(The Center Square) — A Georgia trade workforce says a state committee’s efforts to assist students learn essential trades and skills is “a step in the right direction.”
The Joint Study Committee on Dual Enrollment for Highly Skilled Talent at Younger Ages, established by means of Senate Resolution 175, was once requested to search out techniques to provide extra twin enrollment students and increase professional more youthful employees.
Under Georgia’s Dual Enrollment Program, students at eligible public faculties, personal excessive faculties or home-study systems can get started taking school categories whilst nonetheless in highschool.
“One of the number one needs that always comes up year in and year out is workforce,” state Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, stated all the way through an August listening to. “How do we attract talent to come to rural parts of the state?”
Among its suggestions, the committee needs lawmakers to simplify and streamline current sides of the Dual Enrollment. They additionally need to increase a transparent definition of what constitutes high-demand careers and corresponding coursework.
“Our small businesses applaud the efforts of the study committee to address the workforce issue in Georgia,” National Federation of Independent Business State Director Hunter Loggins informed The Center Square by the use of e mail.
“Anything to make it easier and more appealing for students to learn essential trades and skills is a step in the right direction,” Loggins added. “This committee, along with the Senate’s study committees on workforce and truck driver shortages and the governor through his Georgia Match program, understand that having a healthy, robust workforce is key to remaining the No. 1 state to do business.”
The committee is one in every of a number of state lawmakers established to discover a protracted employee scarcity. State officers automatically tout the state’s low unemployment price, despite the fact that exertions numbers display more or less 39% of Georgia’s working-age inhabitants is not taking part in the staff.
“We’re not trying to fix something that’s broken,” state Rep. Matt Dubnik, R-Gainesville, stated all the way through an August listening to. “We’re just trying to put more oil in the machine.”
According to an analysis from the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, the twin enrollment program has a $76 million finances for fiscal 2024, a $7 million relief.
The ultimate document really helpful giving an undetermined quantity of extra investment for Technical College System of Georgia instructors and highschool counselor positions. It additionally proposed appearing an “ongoing return on investment analysis.”
Committee contributors need lawmakers to nix the sundown provision of Senate Bill 86, which creates a three-year pilot program permitting some twin enrollment students to get entry to HOPE Grant budget for make a selection Career Technical and Agricultural Education classes. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed the measure into regulation previous this 12 months.
“We’ve been getting it right for a long time, and we’re about to make it better,” Brass stated.
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