Technical schools say ‘A crisis is coming’

By Bill Harlan, Journal Staff Writer | Wednesday, January 24, 2007

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PIERRE — The presidents of South Dakota’s four technical institutes hoped Tuesday to unveil their plan to avert a workforce shortage, but the event at the Capitol in Pierre was canceled at the last minute.

The Legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee couldn’t meet because the rules of the Senate’s page-scandal hearing prohibited simultaneous Senate hearings.

So the technical-institute presidents packed up and headed home to Rapid City, Mitchell, Watertown and Sioux Falls. They’ll try again next week.

Rich Gross, president of Western Dakota Technical Institute in Rapid City, said before he left Pierre that the state would face a workforce “crisis” in five to seven years. “I call the technical institutes the canaries in the coal mines,” Gross said.

Employers complain about worker shortages directly to technical institutes, Gross said. For example, he estimated there are 500 positions available for welders in the region. Eastern Wyoming companies are paying $5,000 signing bonuses for jobs that pay $40 an hour to newly certified welders.

“Our industry contacts are telling us the same thing: A crisis is coming,” Gross said.

Labor shortages also are coming in nursing, nuclear medicine, engineering technicians and in manufacturing, he said. And the impending retirements of baby boomers will only make the shortages worse.

The presidents’ five-point plan would:

-- Emphasize recruiting adult students by making classes available to them at night and on weekends.

-- Use technology, including the Internet, to reach students off campus.

-- Target courses to meet specific industry needs.

-- Spread the news, especially among businesses and students from kindergarten through 12th grade about opportunities in technical careers.

-- Create “national career training centers” sophisticated enough to attract students from throughout the country.

Gross said the institute presidents hadn’t estimated what the initiative would cost, but he did say it could be implemented in steps. The presidents had hoped to talk to appropriators Tuesday about what might be feasible.

The question of how to fund technical institutes also is being raised in legislation that would fundamentally change the way they operated.

Currently, local school boards control the institutes. The Rapid City School Board, for example, governs Western Dakota Tech.

SB95, introduced this week, would transfer authority over technical institutes from the State Board of Education to a new State Board of Technical Institutes.

Gross also hopes the new structure will better fund technical institutes — through tuition, alumni donations and state money.

Under the current system, Gross said, institutes get inflation-based budget increases, but, unlike state universities, they don’t get increases based on the number of students enrolled. In other words, the more successful an institute’s recruiting, the less money it has per student.

Gross will find an ally in Sen. Bill Napoli, R-Rapid City, a graduate of Western Dakota Tech.

“It flat saved my life,” Napoli said Tuesday.

Napoli frequently talks to Western Dakota students about how a judge ordered him to classes at the technical school instead of to prison. “It just opened a whole new world to me,” he said.

Napoli agrees the formula for funding technical schools should be changed. “These schools are becoming huge for our state,” he said.

Napoli thinks SB95 will pass. School boards that govern the other three technical institutes support the bill, though the Rapid City School Board so far has not taken a position.

However, school board president Margie Rosario of Rapid City said changes to a first draft of the bill might make it more palatable to the board. The Rapid City School District owns land and buildings at Western Dakota, she said, and separating school district and technical institute accounts will be difficult. The final bill should allow time to do that, she said.

Rosario also said local school districts would have a say in how regional technical institute boards were created and even have a representative on those boards.

Rosario met with Senate Republican Leader Dave Knudson of Sioux Falls, the prime sponsor of SB95, to suggest changes she thinks will survive. “It’s a permissive bill that will give us some flexibility,” she said.

Rep. Jeff Haverly, R-Rapid City, is the prime sponsor in the House. He said Tuesday that details of the bill were still being negotiated.

Napoli, who supported a similar bill that failed last legislative session, said SB95 was important to the fastest-growing sector of higher education. “The VoTechs have always been the ugly stepchild of the school system,” he said. “I want to get away from that. Changing the governance will do it.”

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com