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Workforce Wayne wants our county to be a force in the community. It wants us to be a model of success and a county where good people stick around and raise their families while working good jobs.
We all would like that. But we need to help this agency.
We need to help this agency in its uphill battle to beat the odds and put Wayne County on the map in the commonwealth as a place where people come for a job instead of leaving for one far away.
At Wednesday's annual meeting of this Pike/Wayne Business Education Partnership, the road ahead was layed out before 100 prominent business and education leaders of the community.
The road may look bumpy and filled with booby traps, but there's much promise that it will be paved.
The obstacles, though, are many.
Pike and Wayne counties are two of three counties in the state without a Career and Technology Center, which is a vital student and adult workforce training center essential for the future of these counties.
These days, most jobs require some post-high school training. Only 12 percent of those jobs require a four-year college degree, according to a 2009 Education and Training Needs Assessment for Workforce Wayne.
Workforce Wayne wants to change the image of the region from a low-wage, low-skill area to one that's a high-wage, high-skill job base. A career tech center would have up to five times the amount of students in career and technical education training compared to current data.
Right now, Wayne County is driven by retail. Pike's No. 2 industry is also retail.
While we certainly want those tourism dollars, we need dollars driven by business and industry.
This career and technology center will provide that opportunity.
The support is there. From surveys, 96 percent of parents in the region want to see a technical or trade school here. Three out of four parents would encourage their children to attend such a school.
The concept for such a center sounds great. There's a lot of red tape, though, to cut through before this becomes a reality.
It's up to you, as citizens of Wayne County, to help Workforce Wayne make this possible.
It's up to you to spread the message that this is a key ingredient to our future.
We cannot let this door close.
Workforce Wayne wants our county to be a force in the community. It wants us to be a model of success and a county where good people stick around and raise their families while working good jobs.
We all would like that. But we need to help this agency.
We need to help this agency in its uphill battle to beat the odds and put Wayne County on the map in the commonwealth as a place where people come for a job instead of leaving for one far away.
At Wednesday's annual meeting of this Pike/Wayne Business Education Partnership, the road ahead was layed out before 100 prominent business and education leaders of the community.
The road may look bumpy and filled with booby traps, but there's much promise that it will be paved.
The obstacles, though, are many.
Pike and Wayne counties are two of three counties in the state without a Career and Technology Center, which is a vital student and adult workforce training center essential for the future of these counties.
These days, most jobs require some post-high school training. Only 12 percent of those jobs require a four-year college degree, according to a 2009 Education and Training Needs Assessment for Workforce Wayne.
Workforce Wayne wants to change the image of the region from a low-wage, low-skill area to one that's a high-wage, high-skill job base. A career tech center would have up to five times the amount of students in career and technical education training compared to current data.
Right now, Wayne County is driven by retail. Pike's No. 2 industry is also retail.
While we certainly want those tourism dollars, we need dollars driven by business and industry.
This career and technology center will provide that opportunity.
The support is there. From surveys, 96 percent of parents in the region want to see a technical or trade school here. Three out of four parents would encourage their children to attend such a school.
The concept for such a center sounds great. There's a lot of red tape, though, to cut through before this becomes a reality.
It's up to you, as citizens of Wayne County, to help Workforce Wayne make this possible.
It's up to you to spread the message that this is a key ingredient to our future.
We cannot let this door close.
