By State Rep. Richard Berry
Business and industry benefit when we have a large, well-trained and prepared workforce. New Mexico benefits when business and industry is supported by these trained professionals. Companies will want to bring their business to the state, leading to more job growth and opportunity while, at the same time, stimulating the economy.
One way to attract business to New Mexico while providing our workforce with greater opportunities is to start training future workers in a practical way that meets the needs of students, business and industry.
House Bill 44 — the “Running Start for Careers Act” — sets up a pilot program that will allow high school juniors and seniors to use their available electives to attend industry-taught classes. This would not be on-the-job training but, rather, academic classes used to introduce students to specific career paths and to give them a head start on future apprenticeship training.
These could include coursework in safety, math skills for industry, communications skills, scheduling, project management and other basic industry skill sets. These could span a great variety of careers including construction, food service, health care, hospitality and tourism and public safety. Students would gain valuable experience and could even earn industry credit toward future apprenticeship certification. Since Running Start would only use student electives, these students would still graduate with the rest of their class and would still earn a traditional high school diploma.
Evaluating options and gaining skills
The idea is to pair up students with industries in which they have an interest. This gives students a chance to evaluate the industry and vice versa, while the students gain valuable skills. These students could then go into post-graduation apprenticeships or to a two- or four-year institution of higher learning.
Classes would be taught at approved industry training facilities such as manufacturing facilities, union halls or even at the high schools. Instructors would have to pass background checks and the programs would be scrutinized and approved by the public education commission and administrated by the public education department. The pilot program would be open to any school district in the state, but there would be no mandatory participation. The local school boards would have to approve each program, and a fund would be set up to defer the costs to industry for the training.
From an academic standpoint, the purpose of the pilot program is to demonstrate that:
• Public-private partnerships in career technical education are viable alternatives to standard curricula offerings in public high schools.
• The provision of industry-taught or guided pre-apprenticeship programs will expand educational and career opportunities for New Mexico high school students.
• A positive causal relationship between participation in industry-taught or guided pre-apprenticeship programs and declining drop-out rates in participating school districts can be documented.
• Participants who graduate with specific career technical knowledge are more employable in their chosen field and are more inclined to continue their education through registered apprenticeships or post-secondary education.
Augmenting existing programs
This program is not meant to supplant any career technical training at the high schools, but to augment what they are currently doing. The existing education system is doing a great job with the resources it has available, but there are more than 900 apprenticeable trades available to students. It is not realistic to expect our public education system to be proficient at all of these career paths.
Our job as policymakers should be to break down the barriers between industry and these students to allow for this valuable training.
Running Start would provide students with the expert training that they are hungry for — which in turn would give them an incentive to work hard on their core subjects, because they would see how those subjects pertain to their future career goals. It would also allow industry to start early with viable career training, and it would ease the financial strain to the public education system by having industry pick up part of the costs for training.
It’s a winning scenario for students and it’s a winning scenario for New Mexico.
Berry is a Republican House member from Albuquerque.