General News

Union to Council: CTE an unappreciated success story

by Michael Hirsch

Nov 15, 2007 11:12 AM

Making the case that skills-training programs have great value not only in middle and high schools but continuing throughout an individual’s work life, UFT Vice President Michael Mulgrew told an oversight hearing of the City Council Civil Service and Labor Committees on Oct. 30 that, while the city’s Career and Technical Education sequences were “a real success story, the city treats them as unloved step-children.”

Summarizing remarks submitted by UFT President Randi Weingarten in her role as both UFT head and chair of the Municipal Labor Committee, Mulgrew added his own testimony that while CTE schools were outstripping regular high schools in attendance, retention, graduation rates and even in rates of college enrollment, not enough was being done to help them attract more students.

Nor was any skills-training program being offered “to some 200,000 young men and women between the ages of 16 and 24 with no discernable skills, even as we have skilled-worker shortages in almost every major industry in New York City and employers say they can’t get the help they need,” said Mulgrew, the union’s vice president for CTE and alternative high schools.

The hearing was exploring “Pathways to Trade Professions.”

Mulgrew urged tightening the fit between how schools function and the city’s evolving workforce needs. “Poverty and democratic citizenship don’t mix,” Mulgrew said. “We want career-track employment that pays a living wage.”

He seconded remarks by City Comptroller William Thompson that the Department of Education has “relegated these nuts-and-bolts high schools to second-class status in spite of their proven record.” Mulgrew noted that funding for CTE high schools was lower than funding for general academic high schools, so the CTE schools can’t easily meet the evolving skill needs of industry.

“Meanwhile,” he said, “the mayor’s response to the press: Scores are up, so how bad could the schools be? That’s the point. It’s not that the schools are bad, but that the central administration is leaving them to sink or swim.”

The bulk of Mulgrew’s remarks dealt with ways to expand the CTE sequences in New York City. He called for ending the dual problem of overlap and duplication of some services, while other major needs go practically unaddressed.

“There is a lack of communication in the workforce-development community,” Mulgrew said. “Two years ago the DOE opened a construction school in Queens. That was a good move, since it marked the school system’s acknowledgment of a severe shortage of skilled workers in the city’s construction industry. Because up until then the DOE was downsizing and closing programs, basing its decision on an assumption that there was no need for additional workers.

“But there’s still a disconnect of communication and coordination between the industry’s needs, the workforce development community and the school system … [Today] there are more than 200 entities involved in worker training in the New York area, and most do excellent work. But in too many cases they do that work in isolation. There is no formal system for collaborating and sharing information and resources. The UFT is working with Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations just to map out the existing programs — forget about their working together better,” Mulgrew said.

He urged the Council to support better funding for career and technical schooling as well as help put more technology programs in middle schools. He also called for a state-city partnership committed to reinvigorating CTE, more early internship programs, and a fit between incubator industry projects and jobs for students and skilled young people.

He asked Council members to:

• Support discrete funding in each school budget that guarantees shop upgrades and adequate supplies and material;
• Keep after the DOE to ensure that CTE students are allowed adequate time in the school schedule to meet the requirements of their certified programs;
• Advocate that the schools running CTE sequences receive credit in the DOE Progress Report;
• Use the Council’s bully pulpit to ensure that the city emphasizes the hiring of qualified teachers in its recruitment efforts;
• Envision the schools not just as training grounds for emerging workers but as centers for adult retooling and training;
• Help the schools and industry to implement mechanisms that share information on workforce needs;
• Help create mechanisms for partnerships to be formed at the school level and create incentives for principals to prize partnerships; and
• Ensure that when a business does commit resources to a program, the program isn’t cut back, as was the case when Bushwick HS received a full-scale, state-of-the-art printing press and a major grant from Xerox to run a graphic arts program, only for Xerox to be told the school and the program would be closing.