WASHINGTON – Oklahoma CareerTech has reached a new high of 151,000 students enrolled in its K-12 programs, just as President Donald Trump is starting to see the value for apprenticeships nationwide.

More students are finding out that 47% of trade careers after college pay more than the median wage for college graduates, according to the Birmingham Group.

This pivots the “college-for-all” mentality to supporting the next generation with the best career path suited for them after they graduate.

Tonja Norwood, Oklahoma CareerTech apprenticeship division manager, said trade is growing in Oklahoma with the increase of data centers coming into the state.

“This will help keep jobs and people in Oklahoma by expanding more opportunities,” Norwood said.

Since 2018, Oklahoma CareerTech has seen a 7.6% increase in students attending its K-12 programs and an overall 30% increase across its programs. This year, 50% of its enrollment is high schoolers.

This increase will help address the state’s shortage of trade workers, which it experienced earlier this year, to provide more resources to students to start work after they graduate.

Norwood said they are pushing trade programs into high schools, so students in their junior year can start choosing a trade and by their senior year have a job lined up after they graduate.

Many new graduates stay within two hours of where they graduated, Norwood said. If high schools start working through trade programs around their local communities, the students will be better suited to get a job.

“Many of these students are supporting their families. Instead of flipping burgers, they are able to have the opportunity to get into their career,” Norwood said.

Senior Zane Meek at Moore High School was given the chance his sophomore year to visit Moore Norman Technology Center, where he decided to take classes his junior year to learn about becoming a mechanic.

“They have helped tremendously by teaching me the skills I need to be a mechanic, whether it’s simply replacing a part or diagnosing some random obscure issue with a vehicle,” Meek said.

The course name, Automotive Service Technology, teaches students the fundamentals of mechanic work through hands-on activities, building resumes and finding a job after graduation.

Meek has grown up watching his older brothers racing cars, where his interest in cars started. As he got older, he expanded his interest in remote control cars and four-wheelers, where he had to learn how to fix them.

“After finishing my first year of the class, my love for working on cars has only grew,” Meek said.

Instead of businesses asking schools how they are preparing students for them, schools are now asking businesses how they can better prepare students to enter the job force. This is where Oklahoma CareerTech companies can provide apprenticeships for students.

Sandy Hill, who is the director of workforce pipeline development for Integris Health, said the apprenticeships are a smooth pathway for students to stay with the company they are already doing their apprenticeship.

For the past 30 years, Integris Health has worked closely with Oklahoma CareerTech, sending their staff to classes, hosting students for rotations and hiring them. For the past two years, they have been part of CareerTech’s apprenticeship program.

“It allows us to select caregivers who are high performers that we would like to advance in their career,” Hill said of what the apprenticeships have been able to show them while selecting hires. “It gives us a way to allow them to both attend classes while still working to end up with the end result of this advancement.”

This helps students across the state to take the steps to be professionally prepared to work in their field of interest and stay within the area.

These programs bring students together by exploring new methods of learning that they don’t get in the classroom and expand their love of trade.

“The key is that they are doing their learning where they’re going to be working,” Hill said. “They have an increased competency and familiarity with the equipment, with the office setting, with the hierarchy, the managers, the coworkers.”

In President Trump’s press release on May 27, it states he wants to set a national goal of providing one million new registered apprentices for aspiring trade workers as part of his America First agenda.

The Department of Labor has already been awarded $145 million for administering its Pay-for-Performance Incentive Payments Program to grow and support apprenticeships across the nation.

With this hope of the President’s aid, Hill said it will help expand their mission in more types of apprenticeships, both for clinical and non-clinical areas.

“People taking care of patients, but also the people who work in healthcare in office-type settings,” Hill said. “ I would love to see it expand, because not everybody wants to do clinical things, but they could still be our employee.”

Norwood said this will help more companies to get that initial involvement to grow their apprenticeship programs through the different incentive grants. This will help the collaboration between Oklahoma CareerTech and keep companies involved and maintain their apprenticeships.

“Career tech is very strong in Oklahoma. We are very lucky,” Hill said. “We definitely are privileged and reap the benefits of their amazing work.”

Gaylord News is a reporting project of the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication.  For more stories by Gaylord News go to GaylordNews.net.