Last week on Kentucky Edition, we told you about the We Lead computer science program, a virtual computer science career academy.

Establish by the Kentucky General Assembly in 2022.

The program is the first of its kind in the US.

Program leaders, along with lawmakers and educators, announced on Thursday a new partnership they say, will give even more Kentucky students an early start on training for careers in the tech industry.

We launched, as is carrying out the General Assembly's charge to significantly expand Kentucky's students access to opportunities that prepare them for jobs in Kentucky's technology sector.

Today, we're announcing three ways that we're going to meet our challenge in the General Assembly.

Chambers of Commerce across the state know their businesses better than anyone, so we're asking them to take the lead.

We're offering $100,000 in micro grants to chambers in Kentucky.

We're asking them to identify which Kentucky employers are hiring tech talent, what skills they need in their talent pipeline, and how those chamber members can engage with students.

And we need to ask, in partnership with Wheatley to ask.

The Inner Alliance is expanding its model of employer engagement and tech talent pipeline development into Kentucky and October 1st we lead.

The US is launching our student recruitment efforts for 2526.

We want to enroll 300 additional students to join our 80 states as we move toward our goal of graduating 250 to 300 students a year.

Who are the most qualified applicants in the entry level tech pipeline?

When we look at job opportunities and job growth in certain sectors, there's nothing more important than the technology field that this will play.

And to make sure our next generation of learners have the skills and ability to be able to move right into that seamless transition into the workforce.

We're trying to design a workforce.

We're trying to train a workforce for jobs, and we don't even know what they're going to look like.

Computer science is going to play a role no matter what the industry, what the line that you're going to go into is.

So important that we give our students, our kids, our children, those opportunities to be in computer science.

We lead new partnership with Inner Alliance.

We'll help more of our students get real world experiences, real world experiences.

We're going to make school relevant for so many kids.

I want to encourage all local chambers of commerce throughout the Commonwealth to step up and take the lead on identifying employers who are hiring this kind of talent.

Use this opportunity to provide these employers with the opportunity to influence the skills of we lead CSE and develop its students because these young men and women are the future of our workforce.

Ladies and gentlemen, programs like this meet people where they are and can help keep talented people in Kentucky, which should be all of our goals.

These kind of partnerships also help education build closer ties to the business community.

Partnerships like this allow our best and brightest students to stay here in the Commonwealth.

Students in the We Lead Seattle program can get dual college credit and computer programing, cybersecurity and data science.