City’s job training program missing key goal
If Ready to Work doesn’t get more of its graduates into goodpaying jobs faster, the city job training program could be in for a shake-up when a new mayor takes office in 2025, warned the chairman of its advisory board.
The sales tax-funded initiative has fallen short of its goal of placing 80% of participants in jobs paying at least $15 an hour within six months of finishing their training. Its rate was 46% as of Friday, according to the city.
Of the 1,232 people who have completed training so far, city staffers have verified that barely more than half, or 628, are working in jobs paying the required minimum.
“We’ve got to figure out how to get people hired in a quicker time frame, or there could be significant changes to the program,” Ready to Work Advisory Board chairman Ben Peavy said during a meeting Wednesday. “I’m just being extremely direct and transparent and honest.”
Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s impending departure from City Hall looms over the $240 million program, which he pitched to voters in 2020 as a response to pandemic-driven job losses and as a solution to San Antonio’s enduringly high poverty rate.
Nirenberg has pinned his legacy in part on this workforce development initiative, which has won praise from President Joe Biden’s administration.
But the program has struggled from the get-go. Its launch was delayed by almost nine months, and it was slow to draw applicants. Officials reduced its enrollment and graduation targets.
The program, however, appears on track to reach its revised goal of enrolling 7,145 people by the end of June. Just over 6,500 have enrolled to date — though the ultimate goal of enrolling more than 28,000 San Antonians is still years off.
As of January, Ready to Work has spent $33 million of the estimated $240 million in sales tax revenue that will be allocated to it through December 2025. The city estimates it will take until 2029 to exhaust this money. Each participant costs the pro
gram about $6,000, according to the city.
Nirenberg has largely brushed off criticism of Ready to Work.
“If the goal is to count numbers, we’re missing the point,” he said at his April State of the City speech. “The goal is to change lives and change the trajectory of this city’s economy, long term, to break cycles of poverty.”
A new mayor will take office just over a year from now. And that person may not be as much of a cheerleader for the slow-moving program as Nirenberg has been.
“There’s a chance any time that there’s new leadership that’s coming — which there will be with a new mayor being elected and new leadership — that they may want to make changes to the program, which is great, which is fine,” Peavy told the San Antonio Express-news. “All I’m trying to do is put the program in the best possible position so that when new leadership does come in, they can make the best possible decision about the direction to go in.”
Peavy is chief information officer of Accenture Federal Service, a major government contractor, and has chaired the Ready to Work Advisory Board since the program launched in 2022.
According to the 2020 ballot measure that voters approved, 1/8-cent of sales tax revenue collected from December 2021 to December 2025 must be used “for the purpose of financing authorized programs related to job training and the awarding of scholarships.”
At least three City Council members are eyeing the mayor’s office. District 9 Council Member John Courage launched his mayoral campaign in January, and District 8’s Manny Peláez is expected to announce his campaign in the coming weeks. District 6’s Melissa Cabello Havrda has all but said she is running, while Adriana Rocha Garcia of District 4 has said she is still considering it.
Peláez, who sits on Ready to Work’s advisory board as a mayoral liaison, had been a supporter of the program, but he blasted it at a council committee meeting in January.
“I’m sure I’ll get a call scolding me for it later, but I personally am dissatisfied with Ready to Work,” Peláez said. “I can tell you that the CEOS that I talk to here in San Antonio don’t really think it’s had the meaningful impact that was promised to them and the expectations that they have.”
“I do think that we owe the public an answer as to why it is that they shouldn’t be feeling like their money’s been wasted,” Peláez added.
Courage told reporters at his campaign launch that the city could make improvements to Ready to Work to make it more accessible for people who can’t afford to leave their jobs to train for higherpaying ones or who need child care to attend classes.
Still, he said he’s “for this program since I think it can help a lot of people to improve their lives and earn a better income for themselves.”
Peavy said the city needs “to better align” program graduates to specific companies. That could require additional marketing aimed at informing companies about the program, he said.
He told the board that the program would receive far less criticism if it got its six-month placement rate up to 60% or 65%.
Workforce Development Executive Director Mike Ramsey cited participants’ lack of work experience in the field or industry they’ve been trained in as a barrier to employment. Having a criminal history is another roadblock.
He agreed with Peavy’s assessment that the program has to solve its placement rate problem.
“In the next six to nine months, it’s critically important that we move the needle and get participants placed in jobs expeditiously,” Ramsey said. “This is the crux of why the program exists, so we’ve got to figure out a way to do it at a higher rate.”