OPINION: Anchorage schools’ effort to provide the workforce Alaska needs

It’s been 10 years since my youngest child graduated from the Anchorage School District. Since that time, I have had little involvement with ASD, but for the better part of the past 27 years, I have been intimately involved, from the employment side, in hiring hundreds of local people. My experience includes 10 years as a restaurant owner and 17 years as the leader of professional trade associations in the construction and oil and gas industries, working to recruit, train and retain a qualified workforce.

My experience told me that as every industry in this state faces a significant worker shortage, what’s been done in the past to match the skills of ASD graduates with what Alaska businesses need hasn’t worked.

In November of last year, I was introduced to the concept of the Academies of Anchorage (AoA) that ASD was pursuing.

I listened as ASD listed the challenges they were facing: stagnant graduation rates, poor attendance rates, and lack of student engagement and connection. As I began to learn about the academies concept, I started to understand how it could benefit not just our students, but also our local businesses. I came to believe that this new career-focused program could play a key role in increasing our local workforce and reversing the trend of high migration of young adults from the state. I knew at that point that I wanted to be involved.

In December, I began co-chairing AoA’s Career Focused Academies Tactic Team, the group responsible for determining which academies and career pathways each of the eight Anchorage high schools would offer their students, and one of 13 teams made up of educators, community organizations, and the business community. This specific Tactic Team was tasked with doing the work necessary to begin implementing the academies concept in the Anchorage School District.

The results of this community effort are exciting! In the upcoming school year, every freshman in the Anchorage School District’s eight comprehensive high schools will be placed in a Freshman Academy where they will begin to learn about career opportunities in our state. They will participate in a career expo, learn about trade and vocational schools in Alaska, explore college options and have a college campus visit, and take a Freshman Academy Career Exploration (FACE) course. They will also learn about the “soft skills” necessary to be a reliable worker.

At the end of their freshman year, they will choose a career pathway that is offered in an academy at their high school. That pathway becomes a learning lens for the rest of their learning experiences.

Academies were determined by market demand, student and parent interest, and available resources. Not surprisingly, many schools will be providing pathways such as health services, construction, business and technology, and science and engineering, to name a few, based on what our current and projected job market looks like.

Pathways range from transportation and logistics to business management, health sciences, natural resource management, construction technology and project management.

There are pathways for students who are college-bound, those who prefer a trade or vocational route, and those who plan to start working immediately upon graduation. Liberal arts studies are woven through every pathway.

Local businesses will be involved in providing curriculum that meets industry needs, introducing students to careers, providing job shadowing opportunities, internship opportunities, and even work opportunities.

In four years, when that first Freshman Academy graduates, there will be about 13,000 students, at some stage, in this career-driven educational system. What a boon to our local workforce!

The concept is new for Anchorage, it isn’t perfect yet, and it will change to meet market demands and student interest.

It’s still a great concept. It has worked in multiple cities around the U.S., and it has succeeded in bringing education and business leaders together to ensure a qualified workforce for their communities.

I would encourage employers to learn more about the Academies of Anchorage and how they can become involved in recruiting, training and retaining a qualified workforce.

It’s the best chance we have to improve educational outcomes, develop a local workforce, and keep our young people here, in this great state, filling the high-paying jobs that we all want them to have.

Rebecca Logan is the CEO of the Alaska Support Industry Alliance. To learn more about the Academies of Anchorage, visit www.asdk12.org/Academies.

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