Career Pathways Institute
Need
The importance of an educated, trained, and well-prepared workforce cannot be underestimated. Businesses consider workforce as important as location, energy costs, and incentives when locating or expanding a company. If a community cannot meet employer demands relative to education, skill development, and workforce preparedness, companies and jobs will leave the region for a community that will.
According to the 'Battelle Study' Growing Jobs, Industries, and Talent: A Competitive Advantage Assessment and Strategy for Nebraska, (prepared in 2010 for the Nebraska Department of Economic Development and Nebraska Department of Labor) manufacturing was identified as a "primary industry cluster driving Nebraska's economy." The study also concluded that the lack of availability of highly-skilled workers and talent development is not keeping pace with the rising skill requirements in the workforce. This "widening skills and opportunity gap" was echoed in the 2011 report Pathways to Prosperity prepared by Harvard Graduate School of Education.
The Grand Island area is not immune to this skilled labor shortage. During the last four years, Grand Island Public Schools representatives and Central Community College representatives have met with business leaders from local manufacturing and industry to discuss these shortages and devise a plan to cultivate skilled labor from our area high schools.
In 2009, a team of 19 community leaders toured two Arizona career and technical education programs, the East Valley Institute of Technology and the Western Maricopa Education Center. They brought back with them a dream and a sense of urgency to design a technical education program in the Grand Island area to prepare high school students in skilled labor trades needed at local manufacturing plants and businesses.
A design team of approximately 40 people was established. This team met over a six-month period starting in the fall of 2010, to determine the mission and initial curriculum for this technical education program. The sessions were led by Dr. George Copa, director of New Designs for Learning at Oregon State University. In October 2011, members of this team traveled to Oklahoma to see the Francis Tuttle Technology Center in Oklahoma City and the Meridian Technology Center in Stillwater.
The Career Pathways Institute is the result of this community design team's labor. The Career Pathways Institute (CPI) will prepare up to 400 high school students annually in the following trades: Transportation/Logistics; Manufacturing/Industrial Technology; Drafting; Information Systems; Construction Technology; Hospitality/Tourism; Communication Systems; Health Sciences; Business/Marketing/Management; and Welding.
In December of 2009, the Grand Island Public Schools purchased the former Pentair Building on Adams Street and began work to allocate funds to renovate the building into a career technical campus. In July of 2012, the Grand Island Public Schools named a general contractor to renovate the facility to include labs and classrooms for five of the pathways. With an expected opening date of August 2013, this facility has a current need for the specialized manufacturing equipment that students will be trained to operate.
Objectives
The Career Pathways Institute has two objectives. The first is to close the gap on the skilled labor deficit for businesses and industries in Central Nebraska by training students in these skills during their junior and senior years of high school. The second objective is to graduate students with marketable skills so that they may earn a living wage right here in our community.
Students will be introduced to the pathways as early as 6th grade. By 8th grade students will have taken a career assessment and will begin working on a career plan with their parents and school counselor. High school freshmen will take the introductory courses in the pathway/s that interest them. Students who have an interest, and demonstrate proficiency in the Career Pathway's Institute's curriculum, will commit to the program as sophomores. Once they undergo an application and interview process, and are accepted into the program, the students will officially enter the Career Pathways Institute as juniors and seniors.
Pathway courses will be dual-credit courses where students can earn college credits while earning high school credit. This dual credit scenario sets students up to be near their Associates degree as they graduate from high school. Students can either go straight to work with their marketable skill, continue at a community college and earn their Associates Degree, or continue on to a Baccalaureate program in that trade.
The Career Pathways will initially be offered in three locations, Grand Island Senior High, Central Community College, and the Adams Street Campus.
Benefits
In the manufacturing sector alone, there is expected to be a 6% growth of jobs by 2020, (Nebraska Department of Labor). Given the current environment noted in the Battelle study Growing Jobs, Industries, and Talent: A Competitive Advantage Assessment and Strategy for Nebraska, the availability of workers at current levels will not support this growth. We see the Career Pathways Institute being part of the solution to this issue for Central Nebraska businesses. Training high school students in the technical trades that are reflective of the needs of this area specifically will certainly add to the availability of a skilled labor force. This skilled labor force and the availability of training will also drive economic development in this area. Central Nebraska will become even more attractive to business and industry.
Additionally, the students who pursue a Career Pathway will graduate high school with a marketable trade. They can go on for more education or they can go directly into the workforce at a living wage.
Career Pathways Sustainability Plan
The Grand Island Public Schools and Central Community College are committed to the Career Pathways project. The two entities have drawn up an inter-local agreement laying out their specific roles and expectations. At this time the Career Pathways Institute will be funded largely by Grand Island Public Schools as they prioritize tax dollars. Students from other districts who are admitted to the pathway program will be treated as option students with their associated state aid dollars following them for the time they are participating in the pathway.
It is the hope to eventually create a state-wide levy similar to what is done in the state of Oklahoma. They have 29 technology center districts that receive tax funding as percentage of the mill-levy (much like the Educational Service Unit ESU structure in Nebraska). This would make the Career Pathways Institute an entity all its own, separate from any one school district. It would also give other areas of Nebraska the ability to replicate what we have done in Grand Island and make technical training an option for many Nebraska students.
Specifics for the use of our Rotary grant funds would be to help fund the equipment and material needs for the labs and classrooms in the five pathways. The Grand Island Education Foundation, who leads the fund drive for Career Pathways Institute, has developed a list of this equipment and materials totaling over one million dollars. This list can be made available upon request.
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