Education & Retraining
Working Group
April 24, 2014
LAUNCH MEETING NOTES
1.
ATTENDEES
Approximately 40 participants present in meeting (NOTE: see attached scanned sign-in sheets for names/emails)
EDUCATION & RETRAINING WORKING GROUP MEMBERS PRESENT
 Ron Daley, HCTC/KVEC
 Jennifer Lindon, HCTC
 Vic Adams, SKCTC
 Bruce Ayers, president emeritus, SKCTC
 Ian Mooers, EKU
 Jason Reeves, Union College
 Reecie Stagnolia, CPE
 Kelli Thompson, KVEC
 Charles “Rusty” Justice, Jigsaw (private business utilizing EKCEP retraining resources)
 Jon Ernst, representing president Wayne Andrews from MSU
 Lee Nimocks, CPE
EDUCATION & RETRAINING WORKING GROUP MEMBERS NOT PRESENT
 Donald Mobelini, Hazard High School
 Drema Gentry, Berea College
 Frances Feltner, UK Center for Excellence in Rural Health
NOTABLE ATTENDEES PRESENT
 Beth Brinley, Commissioner of KY Dept. of Workforce Investment/KWIB – serving as state cabinet-level
liaison for this SOAR working group
 Tommy Floyd - chief of staff, KDE
 Paul Patton, University of Pikeville president emeritus, former Kentucky Governor
2.
REVIEWED SOAR EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MANDATES OF WORKING GROUPS
a. Emphasized that SOAR will:
i.
Leverage and add value to existing public, private, and philanthropic initiatives, not compete
with nor supplant them
ii.
Enhance regional identity and communication
iii.
Create a lasting platform for deeper regional collaboration and advantage
b. Stressed that the working group will conduct public “listening sessions” in the region to identify regional
assets in workforce development, education, and retraining in Eastern Kentucky
c. Stressed that the working group will need to identify three to five priorities to be undertaken in the next
three years
3.
SUGGESTED INITIAL TASKS OUTLINED IN MEETING
a. Stressed the need to identify the overarching goals of this Working Group and SOAR that provide
guidance in selecting our three to five priorities. Do these include:
i.
Economic diversity and expansion?
ii.
Regional collaboration of initiatives with shared or similar goals or outcomes?
iii.
Innovation (what education and retraining dynamics encourage innovation)?
iv.
Prepare the workforce and support initiatives of the nine other SOAR Working Groups?
v.
Others?
4.
CONCLUSIONS AND KEY SUGGESTIONS FROM DISCUSSION OF NOS. 2 AND 3
a. Listening Sessions
i.
Have topically segmented listening sessions to better organize findings and assets under the
group’s large purview. (Ian Mooers) Suggestions included:
1. Retraining and workforce development
2. Early childhood education
3. Elementary education through high school
4. Postsecondary education
ii.
Utilize the Working Group members to organize and host listening sessions at their various
locations/institutions in the region based on their respective areas of focus (Jeff Whitehead)
b. Consideration of regional assets
i.
What can be done immediately to begin putting people back to work (re: coal mining layoffs)?
(Bruce Ayers)
1. Look at individuals who have gone through this process and have been successful, and
how education/retraining has played a role in this transformation
2. Group assets toward common goals
a. Immediate – retraining of individuals toward getting them back to work quickly
b. Medium-term (2-3 years out) – undergraduates; helping and encouraging them
toward verging and growing careers perhaps in STEM job paths and others
(healthcare, etc.)
c. Long-term – P-12/P-20; encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit and innovation
even at the earliest of ages in such a way as to create long-term shifts in career
guidance and paths in the region
c. Gap analysis
i.
Consider performing some gap analysis to look at employment gaps, sectors, trends,
imports/exports to see where the region is strong and weak
ii.
Is the region weak in that our workforce needs strengthening in specific skills areas, or is it
weak in that some necessary employment opportunities in verging sectors do not yet exist in
the region?
iii.
Examining these gaps will give a better picture as to whether efforts will need to be aggressive
early in P-12, or focus more on postsecondary efforts
d. Further procedural organization (Charles “Rusty” Justice)
i.
Approach this ongoing process as an architect would
1. First step - stabilization of the structure to fix existing decay
2. Second step - renovate the structure
3. Final step - create new additions to the structure
ii.
Use this analogy to look at what is going on in the region and divide up the work of the
Working Group moving forward:
1. Stop the decay by helping area businesses retain the jobs that are left, and stabilize our
economy and get job skills training in the hands of businesses that need it but don’t
have the resources to perform this training themselves;
2. Then renovation—how do students get job skills they need moving forward?
3. Then the adding to the structure, and this could be where P-12/P-20 re-examination
toward career paths comes in.
e. Additional points for discussion in the Working Group (Jeff Whitehead)
i.
Immediate – Where do we generate jobs and how do we train people for these jobs (both
existing and emerging jobs)? How do we help employers hire these people with skills training?
ii.
5.
Long-term – How do we prepare our population and students for these jobs in a longer-term
approach?
NEXT STEPS
a. Correspond frequently via email with Working Group members throughout the month of May
i.
Set the next Working Group meeting for early June (location TBD)
ii.
Continue to look toward the Working Group members from various institutions in order to
allow us to blanket the region with public listening sessions throughout the summer
iii.
Continue correspondence on how to best segregate the listening sessions into Education and
Retraining topic- and sector-specific groupings
b. By late May:
i.
Have a list of sample questions completed and ready to post on SOAR website for public
participation in order to gather focused input at the public listening sessions and via online
surveys (using Survey Monkey), webinars, etc.
1. Questions should be very similar across all outreach platforms utilized
2. Questions will be worked on among Working Group membership (via email) and shared
among group membership throughout May until they are refined and finalized in late
May
ii.
Be further prepared to begin public “listening sessions” in the region
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS FROM MEETING PARTICIPANTS:
o
The region had become depending on extracting natural resources; some parts of country successful in
overcoming extracting natural resources—identify those areas and learn from them. Would support the
goals of this group.
o
(Ron Daley) The Kentucky Work Ready Community program through the Kentucky Workforce Investment
Board (KWIB) is of great value to the region, and is a means to connect education to job creation and
growth. The WRC process engages the county-level communities to work to raise education levels and
grow the economy. Those county work groups will identify best practices, which can be shared and
replicated while work on regional education and job growth strategies moves forward. Additionally, WRC
groups (and Ron has contacts in 12 counties) can also be used as part of our working group’s public
listening session process.
o
There’s not a true K-20 plan for EKY; don’t know how to connect education to economic development.
o
Need a website where we can see all of the best-practices in the region; identify all regional assets;
instead of when having a listening session—will have those ideas out, will have those ideas out and
conversation can be looking at innovations and guide discussion.
o
Need to focus on project learning in high schools – have to create inspiration toward entrepreneurship
(Race to the Top Grant/KVEC) – expand to 17 counties (already started as pilot in Pike County).
o
Entrepreneurship – lots of resources already available; look at education system, educators have enough
responsibility, they have a lot of things put on them; lots of organizations already exist in that arena;
young entrepreneurs academy in Boyle Co. and in Somerset—help students create business plans. Help
with Chambers of Commerce. There are a lot of resources and need to tap into those and direct those to
high schools.
o
Economy of Place – McCreary Co. limited places to create business; Elkhorn City; Middlesboro/Bell County
(Selling to the World Expo)—that’s the thinking need to be doing. Not looking for a silver bullet, but how
better position resources we have and grow that next generation of entrepreneurs.
o
Selling to the World Expo -- need to look at things that can be replicated that can be can give us best help
to our economy.
o
So what we’re talking about is creating an entrepreneurial spirit even at very EARLY ages.
o
(Charles “Rusty” Justice) As a group, focus on the word “and” instead of “or” – let’s not write off our
energy jobs; leverage what we have left into a brighter future; there’s a lot of it left, it’s just that our coal
isn’t competitive in the marketplace; let’s not forget about the coal miner that’s left; But the struggle we
have is getting skills into our workforce, with regulatory compliance, how do you keep those workers
trained (we get them trained, and they leave us, and we have to keep re-investing in more training). We
have to get where the workforce trained, and we then hire the workers. We, as businesses, are not
efficient trainers. We just need the skilled workers. How do we train the worker around the work
schedule to keep the small business viable?
o
How can this group get me better math students as sophomores? How can we improve education as a
whole to improve education as a whole? The P-12 school system is the largest employer in the county by
far. We need to figure out how we can improve the economic status of those school employees; 15,000
teachers eligible to retire in KY right now—we’ll have to replace them. If we’re going to be losing all of
those teachers, we’re going to be looking at 6-10,000 available teaching jobs. Keep those best and
brightest kids in EKY instead of them being stolen away in other counties to become schoolteachers to
begin with. Need to incentivize education in EKY so they’ll stay at home. (could be paid $8,000 more in
other areas with NO more requirements). Education is the economic driver. I appreciate
entrepreneurship, but education is still the key.
o
Craft Academy at MSU – good example of upcoming better education option for students.
o
The biggest field is going to be healthcare; we’re not going to have enough skilled hands to be working in
healthcare. Need innovation to help us bring students in who aren’t academically prepared, so what we
can we do in that transition? Still need to graduate them so they’re ready to go into medical fields.
o
Personalizing learning at all levels – whether I’m interesting in becoming a entrepreneur, engineer,
educator; at all levels, how is that going to equip me at any level to be the best I can be at that level, and
that will transform economic development in our area? What will cause me to come to school and be
engaged while I’m there, and then that jump to be the best I can be while I’m there? As a sixth grader;
what do I need to be doing to go into a career I am interested in? The jobs we’re preparing students for
today didn’t exist for their parents.
o
Apprenticeship programs are needed for high school seniors so they can start working for a company in
high school and get exposed to skilled careers and see if what they’re interested in is for them. Create a
workforce pathway; and do something to help the kids who aren’t quite there and help get them into the
workforce (based on test scores).
o
All-day kindergarten is needed.
o
How many students are we missing? What happened to reading, writing and arithmetic? If they can’t read
and write and do books, they can’t be an entrepreneur. There’s a large gap now between secondary and
post-secondary school. To get entrepreneurs and get them to go to college—need to look at the fact that
a lot of these kids are the children of parents on drugs, are being raised by grandparents, they can’t read
well—need to get back to the core principles to address the gaps.
o
Businesses need workers and need skills upgrades – build that 1 or 2 workers at a time; that’s the crisis at
has to be included in that discussion.
o
Needs to be more work-based learning; what career exploration and understanding of the world of work
is needed so kids can learn to dream to determine careers?
o
Could come up with one plan – how do we bring together the trio of workforce development, P-12, and P20—they have been working in silos so long; how do we do that?
o
Create a plan that has all existing assets in the region that focuses them on our common goals (P-12,
secondary education, workforce training/retraining)
o
We can retrain coal miners all day long, but what are we going to retrain them for?
o
We shouldn’t split up P-12 from P-20 in the listening sessions (teachers from other levels need to know
what others are doing)
o
We need to make sure to have business leaders and community leaders at the meetings to tell us what
they need in employees and from trainees.
o
(Paul Patton) We’ve got to make sure we’ve got an educated workforce to do the jobs created through
SOAR. Adult Ed, Comm. Coll., etc.; skills need to be provided to potential workers. About 1/3 of jobs
require bachelors degree or higher; In the U.S. it’s 24-65%; in KY 22%; in EKY we’re 12%; as long as we’re
12% with bachelor’s degrees, we’ll not have the kind of economy we want. Our students don’t pursue a
degree at the rates students in other parts of state do. But our students enroll in college at same rate as
rest of state; 62% enroll. We really need about half of those 62% who enroll in college to get a bachelors
degree, but for some reason, they don’t.
o
(Paul Patton) House Bill 2 – state w/ coal severance revenues – That tax would make up 40% of tuition of
whatever institution a student attends in a coal-producing county above any other state or federal aid
that student gets as long as they are enrolled in an institution in Eastern Kentucky.
o
The fastest way to accelerate education in Eastern Kentucky is to bring some finishing two-year programs
into the region they don’t have to leave to do. Need programs brought to the region they don’t have to
transfer out to get.
o
Need to develop a website that will help students find out more about communities in the region so
they’ll feel TIED to the area.