KEY TAKEAWAYS: LCTCS plans to open a statewide charter school focused on workforce training for high school students. Students would be able to earn a high school diploma alongside an associate degree or industry credentials. President Richard Nelson said expanding apprenticeships, paid intern ships and employer partnerships is a top priority. The system is also working to reduce barriers for adult learners through expanded financial aid, childcare and transportation initiatives.   The leader of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System said he plans to entice more young Louisianians to pursue workforce training by opening a charter school that would allow high school students to attain credentials alongside their diploma. LCTCS President Richard Nelson took office in January after previously working as Louisiana’s revenue secretary and a state representative. A key ally of Gov. Jeff Landry, Nelson highlighted their collaborative work on workforce development in a wide-ranging interview this week. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Piper Hutchinson: After being in the job for about six months and settling in, what are your priorities for the system moving forward? Richard Nelson: About 70% of the jobs in Louisiana do not require a four-year degree. My perfect world would be we get the 70% of the state that needs to be here, we get them all a job when they walk out the door. Then we’ll have solved all of Louisiana’s problems, frankly. That’s the perfect world. If we get anywhere near that, then we’re doing a good job. We need to make sure that people, when they’re coming into our institutions, know where those jobs are and that they’re going to get the return for the time and money they put into it. And then I think on the other side — the connections to the employers — I think we need to focus on apprenticeships and paid internships and those kind of things with students, so that they have that kind of real world experience when they walk out the door. Hutchinson: A big chunk of your students are non-traditional students who are 26 and older. They also come with more challenges than some of the younger students. They often have kids. They’re working a job. How do you overcome those challenges and get them an education? Nelson: There’s pretty much three significant barriers, right? So one is financial, just out the door. Like, it costs money. If they’re not 18 with no responsibilities and living with their mom and dad, you know financial concerns are important. We’ve done some stuff with the legislature last year. We expanded the MJ Foster [Promise] Program, we basically doubled the funding for that program to help them get those high-value credentials. We expanded Tops Tech, too, so that should help a little bit in giving a little bit more flexibility to the people that are able to come to our institutions. The other two gaps that we have are childcare and transportation.We have some childcare facilities on site at some of our institutions. We’re looking at how we can expand those and partner with operators so that they can come in and run those facilities, which will give us some double benefit, too. Transportation is another issue. Depending on where you are, there may not be reliable public transportation. One of the things we’re looking at specifically is expanding a program to help people get their driver’s license. You know, if you don’t have a driver’s license in the state, it’s very difficult to get around. Hutchinson: You have recently announced the system intends to open a charter school to get those younger students into the system. What is your plan for that? Nelson: We do a lot of dual enrollment with either the local high school or with other charter school kids, but we’d like to make that available to everybody across the state. It’s going to focus mainly on 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, those older kids that maybe want to get an associate’s degree, maybe they want to go get technical training. They’ll be able to graduate with their high school degree as well as you know some either an associate’s degree or some advanced technical skills. We’re trying to … make it available to everyone in the state that wants it. We have about 7,500 students right now that have dropped out of school but would be eligible had they remained in school. This is kind of an alternative experience for them to say, maybe you know going 45 hours a week to high school wasn’t the thing for you for whatever reason. Hutchinson: Over the past few years, the legislature has expressed an interest in increasing opportunities for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to get some sort of community or technical education. What programs are in place for those students? Nelson: Louisiana has what is pretty much the highest incarcerated population in the country, if not the world. Reducing the recidivism rates in that population would be better for all of us, right? We have partnerships that may offer welding or some other kind of technical training, HVAC. We’re actually looking to significantly increase that partnership. If you ask me, the best solution would be that everyone if someone gets incarcerated, they walk out the door and they have at least their high school diploma equivalency, or they have some kind of technical training, whether it’s a [commercial driver’s license] or HVAC or welding or electrical or whatever else they can do. ...read more read less