you know the nation and our region are
really grappling with the future of our
young people we know from opportunity
nation that there are five and point
five million people 16 to 24 years old
who are not in school and they’re not
working which represents one in seven we
know from the broader job market that
there are six million available jobs and
eight million unemployed people and a
clear misalignment between the skills
that are needed and the skills that are
present we know that in our region
poverty language and skill barriers
exacerbate all of this and they’re
working against us to create huge
awareness gaps and and really propelling
this negative narrative that suppresses
hope but y’all it need not be that way
that need not be our story in fact it
doesn’t take a lot of change to make a
lot of change here but you see the map
the path forward for us as a region is
pathways a path to where all of the
assets we already have are directed
toward the shared vision of what we want
to become so we can have the future we
all want and then what we do is we
create pathways for these greatest
resources and put them in the position
of being our future builders we know
that we can make neo moving change here
but you know we’ve done it before we’ve
seen the needle move let me remind you
in 2007 the business community of Dona
Ana County New Mexico was recognizing
the crisis being created by the fact
that half of our high school students
were not finishing now not only did that
you know kind of inhibit our business
leaders in their own ability to grow
their businesses it was suppressing
economic development it was creating
barriers to drawing new businesses and
new jobs here but far more importantly
it was severely limiting the
opportunities that would ever be
available to these young people who did
not understand they were making a
devastating decision so early in their
lives well the business community went
to the educational leaders not pointing
their fingers
saying how can we help and it began a
community conversation about the
importance of high school graduation it
led to the identification of an
intervention that could work for our
students New Mexico’s first Early
College High School but more importantly
it elevated the importance of high
school graduation across the region
today that conversation between business
education economic development and
government leaders continues and what’s
awesome is we’re celebrating the fact
that four out of five of our students
are now graduating high school
that’s needle moving change we’ve done
it before
so now that we’ve got them across that
first academic finish line how do we
propel them across at least one more how
do we get them truly career ready for
the jobs and industries that are here
now that would provide for them
employment advancement and high wages
but simultaneously drive up the economic
growth of our region well we do what we
did before we find a better pathway and
we need to understand that our young
people are caught in the Nexus of change
in our country right now they are
bearing the burden of this misalignment
between education and workforce
preparedness that has perpetuated the
much-discussed soft skills gap we know
that the college and career-ready mantra
has created professional students rather
than professionals we know that the
higher cost of higher ed is kind of not
able to guarantee the high wages that it
once was and the rising minimum wage is
having a correspondingly negative impact
on youth employment so what do we do how
do we help them and how do we get out of
their way well everyone has a role to
play in building the workforce we need
and we need to understand and rally
ourselves around four key connections we
know that education is the key to
producing talent talent is the key to
attracting jobs jobs are the key to
economic development but economic
development at its core will drive
regional prosperity and we are very
aspirin
as a region we have somewhere between
seven and thirteen economic development
plans that give a picture of what we
want to be when we grow up far too many
of our neighbors don’t know that and
don’t know what opportunities are
available to them and across all these
plans a single a single factor must be
present it is a single factor upon which
success or failure rides the presence of
the skilled and Rohde workforce we
simply hadn’t taken taken the time to
build the pathway to get that until now
so now that we have understood a little
bit more of what we’re up against we
convened a broad conversation we
gathered a group together that we call
the workforce talent collaborative
they’re people with the resources and
the programs that are already engaged in
the work force development continuum we
rallied around them what we call a
community of progress people who work
with those who face barriers to
employment to help us be holistic in our
solutions and we began a conversation
and what we’ve come to understand is we
must harness these assets and point them
in the same direction we need good
policy policy is sustainability we need
to prioritize investment in things like
dual credit Career and Technical
Education pathways for our young people
but we also need to target better the
federal and state investments that we
already have we know that the business
community must lead the business
community has such a critical role to
play in deeply more meaningfully
engaging with teachers with schools with
young people’s and what we talk about is
five shifts that’s where you change
curriculum mentorship internship
apprenticeship and externships for
teachers what’s the impact of a teacher
spending two weeks in a business
environment and learning what’s real and
relevant and taking that back to her
class where she will over the next year
reach 150 to 200 kids business has such
an important role to play we must be
stem proficient as a community and as a
region science technology engineering
and math there
all vital to the 21st century industries
if you want to throw the a in there for
arts that’s fine communication is a
critical skill that’s needed and for us
we sure better put in the H for health
because our healthcare industry is our
largest fastest growing best pain so we
need to be proficient in all of those
things and then you’ve got four levers
of change you must mobilize you’ve got
to propel kids past that high school
finish line but then cross at least one
more and what we’ve done is we’ve said a
four-year college degree was the only
acceptable one but we’ve only told part
of the story
career certifications and associate’s
degrees can out earn many four-year
degrees but we’ve not told that story we
have we have things like dual credit
like the early college high school model
and Career and Technical Education that
help a young person in high school while
they’re still there go into their
college career you can finish some
things career certifications you can
finish an associate’s degree in an Early
College High School so use the tools we
have to propel them toward a completion
line and it doesn’t have to be only one
write success happens at many levels
career certifications associate’s
degrees bachelor’s and higher they’re
all definitions of success but we just
need to tell a better story well the
other piece that you really need address
is the opportunity youth these 16 to 24
year olds for whom life has gotten in
the way how do we prioritize our federal
and state investments to help them well
once you’ve done all this you’ve got a
comprehensive approach to Workforce
Development but you get a bonus you
change culture we become a culture of
completion a culture of high
expectations a culture of lifelong
learning and we change the narrative
about what it means to grow up here it
becomes a great place to grow up well
with the workforce talent collaborative
in the community of promise we convened
a set of industries that appeared across
all these plans and they were industries
that were here now with good wages
potential for growth and their their
health care defense
agriculture but we mean value-added
agriculture digital media advanced
manufacturing transportation and
logistics energy and aerospace and what
we did then for each of these industry
targets we built a corresponding
workforce development pathway to get
there let me just this is just one and
we combine two aerospace and defense
because the characteristics and the kind
of what the qualities you need the
skills you need are very similar it
start at the bottom if you look across
the bottom that’s a career progression
in these industries the traits of the
technicians that’s the the ground floor
but what’s really interesting is for us
in our County thirty six thousand
dollars is the median income so you’ll
never be in working poverty in this
industry right and neither one of these
so you start with the trades and
technicians then you go to the higher
skilled a little better paying
engineering techs of course you’ve got
your physician your physicist or chemist
your four-year engineers and higher but
then you want to give birth to
entrepreneurs people who will start
businesses here grow businesses here and
hire here well we have the academic
assets we need across the top we have
Career and Technical Education pathways
and STEM fields we have a stem focused
Early College High School and then we
also have relationships with community
colleges that allow students to get
propelled while they’re in high school
into their college career we just need
to better use the community colleges
they’re not a second choice they’re
they’re another great choice career
certifications and licensures
associate’s degrees when you talk about
the middle skills gap that’s where you
go fill it we have the universities and
we have universities that have
relationships with the community
colleges and what we need to do is have
more of the 2+2 type programs where I
complete an academic finish line but I’m
so much closer to completing the next
and then the other thing is we’re
starting to get smart we have a lot of
people in these industries here now how
do we leverage the university assets to
keep our own workforce on the cutting
edge in aerospace and defense well we’re
starting to do that and
is the non-traditional pathway this is
the part where you mobilize your federal
and state investments to help young
people get beach the education that they
need and putting them in the position
about earning their benefits because
they’ve entered the workforce pipeline
get them there quickly and efficiently
and then they can go however far they
want but they’re in at a great starting
point the part we’ve kind of done but
we’ve not really done it systemically
and well if it is the work based
learning piece that’s where externships
for teachers are so important what is
the value of a teacher and a business
professional Co designing a work based
learning opportunity for students in the
classroom that’s how you close the soft
skills gap so externships for teachers
internships and at the high school level
you can pay them or not because in many
cases there are internship programs that
provide credit but for sure at the
college level with internships coops and
apprenticeships they need to be paid why
because what we know is the majority of
high of college students are working
also so why not put them in a position
to learn and earn together and by the
way the employers is kind of prospecting
his future workforce his or her future
workforce so it’s a terrific model and
opportunity and then you’ve got a rally
the resources you have around this
budding set of potential entrepreneurs
and you leverage the assets you have to
support that innovation and the business
development well the great thing about
this is so this tells all of us in the
in the continuum what our job is but
this very simple graphic conveys a very
simple message it is the Mac for our
young people who now know how far in my
academic career do I need to go to
become that to earn that and so and what
and what resources are available to me
and how important is this work based
learning thing so this becomes the map
for them so that they can find their way
we know that for us this is an argent
mater poverty in our region is
significant in Dona Ana County for us
our general population our poverty rates
are higher than the state
nation but the younger you look the
worse it’s getting and with what we know
about the generational poverty issue
children who grow up in poverty are more
likely to stay there we have to break
the cycle of poverty now the beauty of
the pathways is that they also show the
unemployed the underemployed in the
low-skilled workers what they need to do
– and how close change is for them so
just this last week one of the leading
economists in our region was talking
about how do you get fast economic
development well you know what you do
you don’t diversify your economy you
concentrate it on fast-growing high wage
industries that’s what we’re doing
that’s exactly what we’re doing so so
for us we know that pathways are the
path forward for us as a region when we
know that we’ll get there we know that
we’ll get there when the business
community takes its lead in engaging
with with young people in engaging in
classrooms engaging in the Workforce
Development continuing through the five
shifts the bonuses we close the soft
skills gap we know that we’ll get there
when the institutions and the agencies
that serve our young people are aligned
and coordinated taking down the barriers
that stand in their way and putting them
in a pathway that propels them towards
success and we get a better return on
our investment by the way we know that
we’ll get there when students and
parents understand education is not a
destination it’s part of the journey
they are then put in the position of
being able to make better decisions
about the education that is truly needed
to become whatever you want to become in
a career and they can make those
decisions more efficiently effectively
and less student debt
students like jalisa and Jocelyn two
kids that graduated from early college
both first-generation college attenders
well Jocelyn’s on her way to becoming a
doctor so she took her associate’s
degree that she got right out of high
school and she’s two years closer to the
finish line for jalisa high school was
the finish line but she also left with a
college completion and she’s now working
in a hospital making good wages and
getting terrific benefits so you see it
doesn’t take a lot of change to make a
lot of change here we just have to build
the pathways that allow our young people
to know just how close they are how easy
changes to achieve and they will
literally build our future and then when
they are doing that when they have
figured it out and we have rallied
around them we are putting ourselves in
the position of showing other
communities like us how they can do it
too
thank you all so much
[Applause]
really grappling with the future of our
young people we know from opportunity
nation that there are five and point
five million people 16 to 24 years old
who are not in school and they’re not
working which represents one in seven we
know from the broader job market that
there are six million available jobs and
eight million unemployed people and a
clear misalignment between the skills
that are needed and the skills that are
present we know that in our region
poverty language and skill barriers
exacerbate all of this and they’re
working against us to create huge
awareness gaps and and really propelling
this negative narrative that suppresses
hope but y’all it need not be that way
that need not be our story in fact it
doesn’t take a lot of change to make a
lot of change here but you see the map
the path forward for us as a region is
pathways a path to where all of the
assets we already have are directed
toward the shared vision of what we want
to become so we can have the future we
all want and then what we do is we
create pathways for these greatest
resources and put them in the position
of being our future builders we know
that we can make neo moving change here
but you know we’ve done it before we’ve
seen the needle move let me remind you
in 2007 the business community of Dona
Ana County New Mexico was recognizing
the crisis being created by the fact
that half of our high school students
were not finishing now not only did that
you know kind of inhibit our business
leaders in their own ability to grow
their businesses it was suppressing
economic development it was creating
barriers to drawing new businesses and
new jobs here but far more importantly
it was severely limiting the
opportunities that would ever be
available to these young people who did
not understand they were making a
devastating decision so early in their
lives well the business community went
to the educational leaders not pointing
their fingers
saying how can we help and it began a
community conversation about the
importance of high school graduation it
led to the identification of an
intervention that could work for our
students New Mexico’s first Early
College High School but more importantly
it elevated the importance of high
school graduation across the region
today that conversation between business
education economic development and
government leaders continues and what’s
awesome is we’re celebrating the fact
that four out of five of our students
are now graduating high school
that’s needle moving change we’ve done
it before
so now that we’ve got them across that
first academic finish line how do we
propel them across at least one more how
do we get them truly career ready for
the jobs and industries that are here
now that would provide for them
employment advancement and high wages
but simultaneously drive up the economic
growth of our region well we do what we
did before we find a better pathway and
we need to understand that our young
people are caught in the Nexus of change
in our country right now they are
bearing the burden of this misalignment
between education and workforce
preparedness that has perpetuated the
much-discussed soft skills gap we know
that the college and career-ready mantra
has created professional students rather
than professionals we know that the
higher cost of higher ed is kind of not
able to guarantee the high wages that it
once was and the rising minimum wage is
having a correspondingly negative impact
on youth employment so what do we do how
do we help them and how do we get out of
their way well everyone has a role to
play in building the workforce we need
and we need to understand and rally
ourselves around four key connections we
know that education is the key to
producing talent talent is the key to
attracting jobs jobs are the key to
economic development but economic
development at its core will drive
regional prosperity and we are very
aspirin
as a region we have somewhere between
seven and thirteen economic development
plans that give a picture of what we
want to be when we grow up far too many
of our neighbors don’t know that and
don’t know what opportunities are
available to them and across all these
plans a single a single factor must be
present it is a single factor upon which
success or failure rides the presence of
the skilled and Rohde workforce we
simply hadn’t taken taken the time to
build the pathway to get that until now
so now that we have understood a little
bit more of what we’re up against we
convened a broad conversation we
gathered a group together that we call
the workforce talent collaborative
they’re people with the resources and
the programs that are already engaged in
the work force development continuum we
rallied around them what we call a
community of progress people who work
with those who face barriers to
employment to help us be holistic in our
solutions and we began a conversation
and what we’ve come to understand is we
must harness these assets and point them
in the same direction we need good
policy policy is sustainability we need
to prioritize investment in things like
dual credit Career and Technical
Education pathways for our young people
but we also need to target better the
federal and state investments that we
already have we know that the business
community must lead the business
community has such a critical role to
play in deeply more meaningfully
engaging with teachers with schools with
young people’s and what we talk about is
five shifts that’s where you change
curriculum mentorship internship
apprenticeship and externships for
teachers what’s the impact of a teacher
spending two weeks in a business
environment and learning what’s real and
relevant and taking that back to her
class where she will over the next year
reach 150 to 200 kids business has such
an important role to play we must be
stem proficient as a community and as a
region science technology engineering
and math there
all vital to the 21st century industries
if you want to throw the a in there for
arts that’s fine communication is a
critical skill that’s needed and for us
we sure better put in the H for health
because our healthcare industry is our
largest fastest growing best pain so we
need to be proficient in all of those
things and then you’ve got four levers
of change you must mobilize you’ve got
to propel kids past that high school
finish line but then cross at least one
more and what we’ve done is we’ve said a
four-year college degree was the only
acceptable one but we’ve only told part
of the story
career certifications and associate’s
degrees can out earn many four-year
degrees but we’ve not told that story we
have we have things like dual credit
like the early college high school model
and Career and Technical Education that
help a young person in high school while
they’re still there go into their
college career you can finish some
things career certifications you can
finish an associate’s degree in an Early
College High School so use the tools we
have to propel them toward a completion
line and it doesn’t have to be only one
write success happens at many levels
career certifications associate’s
degrees bachelor’s and higher they’re
all definitions of success but we just
need to tell a better story well the
other piece that you really need address
is the opportunity youth these 16 to 24
year olds for whom life has gotten in
the way how do we prioritize our federal
and state investments to help them well
once you’ve done all this you’ve got a
comprehensive approach to Workforce
Development but you get a bonus you
change culture we become a culture of
completion a culture of high
expectations a culture of lifelong
learning and we change the narrative
about what it means to grow up here it
becomes a great place to grow up well
with the workforce talent collaborative
in the community of promise we convened
a set of industries that appeared across
all these plans and they were industries
that were here now with good wages
potential for growth and their their
health care defense
agriculture but we mean value-added
agriculture digital media advanced
manufacturing transportation and
logistics energy and aerospace and what
we did then for each of these industry
targets we built a corresponding
workforce development pathway to get
there let me just this is just one and
we combine two aerospace and defense
because the characteristics and the kind
of what the qualities you need the
skills you need are very similar it
start at the bottom if you look across
the bottom that’s a career progression
in these industries the traits of the
technicians that’s the the ground floor
but what’s really interesting is for us
in our County thirty six thousand
dollars is the median income so you’ll
never be in working poverty in this
industry right and neither one of these
so you start with the trades and
technicians then you go to the higher
skilled a little better paying
engineering techs of course you’ve got
your physician your physicist or chemist
your four-year engineers and higher but
then you want to give birth to
entrepreneurs people who will start
businesses here grow businesses here and
hire here well we have the academic
assets we need across the top we have
Career and Technical Education pathways
and STEM fields we have a stem focused
Early College High School and then we
also have relationships with community
colleges that allow students to get
propelled while they’re in high school
into their college career we just need
to better use the community colleges
they’re not a second choice they’re
they’re another great choice career
certifications and licensures
associate’s degrees when you talk about
the middle skills gap that’s where you
go fill it we have the universities and
we have universities that have
relationships with the community
colleges and what we need to do is have
more of the 2+2 type programs where I
complete an academic finish line but I’m
so much closer to completing the next
and then the other thing is we’re
starting to get smart we have a lot of
people in these industries here now how
do we leverage the university assets to
keep our own workforce on the cutting
edge in aerospace and defense well we’re
starting to do that and
is the non-traditional pathway this is
the part where you mobilize your federal
and state investments to help young
people get beach the education that they
need and putting them in the position
about earning their benefits because
they’ve entered the workforce pipeline
get them there quickly and efficiently
and then they can go however far they
want but they’re in at a great starting
point the part we’ve kind of done but
we’ve not really done it systemically
and well if it is the work based
learning piece that’s where externships
for teachers are so important what is
the value of a teacher and a business
professional Co designing a work based
learning opportunity for students in the
classroom that’s how you close the soft
skills gap so externships for teachers
internships and at the high school level
you can pay them or not because in many
cases there are internship programs that
provide credit but for sure at the
college level with internships coops and
apprenticeships they need to be paid why
because what we know is the majority of
high of college students are working
also so why not put them in a position
to learn and earn together and by the
way the employers is kind of prospecting
his future workforce his or her future
workforce so it’s a terrific model and
opportunity and then you’ve got a rally
the resources you have around this
budding set of potential entrepreneurs
and you leverage the assets you have to
support that innovation and the business
development well the great thing about
this is so this tells all of us in the
in the continuum what our job is but
this very simple graphic conveys a very
simple message it is the Mac for our
young people who now know how far in my
academic career do I need to go to
become that to earn that and so and what
and what resources are available to me
and how important is this work based
learning thing so this becomes the map
for them so that they can find their way
we know that for us this is an argent
mater poverty in our region is
significant in Dona Ana County for us
our general population our poverty rates
are higher than the state
nation but the younger you look the
worse it’s getting and with what we know
about the generational poverty issue
children who grow up in poverty are more
likely to stay there we have to break
the cycle of poverty now the beauty of
the pathways is that they also show the
unemployed the underemployed in the
low-skilled workers what they need to do
– and how close change is for them so
just this last week one of the leading
economists in our region was talking
about how do you get fast economic
development well you know what you do
you don’t diversify your economy you
concentrate it on fast-growing high wage
industries that’s what we’re doing
that’s exactly what we’re doing so so
for us we know that pathways are the
path forward for us as a region when we
know that we’ll get there we know that
we’ll get there when the business
community takes its lead in engaging
with with young people in engaging in
classrooms engaging in the Workforce
Development continuing through the five
shifts the bonuses we close the soft
skills gap we know that we’ll get there
when the institutions and the agencies
that serve our young people are aligned
and coordinated taking down the barriers
that stand in their way and putting them
in a pathway that propels them towards
success and we get a better return on
our investment by the way we know that
we’ll get there when students and
parents understand education is not a
destination it’s part of the journey
they are then put in the position of
being able to make better decisions
about the education that is truly needed
to become whatever you want to become in
a career and they can make those
decisions more efficiently effectively
and less student debt
students like jalisa and Jocelyn two
kids that graduated from early college
both first-generation college attenders
well Jocelyn’s on her way to becoming a
doctor so she took her associate’s
degree that she got right out of high
school and she’s two years closer to the
finish line for jalisa high school was
the finish line but she also left with a
college completion and she’s now working
in a hospital making good wages and
getting terrific benefits so you see it
doesn’t take a lot of change to make a
lot of change here we just have to build
the pathways that allow our young people
to know just how close they are how easy
changes to achieve and they will
literally build our future and then when
they are doing that when they have
figured it out and we have rallied
around them we are putting ourselves in
the position of showing other
communities like us how they can do it
too
thank you all so much
[Applause]
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