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Florida has lots of non-college-bound students, and employers have plenty of high-paying, skilled labor jobs for them. The problem is matching employers with potential hires.
 POLE POSITION: A student trains to become an FPL line specialist. Almost half of FPL’s line specialists will be eligible to retire in three years. The company pays apprentice line specialists more than $41,000 a year. [Photo: Daniel Portnoy] |
semester, sleep lab tech program beginning this month at the Banner health sciences training center at Valencia Community College in Orlando. Dew cold-called 30 central Florida sleep disorder centers and found plenty of demand for registered polysomnography technicians, who can make $37,000 to $48,000 per year. Sleep disorder treatment is a growth industry, but there are only 13 accredited training programs nationwide, including one at Tallahassee Community College, for techs. “I was actually getting calls from physicians saying, ‘How can I get involved? I need techs,’ ” Dew says.
The state hopes the centers can duplicate the success of business-education partnerships such as the one Torrance, Calif.-based Toyota Motor Sales has with schools like Atlantic Technical Center, a Broward County public school offering post-secondary and high school education. A June day finds 15 students, in training to become mechanics, in a school garage huddled around a classmate wearing thick white electrical line gloves as he works on the 200-volt power unit of a 2006 Prius.
Out of 100 entering
9th-graders in Florida this fall: |
Students pay $7,000 in tuition and books for the two-year program and after eight weeks begin work at one of 10 Toyota or Lexus area dealerships, generally at $9.50 per hour on the lube rack. Graduates start in the mid-$30,000s but can move up to $60,000 a year and even, for efficient mechanics willing to put in 12-hour days, $100,000 per year. Atlantic Tech provides the teachers and space. Toyota provides $60,000 to $100,000 annually in vehicles. Says the school’s automotive department head, Ken Bergmann, as he shows off the donated vehicles, “I just got a 2007 Camry. This is an ’03 Matrix. I just got a 2006 Matrix.”
Tillman Lee Nelson III, 28, of Margate, entered the program after years working as a auto detailer. “I needed to do something that was more of a career,” says Nelson, who graduated in 2005 and expects to earn more than $40,000 this year as a JM Lexus mechanic, roughly $10,000 more than he made detailing. He can earn $50,000 or more a year when he completes the final two of eight National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence certifications needed to become a master mechanic.
“Toyota figured this out,” says an admiring Miller, the FPL education head. He and FPL are now trying to bring industry and education together on multiple fronts, from high schools to higher education. FPL, which pays starting apprentice line specialists more than $41,000 a year, says that by 2010 an estimated 46% of its line specialists will be eligible for retirement. Meanwhile, Florida’s energy needs are projected to double in coming years; new plants and distribution lines will require skilled labor to build and maintain them. “It’s going to be quite the strain to come up with the workers,” says Kathleen Woodring of the Citrus, Levy, Marion Workforce Board and coordinator of an energy task force representing utility companies and area schools. The state’s Florida Energy Workforce Consortium also is on the case, and a Banner center opened last year at Lake-Sumter Community College.
Business Beat - Week of May 3rd
