In California’s ‘up and coming’ Central Valley, a program for students could create jobs
On a recent school day, Fernando Valero worked on a 32,000-pound diesel truck with failed sensors that kept it from moving.
Then he crawled under another truck before lifting it with a floor jack. The morning work left his hands black from grease.
And his day was just getting started.
After lunch, Valera left Duncan Polytechnical High School and headed to a job where he’s paid as a regular employee. Much like the classroom labor he does on diesel engines, he also works with professional technicians fixing trucks for local customers.
There is a good chance the 17-year-old high school senior will keep his job after he graduates in June.
School officials say that’s the goal.
About a decade after a recession nearly crippled the nation’s economy and devastated the job market in California’s Central Valley, the region is still trying to pick itself up. But local education leaders believe a significant page has turned in the state’s poorest region. They say efforts to attract new businesses and train workers for skilled - and decent-paying - jobs are starting to bear fruit.
At Fresno Unified, that work begins early in a program developed in recent years.
Valera is part of the 45% of Fresno Unified students enrolled in career and technical programs, including medical, manufacturing and heavy trucking. The pathways expose students to real-world industry work, and some, like Valera, are finding jobs while in school.
Jeremy Ward, executive officer for college and career readiness at Fresno Unified, said students who take part in career pathways have a higher graduation rate than students outside the programs.
Most importantly, Ward said, the pathways offer students an invaluable opportunity: experience.
“All of this has application outside of school,” Ward said. “It doesn’t take much to see how this benefits students who are in poverty, because it is providing them all those experiences.”
The pathway program is part of a district-wide effort and several other Valley schools have developed their own career pathways. Cara Jurado, a pathway coordinator at Duncan High, said partnerships between schools, industry leaders and state officials have fueled investment in education and jobs.
“We’re in one of the lowest socio-economic areas in town, (and) data shows that students from this area don’t tend to go on to high-paying jobs and that’s not right,” Jurado said. “We wanted to create opportunities.”
During school breaks, Valera is one of the few students who work eight-hour paid days.
“If you don’t put the time and effort, then you won’t be able to go where you want to succeed in,” Valera said.
Pathway to success
Thousands of jobs have poured into the Valley from large corporate warehouses in recent years. But those jobs don’t always pay high wages.
As the Central Valley aims to grow, efforts are underway to diversify industries and protect the economy against another recession.
In diversifying and bringing higher-skilled jobs, area leaders say a young emerging workforce could prove critical to keeping those jobs local.
Eric Rubio, a heavy-duty trucking instructor at Duncan High, says this is uncharted territory.
“The older technicians didn’t grow up with that technology. These (younger) guys have the aptitude and the tech-savviness to use diagnostics tools,” Rubio said.
Those changes require better-educated workers, Rubio said.
Skills as currency
Like trucking, manufacturers are struggling to maintain enough highly-skilled workers.
Troy Brandt, general manager of Hydratech manufacturing company and chair of the San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance, says the shortage of experienced manufacturing workers causes a shuffle of employees among companies that offer better pay. But he said as long as manufacturing continues to be strong, there is an opportunity.
“We wonder why we see so much of the middle class disappearing in this country. I would attribute a lot of that to the loss of manufacturing jobs. These are good-paying jobs,” Brandt said.
Adapting to a changing work landscape is a priority for employers as some fear automation and tech improvements will inevitably eliminate many such jobs.
A 2019 study from the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings Institution found industries would be better by adapting to the changes rather than resisting. The study, which examined about 800 occupations across nearly 100 metropolitan areas, found that automation risks vary across the country.
Almost half of males 24 and younger and underrepresented communities, including Hispanic workers, typically hold jobs that are vulnerable for automation. The flip side, according to the study, is that automation creates different jobs if workers can learn technology skills.
“If your skill set loses its currency, then you are in danger,” said Blake Konczal, executive director of the Fresno Regional Workforce Development Board. “I think we need to try to figure out where this change is going, and then try to arrange for our residents and our citizens to be able to access training that makes them competitive in whatever environment that change creates.”
Fresno County offers employee training through the New Employment Opportunity program, which helps job seekers develop skills that could help them land well-paying jobs.
Companies that hire workers through the program get wage reimbursement from the county if they keep the workers as an incentive, according to Jenna Lukens, contracts manager with the Fresno County Economic Development Corporation.
“This is really to get people off of the public aid system to get themselves self-sufficient for them and their families,” she said.
‘Regional investment’
Area stakeholders don’t see warehouse work as a silver bullet for regional woes.
Following the economic recession that caused havoc in large part because of a lack of occupational diversity, many Valley cities struggled to recover.
In Clovis, the recession strained ambitious plans to bring multinational tech companies to the city.
A decade later, however, those plans have slowly materialized.
A large medical facility complex has sprouted in northeast Clovis.
“The beautiful thing about healthcare is that it provides stable jobs that are relatively recession-resilient,” said Andrew Haussler, community and economic development director for Clovis.
The medical complex includes plans for the first medical school in the Valley, where there is an urgent need for medical experts. It’s expected to enroll its first class of students in August.
Recent efforts by state legislators have also advanced goals set by leaders in cities like Clovis, including offering two years of free community college to eligible students.
“When you talk about opportunity … you can go from Clovis High to Clovis Community College … you can transfer straight into California Health Sciences University and have your doctorate in pharmacy in five years,” Haussler said. “That’s how we truly grow economically. This is really a regional investment.”
‘A completely different place’
The Fresno metropolitan area has outpaced larger areas like Los Angeles in economic growth since about 2005, according to data from the Fresno County Economic Development Corporation. That’s in large part due to the largest industries in the Fresno area, crop production and food manufacturing.
But tech companies in recent years created a buzz with the formation of Bitwise Industries and other software agencies that have moved into the Valley. With a growing medical field and a stronger focus to train workers in industries like manufacturing, things could soon change for the Valley, says Amanda Bosland, client services manager with the Fresno County Economic Development Corporation.
The Fresno County Economic Development Corporation along with several other organizations have been exploring ways to attract new business opportunities to the Valley. That has lead to the creation of the Central Valley Global Trade and Investment Plan, which was developed as part of the Global Cities Initiative from the Brookings Institution and JP Morgan Chase. The plan recognized the Valley as an “up and coming” region for the state’s economic development.
“I would gamble, in the next five to 10 years Fresno is going to be a completely different place,” Bosland said.
The plan outlined ways the Valley can improve low wealth and unemployment and also suggested the Valley strengthen its global engagement, something Bosland viewed as critical for the Valley’s future.
“While poverty is a problem, it also means we have a large population hungry for something new,” Bosland said. “It’s not easy work, and it’s pretty slow work, but it’s being done.”
This article is part of The California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequity and economic survival in California.
This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 9:32 AM.
