Team PA hosts five meetings on behalf of Department of Education

Dale Deist, Founder, Deist Industries, left, and Joy Ruff, Community Outreach Manager, Marcellus Shale Coalition, list workforce challenges and strengths of their respective industries at a Team PA-sponsored strategic planning session for the PA Department of Education.

It’s a troubling dilemma that business owner Dale Deist has encountered more times than he would like.

He plans to expand capacity at his business by hiring new employees only to learn that none of the applicants have the required skills needed to work for his company.

It is, unfortunately, a common scenario in many companies across Pennsylvania.

“The problem is two-fold,” Deist, Founder, Deist Industries, Inc., said. “We’ve found that some people don’t even have the basic skills to read a ruler, the ability to balance a checkbook or have any basic math skills. The second is even a bigger problem: not having the higher level skills that prevent potential employees from filling the job openings that we have.”

The inability to find qualified workers creates a multitude of issues for employers like Deist.

“It’s reduces our growth speed, in some cases costing us a lot of money to train unskilled people who must then be brought along at a much slower, and more costly, pace,” Deist said. “And as a result of that, we have lost business to competitors in other states or other countries because we cannot provide products or services when our customers have needed them.”

Team Pennsylvania Foundation is collaborating with industry leaders like Deist, educators and other stakeholders, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), on the department’s proposed strategic plan. Team PA hopes to provide the kind of feedback that helps ensure students are ready for the workforce or the next step in their academic endeavors upon graduation from high school.

Team PA is facilitating and supporting a series of five meetings to provide critical feedback to PDE on the strategic vision of its education initiatives, according to Team PA President and CEO Matt Zieger.

At each planning session, stakeholders review segments of PDE’s plan and then provide feedback on each proposed strategy. Workgroup sessions evolve around the issues of: ensuring effective teachers in the classroom; accelerating economic and workforce development by preparing students to be post-secondary and work ready; early childhood education; educational accountability and transparency; and school choice.

“This has been a very valuable process to learn about the challenges that are out there,” Zieger said. “We believe these kinds of discussions help engage partners, many of whom don’t usually get these kinds of opportunities to provide feedback to the department. We hope these discussions help improve public funding and the prioritization of these issues.”

Strategic planning facilitator Kate Spahr, Dewey and Kaye, posts notes listing strengths of PA's workforce as part of a strategic planning session being conducted by Team PA for the state's Department of Education.

Dan Fogarty, Human Resources Manager, Schroeder Industries, said he is pleased that Team PA and PDE are being pro-active in engaging stakeholders and addressing these issues.

“We have three critical issues facing industry in Pennsylvania,” Fogarty said. “We need to increase the level of skills required for businesses – especially in the manufacturing sector. We have an aging workforce where one-third to one-half of skilled technicians are going to retire by 2020. And the third issue is we have no pipeline in place to meet those (first two) demands.”

Fogarty said the current employee/employer disconnect across Pennsylvania is “crazy.”

“The mismatch between those who are out of work and the requirements that manufacturers have is huge,” Fogarty said. “And we’ve got an image problem. Young people are not aware of the attractive opportunities manufacturing has. About one in four jobs in manufacturing is really a technology job, but people are just not aware of this.”

Laurie Gostley-Hackett, Manager of Community Relations & Philanthropy, Air Products, said her company is honored to be part of the PDE’s strategic planning process, noting this kind of endeavor is long overdue.

“The challenge we face as a business is true communication between industry leaders, educators and government officials,” Gostley-Hackett said. “We stand ready to connect with school districts, both secondary and post-secondary, to discuss industry needs now and those 20 years down the road. Everybody wins via this (planning) process: students, parents, taxpayers, our schools, businesses and the economies of not only the Lehigh Valley, but Pennsylvania and the United States as well.”

Zieger agrees with Gostley-Hackett’s assessment.

“We hope this process helps us together as a commonwealth to devise common language and common goals for the long term,” Zieger said to stakeholders at the session on accelerating workforce readiness. “These are generational changes we are seeking and changes we hope last for many decades to come. We know change won’t happen overnight, but Team PA, its board and investors, are in this for the long haul.”