Years of discussions and planning across El Paso County’s industries and school districts culminated Thursday afternoon during a ceremony to bolster the local workforce.

Announced last year by the Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC and education nonprofit Peak Education, Innovate Pikes Peak is a collaboration designed to close skills gaps in the region by connecting urban and rural students to local high-demand industries.

Elected officials, local business leaders and education advocates gathered at Weidner Field’s McDivitt Premier Club in downtown Colorado Springs to watch representatives from Lewis-Palmer D-38, Colorado Springs D-11, Calhan RJ-1, Ellicott D-22 and the Pikes Peak Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to increase access to career education in the region.

Innovate Pikes Peak Project Director Jessica Warren called the signing “a defining moment for our region.”

“It’s a regional commitment to ensuring that every young person in El Paso County … no matter what corner you’re in, can access the career pathways, the skills and the opportunities that lead to family-sustaining wages to drive our region’s economy.”

While each district has made its own investments in trades and career and technical education (CTE) in recent years, the MOU marks the first collaborative agreement by more than two school districts for aligned career pathways and shared access across the region.

Widefield D-3 and Peyton 23-JT opened the manufacturing education center, the MILL, in 2017, before D-3 became the sole tenant. Last year, the Pikes Peak BOCES gained approval to develop a vocational education campus near Peyton while RJ-1 opened its own CTE facility. This year, D-11 opened its new innovation campus, The Colorado Springs School of Technology, while D-38 welcomed its first cohort of students to its new Career and Innovation campus.

Warren said this new MOU will work toward providing students access to all these different options, regardless of the district they attend. She added that health care, aerospace, cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing are the five defined career pathways that they hope to build out in the coming years.

“This is not how our system was built. We have to think so much more broader, so much more systemic and we have to truly say, ‘We’re interdependent here and we don’t need to build on our own,’” she said.

Among the immediate additions are a pair of new industry-sponsored Capstone projects for two of these pathways. D-38 will offer a project for advanced manufacturing, while D-11 will host a cybersecurity and software project at CSST in spring 2026.

Bolstering workforce readiness education and addressing job shortages in the Pikes Peak Region are nothing new. Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC President and CEO Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer cited a 2023 Newmark study on economic development, which found the city lacking in K-12 preparedness for careers in local industries, as the catalyst for forming Innovate Pikes Peak.

Work then began connecting community partners in industry, education and philanthropy that same year to develop a postsecondary initiative similar to the Cherry Creek Innovation Campus in Centennial.

As part of its 2025-28 strategic plan, the Colorado Department of Education set a goal for 100% of high school graduates in the Class of 2029 to have a quality work-based learning experience, college credits or an industry-recognized credential.

Peak Education President and CEO Carlos Jimenez noted that Innovate Pikes Peak will work toward meeting this goal and that this approach wouldn’t have been possible with the previous outcomes expected by public education. Namely, the thought of neighboring school districts sharing practices, transportation and resources was practically unheard of.

“Today, we are turning those narratives on their head with the leaders that are in this room,” he said.

“The leaders in this room have chosen to have an abundance mindset and to overcome those early cynical narratives by prioritizing community, our future economy, our workforce and, most importantly, prioritizing the future of the students that we all serve.”

In addition to the specialized coursework currently in development, local industries partnering with the school districts plan to host field trips at their plants and facilities to provide students greater exposure to potential careers.

D-22 Superintendent Chris Smith was among those in attendance to sign the MOU and said it presents “another leverage point” for students in his small rural district east of Colorado Springs who may otherwise be unable to access these programs.

“There are so many opportunities. Don’t be hindered by imaginary taxes or boundaries,” he said. “Especially with things like transportation, it may take all of us working together. We can’t keep denying these kids.”