Officials visit Hempfield to announce grant to promote school-business ties

As state and local officials toured Hempfield Area High School on Thursday, they saw students working with high-tech manufacturing machinery and discussing detailed business plans they’d designed and enacted themselves.

State Labor and Industry Secretary W. Gerard Oleksiak said he was impressed, and that he hopes a $126,050 grant to local schools will lead to more of the same.

“I spent 30 years in the classroom, and I’ve been out about 10 years, and it’s a world of difference from what it was,” said Oleksiak, who previously taught in the Upper Merion Area School District in King of Prussia.

He was in town to announce the state Department of Labor and Industry’s Business-Education Partnership Grant, awarded to the Westmoreland-Fayette Workforce Development Board.

The money is part of $2.6 million in federal funds the state is distributing to 22 local workforce development boards, meant to promote partnerships between schools and businesses.

There are approximately 300,000 unfilled jobs in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in Pennsylvania, Oleksiak said.

The Westmoreland-Fayette Workforce Development Board will use its share to continue efforts to bring the workforce and classroom together, said William Thompson, executive director of the Westmoreland-Fayette Workforce Development Board.

“What these dollars help do is to build out these business connections with schools,” he said.

Training students to meet the needs of local employers will keep them in the area, he said.

“We need to keep our young people here,” Thompson said.

During the tour, officials saw classrooms that had been remodeled with furniture designed and manufactured by students.

Educators have always needed to adapt, and that adaptation is happening faster to keep up with the changing times, said Hempfield Area Superintendent Tammy Wolicki.

“It’s a matter of looking at our education opportunities for students, and it’s making sure it’s preparing them for productive livelihoods here in Westmoreland County,” she said. “The work we’re doing today isn’t the same as the work we’ll be doing a year from now.”

Jacob Tierney is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jacob at 724-836-6646, jtierney@tribweb.com or via Twitter @Soolseem.