Blog: My Response to the Workforce Summit Report

Statement

This past week, the Governor has been touring the state presenting a final workforce report. He paid an out-of-state consulting firm to produce the report after a series of meetings were held in the largest communities in the state earlier this summer. Although participation by stakeholders is always a good exercise, I believe the issues were already known before the project started. Technical institutes have been providing legislators this information for several years now.

As an Appropriations Committee member, I watched this administration cut already severely underfunded K-12 and career and vocational education programs an additional 8-10% four years ago. Our K-12 schools have STILL not recovered to the per student funding level they had six years ago. In response to the cuts, many school districts cut one of the last optional programs they had: career and technical education. Even the Madison School District, one of our larger schools, is now without a CTE program. They have the facilities but not the staff resources to offer it.

Technical schools have repeatedly told my committee they are not able to compete for faculty because their pay scales are below what the faculty can earn actually practicing their trade. Many programs have struggled to find qualified faculty for their programs and often lose them to industry on very short notice. Their equipment is close to obsolete, their programs don't have the capacity to train the numbers of interested students, and their buildings were so outdated that the legislature finally authorized them to borrow money to replace them.

Because of the lack of financial support from this administration and legislature, our technical school tuition is the highest in the region. That causes South Dakota to lose students to neighboring states, where they are then snatched up by out-of-state employers.

Our schools do not have the resources to offer the very education our state's economy so desperately needs right now. And yet, this governor needed six community meetings, an out-of-state consultant, and another statewide, taxpayer-funded tour during campaign season to get answers? This is the same approach the administration has taken to education and roads: study the problem, but take no substantive action.

As governor, I would work hard every day to ensure that our career and technical programs received the support they need to prepare our workforce and make sure more of our young people can receive a good education and find good jobs right here at home.

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