Representatives from various Marshall County agencies and the Purchase Area Development District are working to ensure that the county keeps its Work Ready community certification.
Officials from the Marshall County schools, fiscal court, economic development, local plants and PADD met Wednesday in Benton to discuss necessary components in obtaining recertification, as well as factors that could affect the outcome and future of the initiative.
A Kentucky Work Ready Community certification is a measure of a county’s workforce quality based on the following criteria: high school graduation rate, educational attainment rate, and the amount of broadband available to demonstrate digital literacy. Each county must also submit a plan that will reduce the number of adults without a GED or high school diploma, increase the number of adults who have earned a National Career Readiness Certificate, and implement a soft-skills credentialing program addressing needs of local employers.
Marshall County was designated a Work Ready In Progress community in February 2015 and achieved certifcation in November that year as the 21st community in the state to do so. The school system played a critical role in that process, implementing a soft-skills program for students, as well as through adult education that allows participants to obtain industry certificates and Kentucky Occupational Skill Standards Assessments in 26 fields, including manufacturing.
The county must meet a number of educational benchmarks to earn and keep its status, however. Graduation rates must be at least 89 percent upon initial certification, and officials must have a plan in place to reach 98 percent by 2020, according to Work Ready Kentucky. Some 25 percent of the working age population must hold two-year degrees with plans in place to reach 32 percent within the first three years and 39 percent within five. Communities are also required to have plans in place to reduce the number of working-age adults without a GED or high school diploma.
The county is making progress toward many of those second tier goals. According to the most recent Census data on file with PADD, the county has made gains in graduation and educational attainment – which refers to the highest level of education an individual has completed – rates. Some 92.9 percent of students graduated as of last year, up from the 92.7 percent of students in November 2015; educational attainment rates were 27.8 percent, an increase from the 26.7 percent at the time of the county’s Work Ready certification.
The county also made an impact on those without a high school diploma or GED, noting a decrease from 13 percent in 2015 to 11.7 percent. The number of residents with National Career Readiness Certificates increased from 3.44 percent to 6.71 percent, according to the PADD data.
While data support growth in those areas, challenges still exist to obtaining recertification. Marshall County Economic Development Director Josh Tubbs, who facilitated Wednesday’s meeting, said state assistance in areas that helped to bolster numbers had been cut. In particular, he said Kentucky Department of Education funding for seniors to take the WorkKeys exam was no longer available. Marshall County High School has picked up the cost for that test, which comes to about $8,000, prompting administration to look for alternative funding resources.
“(Stacey Bradley) had asked me what I thought, and whether he should approach the cities or the (fiscal) court,” Tubbs said. “I said I didn’t think that was a good idea. You know, because I felt like that certificate is really something that benefits the private sector more than the public sector in terms of how that’s doled out.”
PADD Special Projects Coordinator Mary Ann Medlock said it affected all counties in the state, as schools had used the WorkKeys assessment to help students to demonstrate career readiness, though they might not score high enough on the ACT to prove college readiness.
“They could take the WorkKeys, earn a National Career Readiness Certificate, that could then be used in the work place,” Medlock said. “We have very few companies in the area that utilize WorkKeys. We do have in Calvert a couple of companies who look at it. So, I don’t know how the state is going to keep WorkKeys a part of this process.”
Medlock said officials were meeting with the Work Ready review panel to discuss program changes; she did not foresee any major changes before the county will submit its recertification application, however. Regardless, Medlock said the main objective of the local Work Ready group was to demonstrate progress toward implemented goals, which she said the county was accomplishing.
Programs in the schools were working toward more than NCRCs too, however, which doesn’t hinge on a state consideration. Attendance and work ethic improvement are school system goals still in progress.
“These soft-skills programs were developed in an effort to address employer concerns with this generation’s ability to show up to work on time and to understand what it takes to be successful in the workplace,” Medlock said. “So, they added two components to the full Work Ready Communities program. No community could be a Work Ready Community without a high school soft-skills credential and … what they call a post-secondary adult soft-skills credential.”
The local committee has set a deadline of Sept. 15 to submit the county’s recertification application for consideration. In addition to providing community progress data and a closer look at student and adult education soft-skills program development, the committee must hold a public event. Tubbs said the committee would schedule an update for the fiscal court to be held in a forum after the official meeting Aug. 15 in the fiscal courtroom. The event, which will serve as a yearly update on the county’s work ready progress for both the court and public.
“It would be a presentation of sorts,” Tubbs said. “But nothing that would last two or three hours. … Just kind of updating the court as the audience but then also having the press there to be able to get those numbers. That way we don’t have to plan for an after hours event and, you know, (just) us show up.”
For more information about Work Ready communities and certification criteria, visit workready.ky.gov.