189. Two Clock Hours available. Learn more and sign-up to attend here.
02/19/2026 Save the Date: High School & Beyond (HS&B) Community of Practice.
05/28/2026 Save the Date: High School & Beyond (HS&B) Community of Practice.
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10/02/2025 & 10/03/2025: Washington Student Achievement Council, FuturesNW, and College Success Foundation are partnering with local colleges (SVC, WCC, and BTC) to host Financial Aid "Train-the-Trainer" events.
Options are October 2 at Skagit Valley College from 4 p.m. - 7 p.m. and October 3 at Whatcom Community College from noon - 3 p.m. Clock hours available.
Learn more and register here!
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For Students:
10/21/2025 - 10/23/2025: Washington Apprenticeship Vocational Education (WAVE) Toursm at Skagit County Fairgrounds.
***Must RSVP to attend. Invitations are going out to our high school counselor contacts the week of September 15th. Contact CCNW Career Connected Learning Specialist Donovan Tate at Dtate@nwesd.org if you have questions.
***Want to read more about the WAVE Toursm this year and who's coming? Check out our blog!
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Want to share upcoming event dates with us?
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If you are having a career-connected learning event and would like us to share it widely, you can enter your event in this form. We review each event and then add them to our "Upcoming Events" webpage tab and the next newsletter. It makes it easier to for people see what's happening in the region and when!
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Professional Development Opportunities |
Looking for Clock Hours in Canvas?
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Exploring Healthcare Careers: Student Pathways This asynchronous course in Canvas helps educators, paraeducators, counselors, teachers, and advisors in 7-12 grades (middle/high school) gain awareness around career paths to better support students interested in pursuing healthcare careers. The registration fee is $25. Course completion offers an opportunity to purchase 2 clock hours in Equity or STEM.
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Guiding High School Students: Resume 101 Workshop This asynchronous course in Canvas prepares advisors, educators, counselors, and teachers to help students build a modern resume. It is a resource for anyone helping students with resumes, and includes resume templates for students, slides to use in the classroom, and up-to-date information on how technology such as AI and Applicant Tracking Systems impact resume writing. Participants can enroll in the course and use the “grab & go” resources in the modules as often as needed. The resources are customized for schools using Microsoft platforms as well as Google platforms. This is a great resource for resume resources if your school doesn’t have SchooLinks implemented yet! OSPI’s High School & Beyond Plan requires students to build a resume or an activity log by the end of 12th grade. The registration fee is $55. Course completion offers an opportunity to purchase 5 STEM clock hours.
- Looking for online clock hours? The NWESD 189 offers many upcoming STEM clock hour opportunities! The classes are online via Canvas, asynchronous (so you can take them when and where you want, at your own pace), and between 1 and 10 hours long.
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CCNW's Career Spotlight YouTube Video Series
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Manufacturing & Engineering Careers with Ermias Hagos!
With Manufacturing Week coming up the first week of October, we are featuring Ermias Hagos on Career Spotlight this month. Ermias is a recent graduate from Western Washington University’s Manufacturing Engineering bachelor’s degree program. He secured an internship while at WWU and now he works at a large aerospace company.
Watch the 8-minute Career Spotlight video to discover why Ermias chose this career path and learn action items students can do in high school to get involved in engineering activities to build experiences.
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Sign up for the Career Connect NW e-newsletter here!
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©Career Connect NW Network. All Rights Reserved.
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CCNW Team Email: CareerConnectNW@nwesd.org
- Jenny Veltri, Career Connect NW Director
- Sinead Fitzpatrick Plagge, Career Connect NW Administrator
- Donovan Tate, Career Connected Learning Specialist
- Mary Powers, Career Connected Learning Specialist
- Vanessa Woo, Workforce Diversification and Equity Administrator
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| Career Connect NW
Northwest Educational Service District 189
1601 R Avenue, Anacortes, WA 98221 US
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