Shannon NickinsonI hope all of these miles pay off.
Local businessmen and educators went to Mobile, Ala. to tour aerospace and aviation facilities there to see what they do there that we ought to do here in Florida’s Panhandle.
They visited business sites and a career academy that aims to be the hub of a school-to-jobs pipeline focused on the kind of skilled-labor jobs that are in demand.
Later this week, folks from Florida’s Great Northwest will travel to the Farnborough Air Show, where aviation companies line up to be lured to the next new city for their wares.
Florida’s Great Northwest is a regional economic development marketing entity that pitches a 16-county area of the Panhandle to potential businesses.
These are awesome opportunities — I assume — to showcase our area’s talent and willingness to help business in that industry set up shop.
Nationwide, and locally, there is a shortage of skilled trade workers. Anything that aids the education system in an effort to make sure all students — not only the ones bound for four-year college degrees in arts or sciences — get something more than a good time out of high school is aces by me.
With a high school graduation rate in Escambia County of 64.2 percent, clearly we need to do more at the K-12 level.
With a six-year graduation rate at the University of West Florida for first-time-in-college students of 42 percent (third lowest in the state university system) and the lowest academic progress rate among state universities, K-12 isn’t the only place where more needs to be done.
ST Aerospace Inc., which does maintenance, repair and overhaul of aircraft, has plans to build a satellite operation at the Pensacola International Airport Commerce Park.
The company employs more than 1,300 workers at its Mobile location. The Pensacola facility is projected to add 300 jobs.
But it is worth noting that when the Chamber, Pensacola State College and George Stone Technical Center partnered in March to host a job fair for those openings, of 330 people who turned out, only half met the company’s minimum requirements for employment.
Clearly there is much to do. Which is why the public needs to see these trips beginning to bear fruit.
Back in December, a group of public officials known as the Northwest Florida Aerospace Coalition went to Hamburg, Germany to meet with Airbus suppliers and pitch the Western Gate to the Sunshine State as the perfect place for suppliers for the Airbus A320 passenger airliner that will be built in Mobile.
And German officials told them that suppliers are five to seven years from expanding in the U.S. to support that project.
While we wait, it would be gratifying to see similar effort expended on nurturing small businesses that are already here to expand.
That is a theory championed by Jim Clifton, the CEO of Gallup, in his book “The Coming Jobs War.” Encouraging businesses that already have roots in a community to deepen that relationship, should, in theory, produce businesses with deeper ties to the community, making them more likely to stick it out when business is slow or the incentives runs out.
Is every outside company a carpetbagger? Of course not. Look at what Navy Federal Credit Union has committed to this community for proof of that.
Too often our steps toward progress seem to fall short, like a Technology Campus announced with verve in 2009 but still empty five years later.
Which is why lots of folks view those frequent flier miles to London and Hamburg and other locales with skepticism.
I’m not saying I doubt it.
I’m saying I’ll believe it when the Eagle has landed.
Shannon Nickinson is editor of www.progresspromise.com, a news and analysis site in Pensacola. Follow her on Twitter @snickinson. Her column appears courtesy of ContextFlorida.
