State of the Union Address by President Donald J. Trump February 5th, 2019
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New bill aims to link students with job skills

Federal lawmakers have introduced a new bill in Congress that
would give federal grants to states to put toward linking up students
with training for specific industries in need of skilled workers.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass.,
sponsored the bill, called “The Providing Innovation to 21st Century
Careers Act,” that would help pay to provide student training.

Some of the industries that would benefit would be aerospace, health
care, construction and energy. Murray said on a media conference call
Wednesday that the idea for the bill came from her discussions with
employers around the state of Washington.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done to get our economy back
on track,” Murray said.

Hobart Machined Products Inc. in Hobart is one such business that is
having trouble finding workers to fill openings. Hobart supplies
aerospace parts and hardware.

Rosemary Brester, CEO of Hobart, said her business needs “hands on”
workers who can do electronic assemblies and quality dimensional
inspections. The company has found that such unique technical skills are
hard to find among locals, Brester said.

Programs already exist to provide specialized training — but there
is little broader coordination, according to the Senator’s staff.

Meanwhile, students are slipping through the cracks as high school
dropout rates rise.

Stephanie Hoag, a 2008 graduate of Seattle’s Aviation High School,
was held up on Wednesday as an example of what education-business
partnerships can do. Hoag is a college sophomore majoring in robotics
engineering and technical writing.

She found out about Aviation High School by doing her own research.
She proposed to her parents that she attend because she was getting
bored with the traditional school curriculum, she said Wednesday.

“I’m good at math and science, but it’s easy,” she said she told her
parents. “I want to know where I’m going, have the chance to get my
hands dirty before I get to college.”

Before high school, engineering had seemed abstract to Hoag.

“It was always just an idea for me — oh people who are good at math
and science, they become engineers and go work at Boeing,” she said.

But after attending technical classes and learning from real
engineers, she became intrigued and decided to enter the field.

Murray said that Hoag’s story is “a great example of what we can do
many times over” if businesses and education systems partner.

The proposed bill would establish a new national center with a board
that represents labor, education and commerce. States would be able to
apply for grants, competitively, to fund community programs.

The bill requests $912 million for its first year.

Murray says that federal taxpayer money is needed for such a system
because, “in today’s economy, communities, states and businesses don’t
have the resources for this kind of innovative work. … Our goal is to
kick start the economy by using this federal funding as seed money.”

Communities would get to decide what gets funded.

Follow up: I posed two of my unanswered questions from the
conference call to Murray’s spokesman Matt McAlvanah.



Q. How is this different from former legislation? Aren’t there already
existing programs that do this?

McAlvanah: It’s very unique in that it provides the federal
incentive — the “glue” — to pull these often separate pieces together
to create pathways that work for young people and provide a coherent
vision for their communities. It links employers to local schools to
workforce experts to community leaders and more.

Q. So does this mean that, theoretically, federal money could be
used to teach aerospace skills to workers in states that would compete
with Washington?

McAlvanah: It up to local communities to decide how they would use
their funding. Obviously, in Washington, with Senator Murray leading
the way and emphasis already being placed on building these pipelines in
aerospace, Washington would be leading the way.

– Seattlepi.com

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