Philly to open a new school to train high school students skills needed for manufacturing jobs
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Philly schools, the city and industry officials are putting together a $6 million Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing Center at Ben Franklin High School.
Like many other Philadelphia manufacturers, PTR Baler & Compactor has a chronic problem with filling its jobs. The Port Richmond-based maker of steel trash and recycling containers for major retail clients like Wal-Mart was six welders short of a full complement in early June, despite offering a salary of about $40,000 plus benefits for people with the right experience.
“It’s very hard for us to find skilled welders,” said Brent Ford, PTR’s human resources manager, who has not had a full staff of welder-fitters in his three years with the company. “We go through hundreds of resumes for every single one that we hire.”
Ford and his colleagues say recruitment is a big headache because manufacturing here still has a poor public image as a smokestack industry where workers do repetitive jobs in polluted factories that threaten their health. And some manufacturers complain that many job applicants lack basic literacy and numeracy skills or simply don’t grasp fundamental workplace values like the need to show up on time.
But all agree that public schools don’t do enough to give students the skills they need to work in an industry that pays $1.3 billion in annual wages and is a traditional engine of the city’s economy.
In response, the School District of Philadelphia is preparing to open a high school-based center to teach a range of manufacturing skills that officials hope will help a new generation of workers launch well-paid careers while offering the industry a solution to one of its biggest challenges.
The Center for Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing, the first of its kind in the city, is scheduled to open at Benjamin Franklin High School at Broad and Spring Garden streets in September 2015, and will train students in skills ranging from welding to computer-assisted drafting to electromechanical manufacturing and renewable-energy technology.
The project will complement the vocational training that is already offered at some Philadelphia high schools, which will continue to run their courses. But Benjamin Franklin will be the first to offer a wide range of skills under one roof. Students will be able to apply from across the city, and will be selected on the basis of their academic records and an interview with school district and industry representatives. Enrollment will eventually total about 800.
The electronics technology unit, for example, will teach students the principles and technical skills to produce, test, assemble, install and maintain electronic equipment. Those seeking a career in renewable-energy technology will learn how to install, service and repair power generation, transmission and distribution systems that include solar, wind and geothermal equipment.
With the exception of welding, which is offered at four schools, the new center will teach skills that are not available elsewhere in the school district. Students will have the option of specializing in one program for three years or spending a year each on three different programs.
Four or five of the eight planned subject areas, all of which have been tailored to the needs of the industry, are expected to be operational when the center opens. It aims to equip students with the skills they need to go straight into the work force, or to give them a basis for more advanced studies at the college level.
Both the industry and the city as a whole will benefit if students have skills that allow them to move directly from high school into jobs, said David Kipphut, the school district’s deputy chief of career and technical education, who is heading up the project.
“This is what we need to do, not only for our students, but also because education is a driver of economic development here,” Kipphut said. “If we are going to have a first-class city that has a great economic future, the city and the state have to invest in programs like this.”
The center will be built in an unused part of Benjamin Franklin High for some $6 million, about half of which will come from the local Middleton Foundation, as part of an earlier $16 million gift to technical skills training in Philadelphia. Another $1.5 million will come from the district’s capital budget, with the remainder paid by state and federal funding. The district plans to hire teachers with experience in relevant manufacturing disciplines, and may also employ recent engineering graduates, he said. School officials plan to hold a recruitment fair in 2015.
Kipphut acknowledged that the district’s payment could be controversial at a time when the unresolved crisis in its operating budget may mean further deep cuts in teaching staff and services for the upcoming school year. But he argued that the program represents a step forward for the district despite its ongoing financial storm.
“If we get into this mentality that we can’t plan to do anything because of this temporary financial situation, we are going to be so far behind, and we won’t have anything to offer students,” he said. “We have to continue to be optimistic.”
Although school district funds will pay some of the bill, they will come from the capital budget, which is funded by long-term bonds, and is separate from the operating budget, Kipphut said.
And he argued that a higher enrollment in career and technical education will increase state subsidies in response to more students participating in those programs.
The long lead time before the program opens is because of the extensive building renovations that are needed, Kipphut said.
The center’s plans are modeled on the Lehigh Career and Technical Institute, an Allentown-area academy that offers 50 programs in a variety of technical skills. It has had a graduation rate of more than 90 percent since it began its manufacturing program in 2001.
The institute’s former executive director, Clyde Hornberger, attributed its success, in part, to the participation of the manufacturing community. Hornberger, who is advising the school district on Franklin’s manufacturing center, said they’ll also be active here, helping to “keep the programs current.”
He said students being trained in specific skills have a much higher graduation rate than the general student population. That trend is already apparent in Philadelphia, where 92 percent of those in career and technical education graduated in the 2012-13 school year, compared with 65 percent district-wide.
The Lehigh institute also encourages its students to develop a strong work ethic, which can get someone hired even if they lack technical skills, Hornberger said.
But some manufacturers say many young applicants lack a willingness to work, and even when hired, seem unaware that it’s not acceptable to come in late or use their cell phones at work.
Alan Levin, president of Northeast Building Products, a maker of windows and doors for home remodelers, said he hires only about 10 percent of applicants for entry-level positions in his 330-strong work force. About 40 percent fail drug tests while others have such poor math skills that they can’t read fractions on a tape measure, or lack the reading ability to understand written instructions, he said.
Despite this screening, 4 percent of Levin’s work force turns over every month, and some of those who remain, particularly younger workers, decline offers of overtime that is sometimes needed to meet the Bridesburg-based company’s growth in orders.
Job readiness was among the issues identified by Mayor Michael Nutter’s Manufacturing Task Force as a major challenge for city manufacturers and the wider economy in its December 2013 report. Manufacturing remains a big economic engine, providing 23,000 jobs in city. The report said that more than two-thirds of Philly’s 750 manufacturers employ fewer than 20 employees.
“Companies indicated they are willing to train workers, but cite as a hurdle their inability to find enough trainable candidates,” the report said.
It also argued that there aren’t enough qualified young workers to replace the aging baby boomers who make up a significant portion of the manufacturing work force. Among electromechanical equipment assemblers, for example, 23 percent of the work force is aged 55 to 64, the report said.
It blamed a low level of job readiness among young applicants, the limited success of existing training programs in placing their graduates with manufacturing companies and a lack of interest among many students in training for a career in the industry.
The point was underlined by Michael Cooper, director of the city’s new Office of Manufacturing and Industry.
“There are a lot of us in the economic-development world that are acknowledging a very big problem,” Cooper said. “Most of the folks in manufacturing today are baby boomers, and in the next 10 years, those folks are going to be leaving the work force. Who’s waiting in the wings? We are all scared about that.”
In response, the industry has stepped up to work with the school district to create the new center, Cooper said.
“The school’s alignment with the private sector will be its greatest strength,” he said. “The private sector will work with the school to figure out what the most useful type of education is for the types of careers we’re hoping these students can take advantage of when they graduate.”
Industry leaders have yet to put any money into the new center, but officials say they are confident that will happen.
“Industry must be given ample time to understand the plans of the school, be given the chance for constructive feedback and criticism and allow the school district to meet developmental milestones before they are asked to make private investment,” said Cooper. “Our industrial community understands the need for a school such as this, perhaps better than anyone else, so I think the community itself will step up to the plate when the appropriate time comes.”
Young people tend to avoid manufacturing jobs because they have a negative and outdated view of them, Cooper argued.
“They think it’s smokestacks and you get up at 4 a.m. for a whistle, and you work all day, get 10 minutes to go to the bathroom, and that’s it,” he said. “But it’s not that at all. It’s fast. It’s computer-based, it’s engineering-based, it’s technology-based.”
The misperception has been caused, in part, by the industry’s failure to communicate what really happens in its plants, Cooper said. But that, too, is about to change. Forty elementary schools will be visited this fall by manufacturing representatives who will talk about the industry in a positive light — and possibly as an attractive career option. The visits are being coordinated by the Manufacturing Alliance of Philadelphia (MAP), according to the school district’s Kipphut. MAP is looking to raise $1 million over five years to support the program, and wants to expand it to middle schools and beyond, he said.
For now, companies like PTR are left with a skills shortage that they try to ease by donating money and supplies to vocational programs in three high schools, including the A. Philip Randolph Career and Technical High School on Henry Avenue, where students learn welding and eight other technical skills.
Denisia McCray, 16, one of 30 students in the two-year-old welding program, said she’s optimistic about her job prospects.
“I chose welding because it was something different,” she said. “I’m learning a lot, and hearing about how much money I’ll be making.”
McCray said she expects to be able to make at least $20,000 a year with the skills she acquires in the program.
Rafael Sanchez, 16, who has been enrolled in the welding program for two years, said he will get a certification when he has completed three years of training, at which point he will have the skills he needs to step straight into a job, with an edge on the competition.
“We learn a little more than the average welder,” Sanchez said. “We learn how to weld and we also learn blueprints so that could make us a cut above the rest.”
More skilled workers from the programs like Randolph’s, together with graduates from the new manufacturing center, should eventually make it easier for local manufacturers to find the help they need. But until that happens, managers will have to continue to scramble to fill these good-paying jobs.
