Preparing High Schoolers for Green Careers

Workforce Wednesdays
Find out more about the briefings in this series below:
Sept 2	Preparing High Schoolers for Green Careers
Sept 9	A New Spin on Conservation Corps
Sept 16	Energy Transitions in Coal Country
Sept 23	Growing Green Industry and Innovation: Mass Timber
Sept 30	Low-Carbon Small Business and Post-COVID Recovery
Overview of the Workforce Wednesdays series

Spiraling student-loan debt and low rates of college completion have encouraged a resurgence in career and technical education (CTE) in public schools. Panelists discussed the benefits of offering students CTE options and the policies and programs that help such programs flourish.

This briefing was part of a series of online briefings on workforce development and policies and programs that can support a low-carbon recovery from the COVID-19 economic crisis. Speakers discussed major challenges faced in each area and solutions providing economic and environmental benefits to communities across the country.

 

 

Supplemental EESI materials:

• $1.25 Million DOE Grant Supports Philadelphia’s Renewable Energy Goals and High School Job Training
• Solar-Powered Learning: Dominion Energy Supports K-12 Clean Energy Curriculum
• The Wind at their Backs: Program Teaches Kids about Clean Energy Opportunities

 

HIGHLIGHTS

 

Ben Gitis, Senior Policy Analyst, Bipartisan Policy Center

• Technological innovation and workforce disruption by COVID-19 have both elevated the need for Americans to learn new skills and transition into new careers.
• For young people entering careers, we typically heavily rely on traditional educational institutions, with a focus on obtaining a bachelor’s degree.
• There is also a workforce development system available for career and technical education for older and mid-career professionals who have lost their jobs, which is supported by the federal government. It is a reactive system.
• There are a few shortcomings with the current system:
  • Only about one third of the U.S. adult population holds a bachelor’s degree. College is not the best option for everyone.
  • There is limited connection between education and the workforce needs of employers. Employers increasingly use bachelor’s degrees as a “screening tool,” which can create mismatches in skills and employer needs and limit opportunities for people without bachelor’s degrees.
  • Because the current system is reactive and focused on retraining instead of proactive skills development, by the time workers need to change career paths, it is difficult to make the change.
• Rather than the current reactive, patchwork system, we need a proactive system that meets the needs of businesses and allows Americans without a bachelor’s degree to build viable career paths.
• One way to change the system is to focus high schools on both college and career readiness. We need to bring in more career and technical education in order to better prepare students to transition into a technical institution or career. Students should be given options instead of being placed on tracks.
• Students should also be given information about the labor market and career opportunities earlier on in their education.
• Greater transparency about the outcomes of a wide range of education options, from colleges to apprenticeships, would help to improve student decision-making and hold institutions accountable.
• Education and learning institutions need to develop a “culture of lifelong learning” in order to prepare for unpredictable changes in the economy. This requires new tools and collaboration between business, educators, and the government.

 

Cody Janousek, Teacher, Green Tech Academy, Olathe West High School, Kansas

• Olathe West High School is located southwest of Kansas City, Missouri, in the Olathe Public Schools district in Kansas.
• Many schools in the district have “21st century academies”, which started in 1999 after district leaders sought out feedback from individuals and businesses in the area on what a 21st century education should look like. The academies were created to address the most in-demand careers of the time, including business and engineering. The programs start with interviews of 8th graders, who can come from any middle school in the Olathe district.
• Olathe West started in 2017-18 and is the newest school in the district. The school is focused on student-centered instruction and project-based learning.
• Green Tech Academy was started, in part, from labor demands from local companies needing energy and sustainability employees. Olathe reached out to local and national companies and developed a four-year energy curriculum.
  • Evergy, a local utility, was concerned with the need to replace skilled workers and developed a partnership with the Green Tech Academy.
  • The fastest-growing job areas in the United States are in green energy, and the wind industry in Kansas is very important to the state.
• The curriculum is STEM- and engineering-focused, but the school will soon be adding an agriculture focus.
• Freshman year is focused on having students decide between energy or sustainability tracks, and includes Intro to Energy and Intro to Sustainability courses. In Intro to Energy, students conduct energy audits of the school.
• During the sophomore year, students take an Energy, Power, and Society class with a focus on wind. During the course, students participate in the KidWind competition.
• During the junior year, students can take a class on utility business models and regulations, which allows them to get a certificate from the Center for Energy Workforce Development.
• Senior year is spent on a capstone project. Projects have included interning at solar companies to do feasibility studies and working with the U.S. Green Building Council. One student built a gardening robot and named it “Broccoli Overlord.”
• Funding sources include:
  • The Kansas Energy Program, which is funded by the Kansas Corporation Commission.
  • Federal Career and Technical Education (CTE) funds for the energy and agriculture pathways.
  • Carl Perkins funding for new equipment.
  • Department of Energy funds for wind activity centers.
• Janousek would like to see a network of teachers involved in green energy curricula to better share resources and adapt STEM programs to a renewable energy future.

 

Bryan Butler, Aquaculture Teacher, Ocean Springs High School, Mississippi

• The aquaculture program started in 2016. Originally, there was a horticulture-based class in Mississippi, but not an aquaculture one. Butler spoke with the Mississippi Department of Education to create the aquaculture program and built the curriculum from scratch in collaboration with students.
• The school has four greenhouses that run both freshwater and saltwater tanks.
• The first project students work on is a floating aquaponic system, usually with vining or leafy plants. From September to December, production always starts out with catfish because Mississippi is a leading producer of catfish.
• Crops produced include tomatoes, kale, cabbage, okra, and eggplant.
• All food students raise is consumed in class or distributed throughout the 2,200-student school, culinary classes, and marketing classes, or supplements the school cafeteria.
• Students grow striped bass and release them back into water for fishing as part of a restoration program.
• Culinary classes cook the food products, which are then distributed to teachers throughout the district.
• During the growing season, students always run into a pest problem, including white flies and aphids. Instead of pesticides, students use locally grown ladybugs to fight the pests.
• With the help of the University of Southern Mississippi and the Department of Marine Resources, students tag fish to track their growth and movement, and then release them into the wild.
• The aquaculture program also takes waste salt water from fish tanks to grow oysters in collaboration with the Department of Marine Resources. Oysters are also later released.
• With the help of crawfish, students grow marine plants that are then distributed to coastal properties to prevent erosion.
• The main program the school works with is the Gulf Coast Research Lab, which works with seniors who travel to the research lab and work with the Department of Marine Resources.
• Students have released nearly 5,000 fish while the school has been operating.
• Everything in the school is geared towards careers in biology, including oyster production, aquaculture, and more. Students have gone into salmon research, started horticulture companies, and grown their own food using aquaponics to sell to grocery stores and markets.

 

Q&A

 

Do you see a stigma against career and technical education (CTE), and does the environmental angle decrease that stigma?

• Gitis: There is a stigma about pursuing technical education once you finish high school. There is a lot of emphasis culturally, in the way we have designed high schools and in what our economy rewards, on trying to get a bachelor’s. To get students at an early age to think about lifelong learning and the value of these alternate paths, we do need somewhat of a culture shift. That is going to be essential for building viable careers and salaries.
• Janousek: The apparent connotations may have changed. Back in the day, it was just wood or metal shop. Talking with Evergy, the Kansas utility company, we realized we needed people to understand that working at a utility doesn’t mean having a dangerous job. We do need lineworkers and people to restore power during a storm, but we also need human resource workers and other people who are knowledgeable about renewable energy. Kids want jobs in solar and wind, but maybe not these legacy CTE jobs.
• Butler: It is not your grandma’s CTE, as we always say. We have nine programs at our CTE center—in engineering and robotics, allied health, aquaculture, teaching—and everything is geared directly towards that career field. The engineering program is huge. They send students to universities all over. Our allied health teacher in her fifteenth year, I am sure thousands of nurses have come out of her program. We recently added a shipbuilding academy to work directly with building aircraft carriers and different ships. They can put their skills and knowledge directly to use right out of high school. There is such a vast amount of knowledge students can gain from any of the CTE programs. The stigma is kind of changing but it is still there.

 

What are the biggest barriers to CTE programs and how can federal agencies better support CTE programs?

• Gitis: A lot of high schools historically used to put students on certain tracks. Over time, that created its own problems. Essentially, lower middle-class students went on vocational tracks and upper middle-class students went to college. Then, they wanted to open up opportunities to go to college for everyone. But then, we had too much of an emphasis on college without opportunities to pursue career and technical education. One thing we could do is provide more funding at the state level for CTE. We also need to expose students to the value of CTE at a much earlier age.
• Janousek: My district has 30,000 students. We are really fortunate to have the resources we have. We have someone in our district solely aimed at CTE coordination. There’s 30+ different programs. But, a lot of school districts do not have those resources. So how do we eliminate as many barriers as possible for districts without CTE programs? States typically have statewide department of education CTE programs. So, however we can send them information would be beneficial. Having just started this program, it would be great to give them additional money for equipment. Solar panels are not cheap.

 

How do you get materials for classes? Do you seek sponsors?

• Butler: I am a 24-hour-a-day grant writer. The school district is currently responsible for about $400 worth of the materials in our high school. I have written over $470,000 worth of grant requests to pay for what I have installed now. Mostly, they come from local connections. The most recent grant was from the Department of Marine Resources, for about $150,000, which supplied me with two greenhouses, and allowed us to expand oyster production. In the next two years, they are building an oyster facility where they will have oysters available for restoration projects and food consumption, and I am getting my students ready to take those jobs as soon as they are available.
• Janousek: My district is fortunate to have a lot of resources and a budget. We have also received grants for a wind tunnel and for energy audits for middle schools in our district. Listening out for where those grants are is a good tip. Most CTE pathways have advisory boards. I am constantly putting out ideas for my advisory board to offer up sponsorships. We have an electric vehicle, and we are going to turn it into NASCAR, basically, for sponsorships. So, it is definitely not just our own budget that pays for everything.
• Gitis: We need partnership between government institutions and business. Some of the funding has to come from the government. But partnerships between government and business are important, so that those resources steer education and training towards the positions businesses want to fill.

 

Compiled by Joseph Glandorf