The senior class at Allen County-Scottsville
High School enjoyed a rare opportunity last week---the opportunity to meet with
the governor of the Commonwealth, Matt Bevin. During a visit to Scottsville for
a town hall forum, Governor Bevin accepted an invitation from a high school
educator to speak to the senior class and take a tour of the five-year old
Allen County Career and Technical Center.
Following the town hall meeting, Bevin spent
approximately an hour with the Class of 2019. Rather than an address to the
students, Governor Bevin spent the majority of the time answering questions.
The students’ questions ranged from the on-going state pension issue to the use
of marijuana for medical or recreational purposes.
The governor also fielded a question
regarding his administration’s efforts to see that every graduate of a Kentucky
high school was prepared for college or a place in the workforce. To accomplish
that objective, the administration spearheaded the Work Ready Initiative---state
funding to help students without college as their first choice prepare for life
following high school.
“I grew up in a rural community,” Bevin
explained, “Most kids didn’t go on to college. One thing I realized is that no
matter where you come from is that everyone needs to be an engaged, working
member of society. Not everybody should go to college. What I do know is that
the ticket from A to B on the ladder of success, every run of that ladder
involves work and being engaged somehow. Most the people I grew up with wanted
a good job, to be able to provide for their families, and have a little extra
spending money.”
Bevin explained that the Work Ready Initiative
asked schools and communities to partner together to help students discover the
opportunities that exist for students who choose not to go to college.
“When I became governor, I asked why don’t
we have an environment in which we ask the community what jobs do you have,”
Bevin said. “What are the things in a community that you need to be done that
need skilled and non-skilled workers, technical and non-technical. I didn’t just
wont to build things; I wanted to scale up programs.”
Schools were asked to apply for grants
through the Work Ready Initiative that would be used to help students in a Tech
Center learn the skills to be ready to step immediately from the classroom to
the hospital room or from a school’s shop to a production line. Grant
applicants were required to collaborate with the local or regional technical
schools and the community to discover ways that the grant would be used to meet
the community’s needs for a workforce that was prepared for an advancing
technical age.
“We had $100 million available and we had
$540 million worth of applications,” Bevin noted. “We could only afford about
18% of the applicants and this school was one of them. That $100 million was
matched by local and private sector money to the tune of almost $150 million.
In the last couple of years, we have put about a quarter of a million dollars
into these training programs. You all are beneficiaries of that. Do every one
of you want to work in a high tech job? Of course not. But, are some of you
absolutely convinced you want to work in a high tech job because of something
you have been exposed to here? I bet so. Will some of you pursue a high tech
job? Would that not be different if you had not had this opportunity? Probably.
For some of you, what you are exposed to through the Tech Center will be
transformation.”
Following the Q and A time with the seniors,
high school principal Joseph Cosby led Bevin on a brief tour of the Tech
Center. The governor visited the welding, industrial maintenance, automotive
education, and health science departments and had the opportunity to hear Tech
center educators Matt Keith, Paul Spears, Todd Stamps, and Julianne Bewley
explain how their programs are interacting with the community and using the
grant monies to better train students.