San Antonio eyes plans to retrain 15,000 workers
SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio is crafting a plan to provide training for thousands of unemployed workers to begin new careers.
Details of the initiative are still being worked out, but San Antonio City Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia said the program would likely target 15,000 workers and possibly include stipends for living expenses while they take classes.
It would be city government’s most aggressive effort to date to overcome San Antonio’s status as a lowwage town where workers have too few skills.
The emerging plan is expected to be similar to — but significantly larger than — the one Bexar County Commissioners adopted this week. At a cost of $35 million, the county will provide a $450 weekly stipend for 5,000 workers around the county as they attend classes at Alamo Colleges for jobs in health care and information technology.
The money for both programs will come from stimulus grants under the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. San Antonio received $270 million, and Bexar County got nearly $80 million.
How much of the funding
the city will spend on workforce training, however, remains unclear. The federal money must be spent by the end of 2020.
“It will be a challenge,” City Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran said.
More than 115,000 people have filed for unemployment in Bexar County since mid-March, when the pandemic forced widespread business closures. In April, the unemployment rate in Texas jumped to a record 12.8 percent, up from just 3.5 percent in February.
Job losses have been concentrated in the leisure and hospitality industry, which employs 13 percent of all workers in the San Antonio metro area.
In a virtual work session on Wednesday, Rocha Garcia said the training program Project QUEST should play a large role in the training initiative.
Project QUEST has been lauded for its success in training low-wage workers for higher-paying jobs, primarily in health care and technology.
In 2019, the nonprofit said it had 383 graduates who earned an average of $44,000 after completion. Prior to enrolling, they brought in less than $15,000 annually on average.
Research on the program has attributed much of Project QUEST’s success to its “wraparound services” — such as child care, career coaching, financial assistance and other services for participants. The program also has a strategy of training people for in-demand jobs in the San Antonio economy.
“Well-designed training programs like Project QUEST don’t just randomly look for a field and start training people in it,” said Paul Osterman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan
School of Management. “They have a dialogue with employers to discover what employers are looking for in job openings, or what kinds of skills they need.”
Osterman estimates the program could double or triple its capacity, potentially reaching up to 1,000 graduates in a year — not 15,000. With tens of thousands of people thrown out of work, the city will rely on Alamo Colleges and other training programs to expand their training capacity as well.
The San Antonio Chamber of Commerce is conducting a survey of business owners to see what skills they’re looking for in prospective employees.
“We have had hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government, state government and local government invested in workforce development, and we haven’t really been able to get it right,” said Richard Perez, the chamber’s CEO. “This is going to be our last, best shot, with a lot of resources that we can really invest dollars in. In order for us to do that, we need to understand the skills our businesses need.”
Perez said he expects to see a high demand for jobs in cybersecurity and health care. Some trainees, he added, will take courses through Alamo Colleges likely for less than six months and graduate with certificates.
For jobs in industries that require more training, such as cybersecurity, trainees may work in an entry-level position part time while attending classes.
While the city’s plan comes together, Rocha Garcia said San Antonio has a chance to set the precedent for a work training program that could help the city quickly emerge from the economic crisis.
“We can see this as a setback or as an opportunity to really shine,” Rocha Garcia said. “This would really put us on the map for how to work in a post-COVID economy.”