TimesLeader.com

Pre-Apprenticeship program Initiative has already graduated 35 students from Luzerne, Schuylkill counties

October 25, 2008

Local H.S. seniors get key skills

By Jerry Lynott jlynott@timesleader.com
Business Writer

SCRANTON – Finally Nick Ogozaly has an answer to a question that’s been on his mind for a while.

The 17-year-old senior at Carbondale Area High School attends a pre-apprenticeship training program at Johnson College twice a week to prepare him for someday learning a trade.

“What do I want to do? The question has always been around,” Ogozaly said Friday. “I’d like to go to the (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) and become an electrician.”

On Tuesday nights and Saturdays he and 18 other students from Lackawanna County attend the 12-week program at the college and receive a stipend. In the three weeks he’s been enrolled, Ogozaly has studied “a lot of math” as well as familiarizing himself with building materials used in the construction industry.

The program received $230,000 in funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. Matching funds raised the total investment to $365,000. The funding, which reimburses the college for program tuition, expands the year-old Northeastern Pennsylvania Pre-Apprenticeship Initiative that has already graduated 35 students from school districts in Luzerne and Schuylkill counties. Regional and county workforce investment boards collaborate on the initiative.

“The program connects high school seniors to opportunities, but ensures that they can pass the entrance test for the apprenticeship programs,” said Sandi Vito, acting secretary of the department of Labor and Industry.

Statewide there are 90 partnership programs in 11 industries and more than 61,000 have participated in training programs. Most of them were entry-level workers who received additional training, Vito said. Workers benefit from higher wages and companies in turn experience higher productivity and retention rates, she added.

The state is starting to feel the impact of the national economic crisis, but there is a demand for skilled workers. The job training programs aim to meet the current and future needs of industries, Vito said.

Paul Casparro , vice president, training director with the IBEW Local 81, endorsed the program that could bring more members to the labor union.

“We have a hard time getting applicants,” he said. “Everybody wants their kids to go to college. Some of the students, they don’t want to go.”

Casparro reiterated what other speakers at the event announcing the program said earlier; that the building trades offer good paying and family sustaining jobs. “What a tremendous opportunity,” he said. “We have 100 percent full health coverage. We have pension plans. We have vacation funds.”

Further encouragement came from Sam Marolo, superintendent of the Hazleton Area School District. “This is a passion with me,” Marolo said as he related how he worked in the building trades as a bricklayer and mason. “Fifteen years I worked in the trades.”

When work was scarce in the region back in 1978, he traveled to Texas, where he said he earned $1,000 a week.

His son, an electrician and foreman with PPL, “is making more than I am,” Marolo said. And his daughter works as a radiologist technician in Virginia. “She’s set for life.”

Schools and work force training programs have to meet the needs of students who want to go to college and learn a trade. “We need high academics and high technical skills,” Marolo said. “If I can do it, you can do it.”

Interested?

For more information about the Northeastern PA Pre-Apprenticeship Initiative, students can contact their guidance counselors or the NEPA Labor Management Council at 570 820-9501 or nepalmc@epix.net.