Sohn: Volkwagen's eight student eLabs will make great start

Tyner students (from left) Jada Beckett and Takayla Sanford work on buidling circuits on the digital analog trainer, while teacher Bryan Robinson instructs Brookeana Willams and Noemy Marberry about soldering. Tyner High teacher Bryan Robinson has started a mechatronics program that offers student the opportunity to graduate with a specific certification that will aid them in finding jobs with high-tech companies.
Tyner students (from left) Jada Beckett and Takayla Sanford work on buidling circuits on the digital analog trainer, while teacher Bryan Robinson instructs Brookeana Willams and Noemy Marberry about soldering. Tyner High teacher Bryan Robinson has started a mechatronics program that offers student the opportunity to graduate with a specific certification that will aid them in finding jobs with high-tech companies.

All too often, it seems, we report here that our students are being left behind in Hamilton County.

Not today. At least not some of them.

Last week, officials with VW, Hamilton County Schools and the Public Education Foundation identified eight schools here that - with the help of $1 million from Volkswagen - will create new state-of-the-art engineering labs to better prepare some of our middle schoolers and high schoolers for the high-tech jobs pouring into the Chattanooga area.

Those schools are Dalewood Middle, Chattanooga School for the Arts & Sciences, East Hamilton Middle/High, The Howard School, Hunter Middle, Normal Park Museum Magnet, Red Bank Middle/High and Sale Creek Middle/High.

These new eLabs will be filled with digital fabrication tools, including automated manufacturing equipment, programmable microcomputers, renewable energy kits, 3-D printers, robotics and laser cutters.

Don't be tempted to think this is just trendy fun.

Be reminded, said Dan Challener, president of PEF, as he announced the plans, that just over a decade ago we didn't have or know how to use iPhones, Twitter or Facebook - let alone driverless cars.

"The future is much closer than it appears," Challener said. These labs will help prepare students for the constantly evolving jobs of the future using hands-on learning tools and tasks to teach critical thinking and jobs readiness, he said.

This is far more important than most of us here in Hamilton County have realized until recently.

Last year, Tennessee was No. 1 in the United States in advanced manufacturing, but our state and region have a huge workforce need, according to Randy Boyd, a former Tennessee commissioner for economic and community development.

A full 16 percent of Hamilton County students did not graduate in the 2016 school year, according to the Tennessee State Report Card. And only about 35 percent of Hamilton County's public high school graduates complete a training, certificate or degree program within six years after graduation.

Yet in coming years, 83 percent of job postings in the county paying a livable wage of at least $35,000 a year are expected to require education past high school.

Already, according to a recent Chattanooga 2.0 report, around 15,000 existing local jobs are not filled by Hamilton County residents because they do not meet education requirements.

So VW's $1 million to create these labs marks an important advancement, and one to which each of us in a small way made a contribution: Tennessee provided this $1 million as a part of the package of financial incentives it offered when wooing the German automaker to Chattanooga.

VW could have used the funds in a variety of ways, but along with the state chose to craft the eLabs.

Twenty Hamilton County middle and high schools applied for the chance to receive an eLab, and 11 schools were identified as unanimous finalists. After extensive site visits to each school, representatives from the school district, the PEF, VW and the state picked eight.

School and local officials also pitched the eLabs as a tool to close the equity gap. As it stands now, that may be a stretch.

With the exception of Dalewood and Howard - the only schools on the list made up of primarily minority and economically disadvantaged students - the choices seem at odds with the idea of creating across-the-board fairness in student jobs-readiness.

CSAS has a diverse student body, but under 12 percent of students are from economically disadvantaged homes, plus the school has a 97.6 graduation rate and a majority of graduates enroll in higher education classes. Sale Creek has only 3.6 percent minority students and fewer than a fourth of all students are poor. At Hunter Middle School, only 18 percent of students are minority and only 14 percent are poor. Normal Park's numbers show even more advantages: 80 percent are white and only 5 percent of the student body comes from poor homes.

Certainly it's fair to assume that the state and VW would want to place the eLabs in schools where they can be assured of success. And certainly all of our schools - even those with students whose home advantages should already be putting them ahead - can use this kind of help.

Thankfully, even after these eight eLabs are built, there will be money left over to create eight more next year. And VW plans to do just that.

The county's remaining middle and high schools - altogether we have 11 middle schools and 18 high schools - will be invited to submit an application.

VW's eLabs are planned in addition to Hamilton County's Mechatronics Akademie, also sponsored by VW, that some 50 high school juniors and seniors will attend next year at the VW plant. Those students will receive a high school diploma and a two-year college certificate. Gestamp has a similar program at Tyner Academy.

Often, so-called "accountability" groups, and occasionally these pages, are critical of city, county and state incentive packages that provide tax credits or cash to industries building plants and jobs in our region.

But when the money is used not only to bring jobs, but also to teach and train our children, preparing them for those new jobs, we don't really lose that money.

In this case, we're winning it back in spades. With interest.

Thank you, VW, Gestamp and a number of other companies locally that partner with our schools and Chattanooga 2.0.

But next year, let's really aim for equity.

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