BENTON – As of Tuesday, March 2nd, Marshall County has been distinguished as a Work-Ready Community In Progress according to Josh Tubbs, Director of Marshall County Economic Development, with one final step left when they re-apply in September to officially become a Work-Ready Certified Community. Marshall County applied for the Work-Ready In Progress application in December.
Governor Steve Beshear announced Monday, Marshall County and Ballard County as Work-Ready Communities In Progress. Beshear announced the two counties as, “communities that are developing their workforce by meeting educational, skill and digital literacy benchmarks .”
According to the Kentucky Work-Ready Communities website; “A certification is a measure of a county’s workforce quality. It is an assurance to business and industry that the community is committed to providing the highly-skilled workforce required in today’s competitive global economy.”
The Work-Ready certification will play a big role in our communities appeal to corporations looking to locate their operations and a boost to Marshall County’s economic development and ability to compete for jobs.
Marshall County will have three years to be declared a Work-Ready Community by meeting several benchmarks which include high school graduation rate, National Career Readiness Certificate holders, education attainment and soft skills development and digital literacy.
“A lot of partners throughout the county played a vital role to make this certification possible”, Tubbs said.
Tubbs commended Marshall County High School for playing a big role in attaining the certification with things they are implementing to allow graduating seniors, whether they are entering a two or four year institution, vocational school or entering the workforce, to have that Work-Ready seal on their diploma.
Graduating seniors must pass all three portions of the Work-Keys test which they began giving to the senior class this year and takes several days to complete. The three tests to earn the certification are Applied Mathematics, Reading for Information and Locating Information.
Beginning with the 2016 graduating class, the official National Career Readiness Certification (NCRC) seal will appear on the diplomas of those students who passed the tests.
The NCRC is an industry-recognized research-based credential that certifies essential skills needed for the workplace, used in all sectors of the economy measuring “real world” skills employers feel are critical to job success. Many companies use the NCRC as a barometer in their hiring process as well as promotions within their company. An employer may use NCRC scores for baseline applicant screening; hiring and promotion decisions; and targeting employee training and development..
“The Work-Keys test is part of the Work-Ready Community formula which is vital to earning the Work-Ready Community status”, Marshall County Assistant Principal Stacey Bradley said.
Bradley, along with MCHS counselor Jill Boone, were instrumental in making the Work-Keys test a reality for Marshall County students.
The test, which was available in the past taken with pencil and paper, is now given on-line and results are ready immediately.
There are three levels to passing the Work-Keys test- Bronze, Silver and Platinum, and students can retake a single portion they may not have passed the first time.
Certifications of Silver or Platinum are instrumental in the Work-Ready Community Status.
In Work-Ready conferences with Frankfort, Bradley stated that a significant amount of questions were addressed to school personnel.
“Our kids data from where they passed the test contributed to the process of the Work-Ready In-Progress Certification”, Bradley said.
Currently, only Marshall County seniors take the test but Bradley said he gets weekly calls from adults wanting to take the test and said it’s a goal of his to be able to offer it to the community in the future.
A grant obtained by Wendy Baxter, Project Administrator with Marshall County Economic Development, was given to the school to cover their cost of giving the test to all seniors.
Economic Development – Industrial Park
Along the same lines of growth for our community, Economic Development received $100,000 from the Fiscal Court this past fiscal year specifically appropriated for Industrial Park development purposes.
“The biggest challenge we have in Economic Development is that we’re not able to compete for projects because we don’t have something tangible to offer a prospect looking at our county, so ultimately we get passed by”, Tubbs said.
With the new Fiscal Court in place, Tubbs is ready to move forward and has received two proposals of which were scored. The engineering and testing firm of Bacon, Farmer and Workman of Paducah has been recommended by Tubbs for a site survey of the county to come up with several possible sites around the county that meet the criteria for an Industrial Park. The fee for the study will be $67,500 which will come out of the $100,000 already received by Economic Development for this purpose.
“This is a big-picture snapshot of our county as it relates to Economic Development”, Tubbs said. “I can’t stress enough, the importance this is to our community. This is a step forward. It’s not enough to live for today, we need to think about tomorrow if we really want to compete for projects and we need to be pro-active rather than re-active.”
With the competition among communities for economic development, Tubbs feels an Industrial Park will be an essential element in attracting businesses to Marshall County.
The Fiscal Court expressed concerns over the funding of such a development once the site has been picked for the park.
According to Tubbs, once the recommendation has been made, a team of people who understand economic development will work on ways to create revenue which include many possibilities including partnerships, matching grants or other cooperative programs.
Another way to generate income for this and many programs throughout Marshall County could come this summer when the Wet-Dry vote will be up for consideration.
Tubbs feels it ultimately comes down to, does Marshall County want to compete for jobs globally and if so, we need a product to market.
Tubbs was asking for the court’s approval to move forward with the survey but the court felt they needed to meet and discuss the issue further and will give their recommendation at the next meeting of the Fiscal Court on March 17th.