Career Pipeline Partnerships With Schools

Why this matters

The techs a shop will hire in five years are in high school or a community college program now, or not in one at all. The programs that train them are shaped, often more than owners realize, by the employers who show up: what equipment the lab buys, which certifications students prepare for, which shop names the instructor mentions when a student asks where to apply. A shop that waits until it needs a helper competes for whoever is left. A shop that has been in the classroom for three years gets the instructor's call about the student who finishes every project early.

This card covers how school programs are structured and funded, where an employer fits, and the limits on putting a minor to work. Running a single classroom visit has its own how-to (see related: How to Run a Career Day Visit That Recruits), and so does joining an advisory board.

How career and technical education is organized

Career and technical education, or CTE, is the formal name for what older owners remember as shop class or vocational school. It runs in three main settings:

• Comprehensive high schools, with a program or pathway inside the school, such as construction trades or electrical.
• Area career and technical centers, which serve students from several high schools for part of the day, often with larger labs and more trade-specific programs.
• Community and technical colleges, with certificates and associate degrees, often for adults as well as recent graduates, and sometimes serving as the classroom half of a registered apprenticeship.

Many programs also offer dual enrollment, where high school students earn college credit, and pre-apprenticeship programs designed to prepare students to enter a registered apprenticeship.

Perkins V: the funding backbone, and why it wants you

The main federal funding stream for CTE is the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, known as Perkins V, signed in 2018. Federal money flows to states, which pass most of it to local school districts and colleges under state plans. It is rarely the largest part of a program's budget, but it pays for a lot of equipment and program improvement, and it carries requirements that matter to employers.

The one that matters most: to receive Perkins funds, a local recipient must conduct a comprehensive local needs assessment at least every two years, and must consult a range of stakeholders, which the law lists as including representatives of local business and industry. The assessment looks at whether programs are aligned with local labor-market needs. In practice, this means the school is required to ask employers what they need, and many have trouble finding employers who will answer.

Two other features are useful to know:

• Perkins funds can support work-based learning, the range of experiences from job shadowing to internships, which gives schools both a reason and a budget to arrange them.
• Programs report outcomes, including whether students go on to further education, training or employment, so a school has a reason to track and value employer partners who hire.

Advisory committees: the seat with the most leverage

Most CTE programs have a program advisory committee: a small group of employers and practitioners who meet a few times a year to review the curriculum, the equipment list and industry certifications. Whether one is required, how often it meets and what it reviews are mostly set by state CTE rules and the district's policy rather than by Perkins itself, so they vary by state.

The advisory committee is where an employer has the most influence for the least time. It is the seat where you say "students who come to us need to be able to read a wiring diagram and use a manometer, and nobody teaches the second one," and the next year's equipment request includes manometers. See related: How to Join a CTE Advisory Board.

Work-based learning, from awareness to employment

Schools usually describe work-based learning as a continuum. Each stage asks something different of the shop:

The line between the second and third rows is the one shops trip over. A student who watches a tech is a visitor. A student who does productive work is very likely an employee under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, regardless of whether anyone calls it an internship, and has to be paid accordingly. Unpaid internships at for-profit businesses are judged under the U.S. Department of Labor's "primary beneficiary" test that asks whether the student or the business benefits more, and state laws may be stricter. If a student is doing work, pay them.

The minor-labor limits, briefly

Most high school students are minors, and federal child labor rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act, plus state laws that are often stricter, set what they may do. The full rules are in their own card; see related: Hiring a Minor Into a Trade: What the Hours Rules Allow. The points that shape a pipeline partnership:

• Under 16, hours are limited, especially during the school year, and most construction-type work is off limits.
• At 16 and 17, the federal hours limits fall away, but the hazardous occupations orders still bar specific work. Several matter directly to trades: driving on public roads as part of the job (with a narrow exception for some 17-year-olds), power-driven woodworking machines and many power saws, roofing and work on or about a roof, excavation, and wrecking or demolition.
• A student-learner exemption covers some of those orders for students in a bona fide vocational program, under the written-agreement and supervision conditions 29 CFR 570.50 lists. It does not cover all of them.
• Many states require work permits or age certificates for minors, issued through the school.

A job shadow that puts a 16-year-old on a roof or on a ride-along where they help carry and run power tools can turn an observation into prohibited work. Plan the shadow around what a minor may watch and do.

A worked example: three years with one career center

A 15-person HVAC shop has struggled to find helpers. The nearest area career center runs a two-year HVAC program, and the shop's contact there covers three classes of about 22 students each: a junior HVAC section, a senior HVAC section and an introductory construction class for sophomores.

Year 1. The owner joins the program's advisory committee, which meets twice a year for about 2 hours. At the spring meeting the instructor shares the local needs assessment results: local employers had reported needing refrigerant-handling skills, but the program had no certification prep. The owner and two other employers recommend adding preparation for EPA Section 608 certification. A lead tech visits the junior and senior sections for a hands-on session, reaching 44 students.

Year 2. The program adds 608 prep. The shop visits both HVAC sections and the sophomore class, about 66 students, and hosts 6 job shadows: half a day each, students observing a maintenance tech on residential tune-ups. The shop's insurance agent confirms coverage for visitors, and the school's work-based learning agreement sets the terms. No student climbs onto a roof or handles power tools; the tech uses the ride time to talk about the work.

Year 3. Two students from the shadows apply for summer helper jobs. One is 17, the other has turned 18. Both are paid. The 17-year-old works only in the shop and at ground-level equipment, rides as a passenger, and does no driving and no roof work. After graduation the 18-year-old is hired full time and enrolled in the shop's registered apprenticeship program, with the career center's 608 certification already in hand.

Across three years, classroom sessions made about 110 student contacts (44 plus 66), and since the year 1 juniors were seen again as seniors, that is about 88 different students (44 plus 22 new juniors plus 22 sophomores); 6 shadowed, 2 worked summers and 1 was hired full time. The owner's time was 6 advisory meetings plus a day a year of tech time on visits. The hire is not the only return: the program now teaches a skill the shop used to teach new helpers itself.

What changes the answer: a community college program brings adult students, often career changers, with no minor-labor limits and a shorter road to hire, but less time to influence. A rural shop with no program nearby may get more from a youth apprenticeship arranged directly with a school district than from an advisory seat.

What goes wrong

The partner who only appears when hiring. A shop that turns up once a year with a job posting gets treated as one; the instructor's best students go to the employers who have been in the room all year.

Promising what you cannot deliver. Offering a summer job to a 15-year-old, or a ride-along that involves roof work for a 16-year-old, puts the student and the school in an awkward spot when the rules come up. Know the limits before the offer.

Donating equipment the program cannot use. Old equipment can be a real help or a disposal problem passed to the school. Ask the instructor what the program needs, and see related: The Tax Reality of Donating Services and Materials.

References

• Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V), Public Law 115-224
• Fair Labor Standards Act child labor provisions, 29 CFR Part 570
• U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, guidance on internship programs under the FLSA
• See related: Hiring a Minor Into a Trade: What the Hours Rules Allow
• See related: How to Register an Apprenticeship Program