School and business leaders look at future workforce needs

Business and education community leaders came together in Libby  Wednesday afternoon to discuss the changing needs of the business community and how the education system can best prepare area youth for the workplace.

The meeting, arranged by Troy and Libby schools superintendents Jacob Francom and Craig Barringer, brought together representatives from local businesses and other education and civic leaders and focused on potential vocational education topics to help Lincoln County students be better prepared for college and the workplace after graduation.

Barringer said the idea was to leverage available facility assets at the school to help better prepare students for post-high school success. 

“With our decreasing student populations in both Libby and Troy we have lots of good facilities sitting around,” he said. “We need to find a way to utilize those facilities to better serve our students.”

Barringer and Francom decided to work together to utilize those facilities. With the two districts working cooperatively, the individual cost to each district is reduced, providing greater bang for the buck.

“By working together with Troy Schools we believe we can offer a better variety of vocational opportunities,” Barrninger said. “Neither school could afford to do this by ourselves, but together we give our students an opportunity to learning 21st Century vocational skills.  We also hope to provide students in these classes a head start on their vocational or college classes by offering college credits while taking these classes at Libby Schools.”

Luke Russell, Hecla Mining’s vice president of external affairs, told the group about Hecla’s Pathways program, a job-shadowing project in place at the company’s Greens Creek Mine in Alaska. The program, Russell said, is intended to provide the students with an introduction to all of the various vocations involved in operating a mine. 

The program has three phases for the students. They are first introduced to the project by way of a field trip to the mine during their third grade year. Interested students are then allowed to take a more intensive tour of the facility during their junior high years. High school sophomores can participate in a more intensive job-shadowing program, in which they receive 40 hours of safety training and then shadow a number of employees on various jobs at the mine site to gain exposure to different career paths.

Cabinet Peaks Medical Center’s Ahyoung Huff spoke about the hospital’s ongoing medicalmentorship program, which started earlier this year. Under the program, a number of high school students work at the hospital in various roles, gaining exposure not only to the specific jobs but also to the responsibilities and demands of a professional workplace.

“The program has worked out so much better than we had originally hoped,” Huff said.

One of the topics of discussion was finding ways to provide high school students with high school and college credits for time spent in workplace programs.

Libby Middle High School assistant principal Jim Germany spoke about the school’s vocational programs as a means to help give students a jump start not only on possible careers, but also on the path to higher education.

“Dual-credit classes give the kids hope for something after school,” he said. “It helps improve the draw for kids to post-secondary education.”

Montana Sen. Chas Vincent was also in attendance and praised the efforts of local educators.

“I see great value and promise in the effort to enhance existing opportunities for both our youth and the businesses in our region,” he said. “It’s very impressive, and a testament to the commitment of our educators, to watch them search for ways to work together to stretch scarce resources to do their very best in preparing our kids for the future.”

Cabinet Peaks’ marketing manager and foundation executive director Kate Stephens echoed Vincent’s sentiment.

“We very much appreciate being invited to the table to discuss our medical mentorship program with the rest of the community,” she said “Ahyoung and the Medical Mentorship Committee here at Cabinet Peaks Medical Center have done a wonderful job getting the curriculum started over the past year, and hope to expand the program to support services in future years. We love having the students here with us, and they seem to be enjoying the opportunity to receive hands on experience at the medical center. It has always been our hope this program would expand beyond the hospital. It was encouraging to see so many people from different organizations present at the meeting, and it was a great conversation for the good of our youth and of our community.  We are happy to be a resource to anybody who is thinking of starting a youth shadowing program in their business.”

Francom said the combination of effort from the schools and local businesses are vital to the continued success of the communities.

“It is imperative that we give our students opportunities to be prepared for our workforce,” he said. “I believe that this will help in strengthening not only the schools, but also Lincoln County. The turnout of local business support is amazing. People are so invested in the community and want to see it continue to grow and develop for future generations.”