The manufacturing sector needs workers. Training high schoolers could help fill that void

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• Judy Woodruff:

  Even as the labor picture in the United States improves post-pandemic, the manufacturing sector is still struggling with a shortage of workers and raw materials.

  An analysis by Deloitte found that over two million manufacturing jobs will be unfilled through 2030.

  For his Making Sense reporting, Paul Solman looks at a program that's preparing inner-city high school students for high-skill, high-paying factory jobs.

  It's the latest in our Work Shift series, which focuses on navigating the job market in this time of COVID and the future.

• Paul Solman:

  OK, here's a dream confluence. First, the problem kid from inner-city Louisville.

• Jaquez Neal:

  Growing up in a troubled neighborhood I would have been wrong place, wrong time, probably end up in the system.

• Paul Solman:

  Next, a potentially problem high school.

• Martin Pollio:

  This is a school that's 80 to 90 percent free and reduced lunch. A third of the kids in this school qualify for English second language or special education services.

  So what you're talking about is a school with significant at-risk population.

• Paul Solman:

  Finally, a huge local manufacturer with jobs it can't fill.

• Valorie Hughes:

  We currently don't have enough workers to continue to run our factories, whether it's here in Louisville or in Georgia or Alabama or Tennessee.

• Paul Solman:

  You see where this is going, right? But stick with me. Admittedly, just one company, one school, only a few kids, but they're trying something pretty new here, because they have to, the economy has to.

  Let's start with the kid, Jaquez Neal.

• Jaquez Neal:

  I would have been one of those just working in a fast-food restaurant. And I didn't want my future to be that. Not at all.

• Paul Solman:

  So, what was he doing in school?

  Neal's mother is Taneda Thompson.

• Taneda Thompson:

  Fighting, walking out of class, getting smart with the teachers. You name it.

• Paul Solman:

  Getting into trouble?

• Taneda Thompson:

  Staying in trouble from pre-K until ninth grade. He took lighters to school one time and tried to light a girl's hair on fire. I don't know.

• Paul Solman:

  But, today, as a high school senior?

• Taneda Thompson:

  None of that.

• Paul Solman:

  Diagnosed with ADHD and ODD, oppositional defiant disorder, her son was medicated from age 5.

• Taneda Thompson:

  He's been off of it for about a year now. And he hasn't been to his therapist in about three years.

• Paul Solman:

  As of 10th grade, a transfiguration.

• Jaquez Neal:

  I literally do research about engineering technology so I can get more mental stage about stuff. So I know how a refrigerator is made. I know how a dishwasher's made. I know how car's made. Something new every day. That's how I want to use the rest of my days.

• Paul Solman:

  Jaquez Neal is now a star student, working his butt off, headed to college next fall, in large part because Doss High School reinstituted vocational ed.

• Greg Ash:

  Pick a category and a dollar amount.

• Paul Solman:

  Using every trick in the book to make even the most boring parts of it palatable.

• Greg Ash:

  Worker safety for 100.

• Paul Solman:

  This is how teacher Greg Ash preps students for their certified production technician exam.

• Greg Ash:

  Material handling for 400. Video daily double.

• Woman:

  Drains should be protected when unloading what?

• Paul Solman:

  But the main attraction here, hands-on learning.

• Jaquez Neal:

  I don't want to sit there and talk about it. I want to be hands-on. So once I learned that we got a lab, I was intrigued. I was happy. No hesitation. I was like, yes, get me in there, get me in there.

• Paul Solman:

  Is the key to it that you have got a shop like this, that you have stuff you can physically be doing?

• Jaquez Neal:

  Yes, I have a lot of resources. Now that I'm in a lab, it's like I can go in there and build anything that I want. It's fun. Like, it's the best thing ever.

• Greg Ash:

  Sitting behind a desk for 90, 100 minutes, it doesn't work for him. But education like this, an alternative, works for him perfectly. And he has excelled in it.

• Paul Solman:

  The program has kept Charles Malone going too.

• Charles Malone:

  I had built a can crusher at one point.

• Paul Solman:

  A can crusher?

• Charles Malone:

  Mm-hmm, with pneumatics. Way better than a classroom, for sure.

• Paul Solman:

  His mother had what she thought were loftier aspirations for him.

  You wanted him to go to college, no?

• Charlotte Riordan:

  I did want him to go to college, but he had no interest in college. I kind of thought you had to get a college education to do something. But this turned my thoughts around.

• Paul Solman:

  A major change?

• Charlotte Riordan:

  Completely.

• Paul Solman:

  Perhaps even more to the point, says county school superintendent Marty Pollio, education like this makes sense in every sense of the phrase.

• Martin Pollio:

  When kids see a skill that is going to specifically lead to something, a certification, a high-paying, high-skilled, high-wage job, they're much more likely to be engaged in the school.

• Paul Solman:

  And that's where GE Appliances, now owned by the hands-off Chinese firm Haier, comes in, with a program called GEA2DAY, outfitting Doss High School with a manufacturing lab, luring kids into two-day-a-week paid apprenticeships at its ginormous factories nearby.

  As sophomores, they can go to GE Appliance Park and they can see what they're learning in the classroom relates to real-world experience. Then, as juniors, they are usually going to work for them during summer works program. And then their senior year, for the ones that are 18, get to co-op on Mondays and Fridays through the GEA2DAY program and get even more real world experience.

• Paul Solman:

  And get paid.

• Greg Ash:

  And get paid.

• Paul Solman:

  Starting at $15.50 an hour, plus benefits. And high schoolers aren't the only ones who work two days a week. So does Jayme Maskey, who switched from full-time after giving birth to her first child.

• Jayme Maskey:

  I picked the program because I wanted to be there for my son and watch him grow.

• Paul Solman:

  Haylee Miles is in college. Her friends ask why she works in a factory.

• Haylee Miles:

  And I tell them they have a tuition reimbursement program, I work there two days a week, and it helps pay for college.

• Paul Solman:

  Renee Jumper is older, 47. But, during COVID, she felt her kids needed her help with schoolwork.

• Renee Jumper:

  Working two days a week at GEA has enabled me to homeschool them.

• A.J. Hubbard:

  We thought we were targeting high school students that maybe weren't thinking about going to college, but a lot of women showed up and came to work, and did phenomenal.

• Paul Solman:

  But wait a minute, I said to GEA's A.J. Hubbard, most people think manufacturing is in long-term decline in this country, and now the robots are coming. So why are you trying so hard to find people to fill jobs that might not be there?

• A.J. Hubbard:

  I don't know that manufacturing is declining. We have added 100 robots here, but we have added 1,000 jobs just in the last year.

• Paul Solman:

  And the robots?

• Valorie Hughes:

  Even though we're adding robots in…

• Paul Solman:

  GEA's Valorie Hughes:

• Valorie Hughes:

  … it's elevating the skill set of the individuals that we need in the jobs.

• Paul Solman:

  Technical skills like those Doss High is now trying hard to teach to meet the demand out there. But doesn't superintendent Pollio worry about education serving business, and doing so to the detriment of a broader education?

• Martin Pollio:

  So I have been asked many times, are you forcing a kid to choose their career as a 15- or 16-year-old?

• Paul Solman:

  Right.

• Martin Pollio:

  And so what I usually say is absolutely not. Our job as a school district is to make sure kids are engaged and passionate and college- and career-ready and give them multiple pathways along the way.

  Jaquez Neal There's so many doors can be opened, and the possibility is endless.

• Paul Solman:

  Jaquez Neal is headed to college in the fall. But he's got a vocational fallback, high-tech manufacturing.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," Paul Solman.