So said Texas Workforce Commissioner Julian Alvarez at a kickoff ceremony Tuesday, Oct. 24, to the first cohort of 52 SBISD high school juniors in a new electrical apprentice program.
“This model is new in Texas,” Alvarez told the students, parents and others gathered in the Guthrie Center auditorium. “I’ve been out promoting the ‘earn while you learn’ model … what you’re doing here needs to be replicated.”
That ‘earn while you learn’ model is the result of a partnership between SBISD, Houston Community College and TRIO Electric, an electrical services contractor. Those 52 juniors – now apprentice electricians – will take classes and have the hours to become a Level I electrician when they graduate from high school.
They’ll get paid for working alongside master electricians during the summer between their junior and senior years. And they’ll earn significant hours towards the 8,000 or so they’ll need to qualify to take the master electrician exam.
Mere months in the making, the partnership started at the request of TRIO President and CEO Beau Pollock, whose growing business needs qualified electricians. SBISD Superintendent Dr. Scott Muri and HCC were quickly on board and the planning began.
“It’s incredibly exciting to stand here today and see 52 students (in the program),” Muri said. “This is the absolute epitome of CollectiveGreatness (an SBISD core value).”
HCC Chancellor Cesar Maldonado told the students that they were designing their own educations, relating a story about a man he knows, a skilled craftsman who first started and ran a successful business – an education unto itself, he said – and is now back in school studying mechanical engineering.
Muri, Maldonado and Pollock signed a memorandum of understanding between the three parties. Later, the student apprentices exchanged commitment forms for hard hats and safety vests.
Students have already started class with instructor Edgar Anguilu, a master electrician, in a specially constructed classroom at the Guthrie Center.
Peter Beard, senior vice president of the Greater Houston Partnership, told students that while TRIO isn’t the only employer in Houston in need of qualified employees, they were in good hands with TRIO.
Workforce Commissioner Alvarez told students how much he wanted to be at the kickoff ceremony Tuesday, and that he wants to expand the program model.
“This is an option you’ve selected,” said Alvarez, “not an alternative.”
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