Governor Asa Hutchinson speaks after signing into law three workforce bills into law. From left: Sen. Jane English (R-North Little Rock); Gov. Hutchinson; (obscured) Senate President Pro Tempore Jonathan Dismang (R-Searcy);Dr. Charisse Childers, director of the Department of Career Education; and Johnny Key, director of the Department of Education.
Over a year after state Sen. Jane English began her crusade to reform workforce education in Arkansas, Charisse Childers is poised to carry out what English thinks is the centerpiece of that reformation: Act 892 of 2015, signed into law last month.
In January, Gov. Asa Hutchinson named Childers to head the state Department of Career Education, a move that English applauded. “She has a great background,” said English, a North Little Rock Republican. Childers “understands where we need to be going.”
“She will be putting a lot of things in place,” English said. “And actually, what we’re finding is that there are a number of things already in place that we never had been using before.”
Those “things already in place” were part of the problem with worker training in Arkansas. State-sponsored training programs were scattered across a number of agencies, including the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, the Department of Workforce Services, the Department of Human Services, the Department of Correction and the Department of Career Education.
The confusion was such that not one point person or one office in Arkansas kept track of the training programs. That led to inefficiency and a duplication of efforts, and a duplication of efforts usually means a waste of taxpayer money.
Act 892 seeks to remedy that problem by creating, as its title states, “a comprehensive statewide workforce development system” and by remaking the ineffective Arkansas Board of Career Education.
During the legislative session earlier this year, English found an ally in John Riggs, the president of J.A. Riggs Tractor Co. of Little Rock. In March, he urged the Arkansas Senate Education Committee “to get rid of my job.”
Riggs wasn’t talking about his day job; he was encouraging the dissolution of the Board of Career Education, on which he’d served for seven years. “There is a huge lack of coordination between all the workforce opportunities that state government has,” he said at the time.
“God bless Jane English,” Riggs told Arkansas Business last week. “I love her. She’s been on this crusade a long time.
“In fact, I was talking to her the other day … and I was saying, ‘You know, Jane, I don’t know if you remember this, but when I was in the Senate you lobbied me on some of these workforce programs.’ She’s been working on this stuff a lot longer than 20 years,” said Riggs, who served in the state Senate as a Democrat from 1999-2003.
And now, he said: “She’s finally got some real traction, in my opinion.”
A Political Trade
English earned that traction last year, when she traded her vote for the “private option,” Arkansas’ version of Medicaid expansion, for a commitment by then-Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, and other state officials to reform workforce education — a reform that officials readily acknowledged was needed.
English and others met for months to hash out changes, and while campaigning for governor, Hutchinson, a Republican, promised to improve workforce training.
The result was three workforce education measures approved during the 2015 meeting of the General Assembly. In a signing ceremony April 6 at the state Capitol, Hutchinson called the bills “one of the greatest accomplishments” of the legislative session.
“This, I see, is foundational,” he said. “It is a momentum-changer. It is going to set the course for success in Arkansas in terms of job-skill training.”
“This is one of the crying needs of our state, to drive economic development, to make sure that we compete with our other national partners of states in terms of recruiting industry and to support the existing industry we have,” Hutchinson said. “To do that, we had to have a more robust system of jobs-skill training that matches the need of industry.”
One of the English-sponsored measures was Act 1131, the Workforce Initiative Act. It seeks to foster partnerships between schools — K-12 through college — and employers in Arkansas to develop education programs that meet the needs of business and industry.
Act 1131 creates a competitive three-phase grant program, administered by the state Department of Higher Education. In the first phase, partnerships of educational institutions and employers seek money to develop plans for workforce training. The second phase provides grants to implement the training. And the third phase provides continuation grants.
Another of the measures was Act 907, the Arkansas Workforce Innovation & Opportunity Act, by Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, the governor’s nephew. It creates the Arkansas Workforce Development Board, a panel of advisers from different industry segments who will advise the governor on a state workforce development plan.
The Grand Coordinator
But it’s Act 892 of which English is proudest. The act makes the Department of Career Education the focal point for coordination of programs. And that makes Childers the point person for English’s efforts.
Childers said she keeps close to her a recent article in Arkansas Business. That story detailed the needs of northwest Arkansas employers for workers with so-called soft skills: a work ethic, the desire to learn, problem solving, communication, the ability to work as part of a team.
“I keep that out because it’s important for me to keep looking at that and making sure that we’re aware of that need,” said Childers, who came to the department from Accelerate Arkansas, a statewide group of business and education leaders that work on knowledge-based economic development, where she had served as executive director.
More than “plays well with others” skills are needed, however, as Riggs and Steve Schulte, president of employee placement firm FirstStaff of Little Rock, will tell you. (See Riggs Tractor an Example of Teaching Students Their Options.) Arkansas employers need workers who are not only computer literate but who can operate machines, people prepared to be electricians and plumbers, workers skilled in what used to be called “the trades.”
“Young people aren’t learning those skills,” Schulte said.
And that’s one of Childers’ goals: to ensure that Arkansans are trained in the skills business and industry need, to match workers to employers. Succeeding at that will help mean that jobs are available for Arkansans and Arkansans are available to fill jobs.
“One of the purposes or the goals stated in the act was to bring coordination of all state and federal career education and workforce development programs,” Childers said.
To that end, Act 892 creates the Office of Skills Development within the Department of Career Education. The office is the entity specifically charged with meeting the workforce needs of employers.
“It will be important that we have more of a top-down approach in that we want to hear from business and industry,” Childers said. “We want to make sure that we are providing the career and technical education in the classroom to meet the needs of the businesses and industries in those regions of our state.”
Childers expects it to be up and running by July 1 but cautions that much work remains to be done and that no one has been chosen to head it.
And to ensure the “top-down approach,” the Board of Career Education that Riggs was so eager to see dissolved is, under Act 892, renamed and reconstituted. The Career Education & Workforce Development Board includes representatives from a number of industries, from agriculture to financial services to transportation-logistics.
“The way that new board is going to operate, there are going to be people who are hiring these kind of kids, and so it will make a much more vigorous discussion at board meetings about what do we need these programs to be doing,” Riggs said.
Also sitting on the board as nonvoting members will be the education commissioner, the director of the Department of Higher Education, the executive director of the Arkansas Community Colleges, the director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, the director of the Department of Workforce Services, a member representing the Arkansas Association of Public Universities and a member representing the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators.
The Office of Skills Development will have available the Skills Development Fund, about $15 million that’s coming from the AEDC and which will be used for workforce training programs.
It all involves many long meetings, Childers said, and many boards. But ultimately, as English told Arkansas Business in April, “We want to make sure that not only are we doing the best job with the resources but that people actually end up with something and they can go get a job and have a career.”
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