Marley Park Elementary School, 15042 W. Sweetwater Ave., recognizes the time is now to encourage and create young entrepreneurs, which is the focus of their signature program. Dysart Unified School District superintendent Dr. Quinn Kellis envisioned every school within the district to own a signature program, and Marley Park students look forward to a future Markey Park Community Market.

But for now, Marley Park principal Jessica Felix and assistant principal Kara Sehr are working to have students find a problem people deal with as well as a solution to find a fix.

“In a designed thinking situation you create a solution to a problem and students get to form an idea and learn what the steps are to get there in order to solve that problem,” Ms. Felix said. “This skill is something they can use for a lifetime.”

This year students are building a business plan, while others may still be working through the thinking process, and the ideas are open-ended through the different grade levels. Ms. Sehr said students are world problem solvers and thinking about it globally can make a big difference, and anything can spark some interest in them to move ahead.

“Even if they are not creating something all the time, but understanding a problem happening in the school you can change,” Ms. Sehr said. “They can come up with ideas us as adults don’t see. This is also a very close community so if they see a problem, our HOA is open to partnerships to see how the solution can be brought to the community.”

Ms. Felix said for the older kids on campus they are being shown the processes and showing them career opportunities guiding them into the next steps, while the young group will have to think more abstractly.

“The challenge we have is we don’t want this to turn into a market where people have a garden and are just selling flowers,” Ms. Sehr said. “We want them to walk away with the process and know the steps it to took to become an entrepreneur and putting some depth into those skills to take with into adulthood.”

Selecting an area of focus for each grade level can look completely different. From there, they can create a small business plan for their specific product. Then, researching the cost of materials, create marketing and analyze the cost and demand for the project.

“We hope to have students and the Marley Park Community Market partner with community businesses so the kids can learn from entrepreneurs right here in their own community who went through this process too and learn from their successes and failures,” Ms. Felix said.

Additionally, the Young Entrepreneur program at Marley Park is helping students to understand money and how to be good managers of it as well. This will tie into the community and building trust and sustainability. The administration will eventually call on volunteers from community businesses to take this program under their wing and continue to build a community of strong entrepreneur leaders who can give back to the community that helped to create their success.

Marley Park Elementary is using teamwork, leadership and collaboration for students to acquire real-world business skills for a successful future. This campus has offers a challenging Cambridge curriculum program to interested middle school students that includes high school credit after the successful completion of Algebra 1 Honors in eighth grade.