A Portland woman who mentors girls in the trades was honored with a laudatory video profile and a surprise gift from TV personality Mike Rowe.

Katie Hughes, founder of the Girls Build summer camp, is the subject of an of Rowe’s new online show for Facebook, “Returning the Favor.”

Rowe is perhaps best known for his Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs,” which showcased unique and untidy blue collar positions. In his new program, Rowe profiles “do-gooders,” or people who are, per the show’s voiceover narration, “slightly better than us, doing nice things for their community in a completely selfless way.”

“We find ’em, we meet ’em and then we surprise ’em,” Rowe says.

In Hughes’ case, Rowe and his crew surprised her at the end of the episode with an 8-foot-wide, 20-foot-long trailer tricked-out so Hughes can bring Girls Build programs to children outside the area. Rowe’s crew had the trailer customized by Ryan Donato and Jeremy Killian of tiny house manufacturer Tiny Innovations. They gave it Husky cabinets, workbenches, saw tables and an extension cord reel, along with 50 kid-size tool belts and other features.

Hughes said she’d been asked by a producer to fill out a list of materials the camp needed. Not taking it seriously, she drew up a “dream list,” containing almost everything she could think to ask for. And almost everything was in the trailer, she said.

“It was surreal,” she told the 91��Ƶ. “To have someone pick us out and say, we value what you’re doing and we want to help you succeed. It was pretty special.”

The show’s producers arranged for 10 of Hughes’ family members to join in the surprise, and had a plaque made commemorating her late father, James, to be added to one of the trailer workbenches. Rowe’s foundation, mikeroweWORKS, even donated $10,000.

“Oh, stop it,” a tearful Hughes said as she was surprised by Rowe with a huge check.

Earlier in the video, Hughes describes how her father died shortly before her birth in 1980, leaving her and her two sisters with a shed full of tools, but a huge hole in their lives. She credits the loss with giving them the drive to be self-sufficient, and her mother with raising her to tackle life’s challenges with exuberance.

“I’m not afraid to open things up,” she said.

The summer camps Hughes holds in Portland and Southern Oregon give day-campers an overview of 10 skilled trades over the course of two weeks on a picturesque green at the University of Portland. It’s grown fast in only a few years, to seven paid staff members today.

Hughes has mentored kids in the building trades at Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. and the ACE Academy trades-focused charter school. She still teaches for OTI once per week and hopes to soon teach building courses for young women in correctional facilities.

If Hughes seems cool in the show in the presence of a celebrity like Rowe, it was natural. She admits not knowing who he was until about four hours into the interview.

She wasn’t sure why others were acting strange around him, but was relieved that he turned out to be “very relaxed and a good interviewer.”

“I thought he was a very kind man,” she said.

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A last-ditch plan to revive the shuttered trades-focused charter school ACE Academy has fallen through.

ACE board member Tom Goodhue confirmed on Tuesday that hopes for the public-private academy to partner with Portland Public Schools had fizzled.

The plan involved relocating some ACE programs to PPS’ Benson Polytechnic School while a larger deal with PPS was solidified. ACE had applied to be a PPS charter school as early as the 2017-18 school year.

Goodhue said the problem was on ACE’s end.

“We were optimistic about being able to do something with the Portland school district, but it fell apart at the last minute when it was time for us to get our proposal together,” he said. “We still have an organization and we’re looking for opportunities to partner with schools that have existing programs and trying to expand on them … I haven’t given up.”

ACE was founded in 2008 as the Oregon Building Congress‘ Academy for Architecture, Construction and Engineering. It was pitched as a way to combat the construction labor shortage by reinstalling technical education in high schools.

Administrators originally intended to enroll 500 students, but lowered that goal to 200, then 175. Along with flagging enrollment, the ACE board of directors dealt with waning interest from two of the four partner districts.

ACE was funded by state dollars funneled through its four partner districts. In the school’s final year, $709,000 of its approximately $800,000 budget came from the districts, while the remainder was donated by private interests like Associated General Contractors.

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The ACE Academy, a public-private trade school set to close next month, might not be at death’s door after all.

Under an idea now moving forward, the career-tech charter academy would relocate its programs to Benson Polytechnic High School for one year while it looks at solidifying a partnership with Portland Public Schools.

PPS spokeswoman Christine Miles confirmed that ACE applied to become one of PPS’ charter schools, though not in time for 2016-17.

The potential partnership was discussed Wednesday at the monthly meeting of the Oregon Construction Workforce Coalition. Many of the coalition’s members have paid into ACE over the years, and have regularly expressed frustration with what they see as a lack of urgency regarding public education and the state’s complicated rules regarding charter schools.

ACE’s teachers have applied to work next year at Benson, a trade skills-focused school in the Buckman neighborhood. And Benson has extended an “invitation” to house ACE’s architecture classes next year, according to Tom Goodhue, Oregon Building Congress‘ executive director. Since Benson already has a robust construction program, it wouldn’t need resources from ACE. But the charter school’s architecture program could be used by the district, Goodhue said.

The coalition was formed to address a dearth of young blood entering construction – a trend that threatens to stunt the growth of companies and continue to drive up construction costs. As shop classes and other electives have been cut in favor of college prerequisites since the 1990s, stakeholders thought programs like ACE could fill a gap for training for craft skills.

The ACE Academy opened its doors in 2007 with a goal of enrolling 500 students. That number was reduced as the school struggled to take on even 200 students. In addition, the school’s board of directors faced waning interest from two of its four school district partners. ACE was finally forced to close shop when its landlord, the Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute, asked for its space back so it could expand.

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Walking through the ACE Academy, it doesn’t feel like a failing school.

The students here say they love their classes, their teachers and the projects they build by hand. The teachers love their students (and their students’ focus), and the small class sizes. There are blueprints and robots spread around, 3-D printers and CAD machines. There’s a buzz like a jobsite down “on deck,” where ACE’s high school juniors and seniors learn with real tools alongside real apprentices and real masters.

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, and a number of others interviewed this month, say the “ACE model” should be an inspiration to other trades-focused charter schools, which are badly needed to help address a labor shortage that’s driving up the cost of doing business and stunting the growth of companies.

So why did ACE’s board of directors vote unanimously this month to close the school? Why did it struggle for so long? The answers illustrate what’s frustrating to Oregon educators about getting tax dollars to schools – especially charter schools – and what riles businesspeople who work with government.

A lot of disappointment

At the start of the school day Feb. 10, ACE Director Mark Clifford called a school-wide meeting to deliver an announcement he’d feared giving for years. The ACE Academy would fold at the end of the semester. The senior class would be the eighth and final. Juniors would return in the fall to their “home schools,” where it was uncertain whether they’d earn the college credit they’d been promised. There was no plan to reopen.

“It was disappointing to say the least,” Clifford said.

The teachers had found out only hours earlier. Karli Kyle was upset, but knew as a specialist in advanced math, she’d be able to find another job. But it likely wouldn’t involve teaching such small classes, she said.

“It’s such a bummer,” she said. “There are so many kids who just really found their spot here.”

It wasn’t any easier back in her classroom, Kyle said. The kids lamented not being told of the school’s position sooner, so they could have helped. They wanted to email Bill Gates. They asked, “How much do we need?”

$250,000.

“Yeah, their GoFundMe didn’t go very far,” Kyle said.

Yudie Lewis, 18, found a home at ACE. She didn’t really connect with her coursework or teachers at her home school, Parkrose, where classes contain upwards of 40 students.

Now she speaks the language of construction, and plans to start a carpentry apprenticeship after graduation. Her favorite teacher is Ms. Hughes – ACE’s construction instructor, Katie Hughes – who talks to her “like a friend would.”

“(ACE) honestly changed my whole attitude on high school,” she said. “Your work here is totally different. They don’t only care about your grades.”

‘Bad snowpack’

According to professionals in the building trades, the 1990s are when the U.S. education system started pushing all kids to go to four-year colleges. In Oregon, the decade began with passage of Measure 5, which limits tax funding for education. Ten years later was No Child Left Behind, which didn’t emphasize career education. Shop classes, along with arts, physical education and other electives, were diminished in favor of college prerequisites. In this way, academia is often seen by the building community as damaging its “pipeline” of skilled workers.

Despite offering well-paying jobs – and lots of them – the construction industry has long battled the perception that it’s “low-tech,” and thus unappealing to tech-savvy youth.

Following the turn of the millennium, construction executives needed only look at their employee rosters to see what was coming: far more older workers than younger ones to replace them. The math was simple.

“It’s sort of like hearing that there’s bad snowpack in the mountains, and you know there’ll be a drought come summer,” said Bart Eberwein, executive vice president of Hoffman Construction. “We need a river of construction workers, and this tributary’s gone dry. It’s a bad thing.”

Stakeholders were about two years into planning a trades-focused charter school for Northeast Portland when the housing crash hit, followed by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The construction sector was stung perhaps worse than any other industry. Private work came to a standstill; unemployment rose to 50 percent in places.

This was all at a point when the oldest baby boomers were starting to hit retirement age. Many boomers stayed on the job, while younger workers left the industry for other opportunities.

Getting vocational training back in public schools – through efforts like ACE – is just one approach to forging the construction workforce of the future. More conventional efforts include union apprentice and training programs, pre-apprenticeship programs like Northwest College of Construction and Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. and college-level construction management programs, like those at Oregon State University and the Oregon Institute of Technology.

ACE Academy has graduated around 500 students in its eight years. For perspective, to merely keep pace with retirements, close to 4,000 replacements are needed each year in Oregon.

Associated General Contractors spends about $220,000 a year on various workforce development efforts.

“The challenge with ACE always was that you’re asking school districts to give up a part of their budget to send students outside the school district,” AGC Oregon-Columbia chapter Executive Director Mike Salsgiver said. “And that’s a pretty hard sell, especially in a down economy.”

No worse time

Because charter schools draw money away from their partnering school district with each student who attends, it’s hard enough to establish one in Oregon during boom years. But as one past ACE director has said, the school founders couldn’t have picked a worse time to establish. ACE was founded in 2008 as the United Building Congress Academy of Architecture, Construction and Engineering. The plan was to enroll 500 students, a figure quickly revised to a more realistic 200, then 175.

In a unique arrangement, ACE is funded primarily through state dollars funneled through its four partner districts – Reynolds, Centennial, Gresham-Barlow and Parkrose. Last year, around $709,000 of the school’s approximately $800,000 budget came from the districts, with the remainder provided by private interests like AGC’s Education Fund. Other contributors have included PGE and Intel, and major Portland building firms like Hoffman and Lease Crutcher Lewis.

In 2011, the four districts agreed to pay equal shares for 175 students. But each is on the hook for about $3,100 per student for unfilled seats. In 2013-14, the districts subsidized ACE to the tune of $120,000.

Clifford even led several revenue-raising efforts with the help of students. They built and sold chicken coops and sheds. A program to build and sell two tiny houses ($45,000 each) has been operating for several years.

A tough decision

Though low and declining enrollment hurt the school throughout its run, one definitive fact instigated its closure: ACE’s landlord, the Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute, wanted its space back. ACE has leased classrooms and administrative office space, at a discount, since it opened.

But in the time since, construction in Portland has come roaring back. So in a twist of irony, the carpenters union needed to kick the ACE Academy out because there’s so much work to be done.

The ACE board was notified of this eight months ago. The nearest and best option for relocation was Mt. Hood Community College. That plan made it to the conceptual design phase before the plug was pulled because of cost concerns. It turned out that adding high school students to a college triggered greater code requirements, which proved costly. And finding classroom space near well-wired shop space, for a price the academy could afford, proved impossible.

“Looking at those issues, our partner districts didn’t see us getting there,” said board member Dan Drinkward, operations manager at Hoffman Construction. “So we came to the conclusion as a board that it was not viable to continue.”

But the districts aren’t all alike. Enrollment figures show that Reynolds and Parkrose consistently contributed fewer students than Gresham-Barlow and Centennial, which were closer to their targets.

The ACE board is made up of four representatives of partnering businesses, four school district superintendents (representing each school district partner), and one parent who also works in the trades. Following Clifford’s announcement, the board sent letters signed by all members notifying parents and partnering companies.

“Without a viable facility and plan for relocation of the school, member school districts shifted their support away from the school,” the letter reads. “All of this led to the tough decision by the Board of Directors to close the school at the end of this school year.”

Meeting minutes of the board of directors, available online, show little hint of conflict in the months leading up to the closure – meaning tensions described in interviews by board members played out in executive session or were left out of the public record.

What’s certain is that the following week, during the monthly meeting of the Oregon Workforce Development Coalition, several stakeholders pointedly expressed their displeasure with the outcome.

“To be blunt about it, I think we found out that some of the school districts have lost interest,” said board member Tom Goodhue, Oregon Building Congress‘ executive director. “What I’m seeing out there, what I conjecture, is that there’s a pot of money out there, and the districts that we partnered with would rather pocket that money than participate with ACE.”

In Oregon, funding is available to start a charter school. But once it’s up and running, administrators are burdened with keeping enrollment numbers up.

“I think one of the greatest challenges to charter schools is financial stability over the long term,” said board chairman Jeff Wheeler of PGE. “We’ve been somewhat successful with that over the last eight years, but losing our facility and not having another one that was viable really challenged the financial stability of the school.”

A larger problem

What to do next is the “million dollar question,” according to Drinkward.

“We need people in this business,” he said. “Craftwork jobs are getting more demanding and more complicated, and getting young people interested in them is one of the reasons we’ve been involved in ACE.”

The labor shortage is already manifesting itself in various ways, Drinkward said. Some of the price escalation for public and private projects is due to a smaller workforce. Many Hoffman subcontractors aren’t able to take on the work they’d like to, meaning Hoffman sometimes has trouble getting the requisite number of bids.

The AGC in Oregon has ramped up efforts to restore career technical education, according to Salsgiver. It’s seen encouraging progress at Portland Public Schools, Salem-Keizer School District and Sherwood School District. PPS’ Franklin High School is being modernized and will feature a large shop.

“I believe the ACE model absolutely can be effective, but you have to have an agreed-upon partnership that takes a long view,” Salsgiver said.

Talking this month to the Oregon Construction Workforce Coalition, Tom Goodhue of the Oregon Building Congress said an important lesson from the ACE Academy should be that no two high schools are the same.

“Where we as businesspeople would like to see effort and return on investment, that’s not necessarily how schools approach what we’re trying to do,” he said.

Brad Avakian, head of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industry, thinks it should start with middle schools. He helped establish a grant fund in the state Department of Education to bring back modern shop classes to middle and high schools. To date, 340 schools have added programs, he said.

“I think ACE was successful in that regard,” he said. “You know, 500 kids that graduated there in its lifespan and it moved a number of them toward the trades. I think we need more places like ACE.”

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ACE Academy, a trades-focused charter school operating in Northeast Portland, will close after the current semester.

A mix of factors is behind the unanimous decision by the school’s board of directors to “mothball” the failing eight-year-old school, according to Tom Goodhue, board member and executive director of the Oregon Building Congress.

“It’s kind of like the perfect storm of things going wrong,” he said.

First, ACE was asked by its landlord, the Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute, to relocate. Then a plan to move to Mt. Hood Community College was derailed by “insurmountable” cost concerns. In addition, enrollment continues to decline. Oregon laws make funding difficult for charter schools. And two school districts, including Reynolds, are withdrawing their participation, according to Goodhue.

Officials had high hopes that the unique school would help develop the next generation of construction workers. Its board of directors contained an even split of public school administrators and construction industry professionals, and funding derived from both sources. The goal was for enrollment to reach 500 students, but ACE was never able to draw even 200 – meaning the school received sizable subsidies for its unfilled seats.

Today, around 120 students attend the academy for part of the day twice a week. The closure also affects two administrators and five teachers.

Of ACE’s approximately $800,000 annual budget, $709,000 came from the state through school district partners. The school also was the regular recipient of large donations from the Associated General Contractors Education Foundation and PGE.

“It’s very disappointing,” said Mike Salsgiver, CEO of AGC‘s Oregon-Columbia chapter. “But those issues that caused AGC to help create ACE in the first place have not gone away, and we’re going to continue to work on them.”

The construction industry was one of those hit hardest by the Great Recession, with unemployment reaching nearly 50 percent unemployment in places. Many of those workers never returned, so the current building boom has been tempered by an acute lack of skilled help – despite the availability of jobs offering good wages.

The ACE Academy is two years into its second five-year charter with the Reynolds School District. The district did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

In a joint letter announcing the school’s closure, board members said they are open to conversations about starting a different school with a similar mission.

“The successes and challenges experienced over eight years of ACE would inform the development of a new academy,” the letter reads.

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The Associated General Contractors‘ Oregon State University chapter took second place in the national AGC‘s Outstanding Student Chapter contest.

OSU AGC won $750 for “its unique focus and fusion of workforce development programs and service,” according to a news release issued by the Oregon-Columbia chapter. Among its accomplishments, the OSU chapter is credited with creating AGC’s first high school chapter at Portland’s ACE Academy. Chapter members helped the ACE students devise a constitution and calendar of events and expand membership.

Through a program sponsored by OSU, the chapter also used building games and computer programs to teach middle school students about the construction industry. The chapter volunteered for community service efforts, including food donation to a local homeless shelter, homebuilding and landscaping projects with Habitat for Humanity, and assistance with the Oregon-Columbia chapter’s work on a surgical center in Haiti.

Nearly 200 AGC chapters operate at two- or four-year colleges offering construction-related courses.

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Something interesting has been happening in the construction industry over the past two decades: despite rising wages and rapidly increasing demand for new workers, contractors are having trouble filling positions.

Broad demographic and cultural explanations exist, according to a recent Associated General Contractors paper reporting the results of a national membership survey that had nearly 1,400 respondents.

Likely causes put forward by the AGC include an aging workforce, the residual effects of the Great Recession, and the rise of the four-year college degree in favor of what was once called “vocational training.” AGC warns that unchecked, this problem could lead to greater reliance on temporary employees and subcontractors, along with diminished workplace safety (though it has resulted in higher pay for highly-skilled workers and better benefits).

The average construction worker in Oregon earns $56,000 annually.

“Our economy is creating a lot of good jobs, but will Oregon’s kids be able to fill those jobs?” asked John Rakowitz, top lobbyist for AGC’s Oregon-Columbia chapter. “By 2022, we are going to need 25,000 new employees. That is a serious challenge, to be able to sustain the recovery of our industry in our state.”

To restore a “pipeline” of skilled “hourly craft professionals,” the AGC proposes greater funding for career technical education at the high school and career college level, and even comprehensive immigration reform.

In Oregon, many high school career tech courses are now considered “elective,” and don’t count as highly toward graduation. Schools also lack qualified instructors. Two bills passed in Oregon during the past legislative session – House bills 5016 and 3072 – took aim at these issues.

Rakowitz said his cause has broad bipartisan support. Homebuilders and unions are on board, he added.

“We want people to think of (construction) as a career, not just a job,” he said.

Paul Grove of the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland agreed.

“It’s a career path that probably doesn’t get as much play as it should,” he said.

Right now, the role of training the next generation of hourly construction workers has been partially outsourced to community colleges.

At Portland Community College, construction instructor and retired homebuilder Bob Steele said many of his students have already earned bachelor’s degrees in unrelated areas. Some “kick around” a few years after high school in the service or retail industries before becoming serious about the years-long process of learning a trade, he said.

“The majority of my students come here looking for skills,” he said.

This is happening when the construction field is growing faster than all other sectors monitored by the Oregon Employment Department, with 29 percent growth predicted between 2012 and 2022. In September, unemployment in the construction sector was at its lowest point in 15 years. On Thursday, the Employment Department listed 93 current job openings for carpenters.

Many people who left the construction industry during the recession have not returned, according to AGC. And the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that one in three members of the labor force will be above 50 by 2016.

“One of the biggest problems in the industry is all the people getting to be my age,” said baby boomer David Zagorodney, president of the Northwest College of Construction. “And not only are people not entering this industry, but there’s a whole group of people that’s missing.”

Career technical institutions like the NWCOC and the ACE Academy charter school are helping fill the skills gap.

The NWCOC is funded primarily by a trust paid into by Portland-area contractors. It offers seven apprenticeship programs – two years to four years – such as brick masonry and heavy equipment operation. All begin with a “jump-start” crash course – several full days focusing on the “soft” skills of construction. These include punctuality, a good resume, proper attire, etc. Zagorodney said he wants graduates to begin contributing on day one.

Among the NWCOC’s more than 250 current students is apprentice general laborer David Oancea, 20. He hopes to attend college one day and move into management. He has about 1,000 hours to go before he earns his journeyman card from NWCOC.

Following an abortive start with a demolition firm (he had trouble reaching the job site on time, he admits), Oancea has now been with Cascade Bridge for a year and a half. He says he’s free of debt and earns three times what his friends make. He’s started paying into a 401K.

“Being a grunt, you see where all the holes are and how to treat your men,” he said. “When you have to do all the jobs that everybody has to do, it shows you how to do it all … I’m pretty blessed.”

Oancea’s mother, Sarah, an administrator at NWCOC, pushed him to join the apprentice program after high school to “make him into a man.” So far, she’s seen many changes in him, all positive.

“Physically, his body has changed; but mentally, he’s just a lot stronger,” she said. “One other thing about him – he’s a helper now.”

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An aging workforce and a shallow labor pool means the construction industry in Oregon is facing a shortage of workers – and it will likely worsen before it improves.

Data released Wednesday by the Associated General Contractors of America indicates 83 percent of reporting Oregon construction firms are struggling to find qualified craft workers and 54 percent are having a hard time filling professional spots.

At its peak, in 2006, the U.S. employed 7.7 million workers in the construction industry. By 2011 the industry had lost 2.3 million jobs, or 30 percent of its workforce, AGC Chief Economist Ken Simonson said.

“When the industry was at its worst we had a 43 percent unemployment rate,” said Mike Salsgiver, executive director of AGC’s Oregon-Columbia chapter. “We’ve found it didn’t take much of an upturn for the industry to be faced with a shortage of workers.”

The industry has rehired about 600,000 workers since the economy began improving, Simonson said, and already firms are struggling to find qualified workers. He attributes this to people retiring, finding other careers and dropping out of the workforce entirely.

“Now that we do have work we’re adding workers at double the rate of other industries,” he said. “But we’re quickly getting to the point where the pool of former workers is depleted.”

Simonson said the construction industry is increasing its workforce by about 3.9 percent each year, whereas the nationwide pace is around 1.9 percent for the last 12 months.

“Fifty-six percent of Oregon contractors have increased wages to retain and recruit craft workers,” he said. “Forty-nine (percent) have boosted base pay rates to attract construction professionals.”

Steve Malany, president of Portland-based P&C Construction, said he pays his employees anywhere from $25 to $40 an hour and offers full benefits.

“It’s not just a job; it’s a career,” he said. “You can support a family on these wages for the rest of your career.”

But if there’s no one to hire, it doesn’t matter how much firms like P&C Construction are offering.

Salsgiver said the average age of a construction worker is 43. The average age of a skilled construction worker – someone who can work unsupervised and has often gone through a formal apprenticeship program – is 46.

ACE Academy, a public charter high school for juniors and seniors, is hoping to educate the next batch of construction professionals, executive director Mark Clifford said.

Students enrolled at ACE take classes at the Northeast Portland campus for half a day, and then return to their regular school for the other half. ACE offers kids specialty classes in architecture, construction and engineering in addition to typical high school classes like English, math and science.

“Some of the schools have similar programs – Reynolds has a construction class, for example – so students can have that and come here to get an education they can’t get at their high school,” Clifford said. “This program is designed not to be just like a regular high school program, but to augment it.”

Right now, four Portland-area school districts – Gresham-Barlow, Parkrose, Reynolds and Centennial – have partnerships with ACE, though Clifford said the school would like to include other area schools and recruit more students.

Malany, who’s serving as president of AGC’s Oregon-Columbia chapter in 2014, said he and the other chapter members at their monthly meeting have discussed how to reintroduce career technology education into local high schools.

“High school officials in this program say graduation rates for the students who participate are up 15 to 20 percent,” Malany said. “It holds their attention because they’re participating in hands-on, real-life situations that help them understand what having an education can do for them in the long run.”

Salsgiver said there has been a clear directive in public schools over the past 40 years to reduce funding to shop classes and similar ones, and encourage students to follow a four-year college path instead. But he argues that not all students excel in a high-tech environment.

“There is a clear correlation between a certain type of student, one who likes to work with their hands and isn’t a traditional student,” he said. “Those types of students, traditional classrooms don’t work for them.”

Malany said that AGC and ACE also are making a concerted effort to educate high school counselors that options like ACE exist.

“We’re trying to make people aware that construction is a great industry,” he said. “They came through a four-year university, so that’s the way they’re geared. Through training efforts we’re trying to open their eyes.”

Of the Oregon construction firms polled by AGC, 51 percent said the local pipeline for preparing new craft workers is poor, and 25 percent of poll respondents expressed a low opinion of the local pipeline for construction professionals.

“There hasn’t been a place for students to go, and we’re trying to reconnect them,” Salsgiver said. “It’s going to take us a long time to rebuild this pipeline.”

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Last month, the Associated General Contractors’ Oregon-Columbia chapter, in partnership with the Academy for Architecture, Construction and Engineering (ACE Academy) opened the first AGC high school student chapter in the United States. The inauguration of a technical skill-focused student chapter represents another step the industry is taking to ensure a highly skilled, diverse workforce in Oregon – the future of which is very much in question these days.

Today, nearly 60 percent of construction firms report having some difficulty finding enough skilled workers to fill key professional and craft positions. Skilled worker shortages can be attributed to a series of policy, education, demographic and economic factors that have reduced the once robust education pipeline for training new construction workers as well as affected the entire chain of commerce.

We as contractors know that quality, comprehensive craft training is fundamental for development of a skilled workforce. In turn, a skilled workforce is essential for a productive and sustainable construction industry as it climbs its way out of recession.

The crippling of the education pipeline for construction can be seen in many educational trends, including: the dismantling of the public vocation and technical education programs and an increasing focus on college preparatory programs at the high school level. With the “university-for-all” mentality in education, there is an increasing demand for high school students to focus solely on college prerequisites, which prevents students from enrolling in elective courses such as the construction trades. There also exists an overwhelming impression among young people, their parents and teachers that career technical education is unacceptable, despite the fact that construction jobs often pay better than many post-college options, especially post-downturn.

As of July 30, the average salary of a construction worker in Oregon was $51,500 – 16 percent more than the average for all private-sector employees in the state. This figure demonstrates that success in our economy and society is not limited to attainment of a bachelor’s degree.

Across the U.S., the reality of the education system is that 50 percent of high school students go to college, but only half of those students earn a degree. The result is that 75 percent of our high school graduates are looking for jobs that do not require a college degree. Students, teachers and parents need to broaden the “university for all” definition to mean “post-high school education for all,” and understand that there is more than one path forward following high school graduation. Apprenticeship and other programs that focus on the development of technical, in-demand skills are examples of these other paths.

If left unaddressed, shortages of new, highly skilled construction workers will ultimately undermine the industry’s recovery and impact broader economic growth as staffing shortages lead to construction delays. From an industry perspective, the recognition of the construction industry as a path to a well-paying job and career is a critical step toward meeting our future workforce needs. When you combine the aging trend of the baby boomers that make up a majority of Oregon’s construction workforce with the need to add more skilled workers, our state alone will need to add over 23,000 skilled workers by the year 2020.

The link between industry and academia is extremely important. The educational system in general is not preparing young people for or encouraging them to pursue the career opportunities that are available in the crafts. The construction industry has traditionally been viewed as “low tech” and, therefore, is unappealing to the tech-savvy, younger demographic. This, however, is not the reality of today’s construction industry. From high-tech tools to more elaborate building processes and materials, the craft professionals and supervisors of the new construction workforce must be more than just computer literate; they must be computer-proficient and technologically competent.

Cutting-edge career technical education bears little resemblance to the old vocational education programs. Today’s best CTE programs – such as the ACE Academy – do a better job of preparing students for careers than academics-only programs. CTE is reactive to the demands of an ever-changing economy and grounded in the belief that the skills and abilities students need to succeed in college and careers are effectively identical.

While the opening of the first AGC high school student chapter in the U.S. is only a small step, this association and its members are committed to educating young people on the value of learning a trade, dispelling their misconceptions about the construction industry, and inspiring them to pursue a career as a skilled construction tradesman. Our commitment – and the industry’s commitment – to quality CTE are absolutely essential to the successful development of our future workforce.

Mike Salsgiver is the executive director of Associated General Contractors’ Oregon-Columbia chapter. Contact him at 503-685-8305 or mikes@agc-oregon.org.

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Launched in Portland as a training ground for the next generation of workers for the building industry, ACE Academy is struggling to meet its goals.

The charter school opened in 2008 to serve students interested in pursuing careers in architecture, engineering and construction. At the time, supporters said there was high demand from students interested in taking courses of study that had been eliminated by high schools faced with shrinking budgets. There was even talk of possibly using the Portland charter school as a model to create similar programs around the state.

But six years and three executive directors later, ACE Academy, which receives state funding for student enrollment from four “partner” school districts, has fallen short on enrollment goals, leaving the educational partners wondering whether they will need to pull the plug on their support for the charter school.

ACE Academy administrators admit the school is at a critical juncture this year. They’re pinning their hopes on a revamped program designed to attract more students, create additional revenue and re-establish the school as a vital link in the building industry in Oregon.

By the numbers

ACE Academy opened its doors in 2008 with a plan to eventually enroll 500 students, a number that was later revised to a more realistic 200 students. But the school’s enrollment actually has hovered between 135 and 150 students – 50 to 70 students shy of the target, according to Jim Schlachter, superintendent of Gresham-Barlow School District, one of ACE’s four district partners.

Through an agreement reached in 2011, the four district partners — Gresham-Barlow, Reynolds, Centennial and Parkrose — guaranteed payments to the charter school for a total of 175 students expected to attend ACE every year. For the coming school year, though, only 156 students are projected to attend, according to Rick Larson, director of business and operations at Centennial School District, who also does business services for ACE and attends regular board meetings.

The districts pay ACE Academy $3,131 per seat, which means they’ll end up paying about $60,000 for the 19 empty seats during the coming school, Larson said.

During the past school year, ACE Academy had only 136 students enrolled, which resulted in a roughly $120,000 subsidy for unfilled seats, according to Larson.

“This is not something that anybody associated with ACE sees as a sustainable plan,” Larson said. “I don’t know when the board of directors will decide they can’t do these guarantees anymore.”

The guarantees from the districts are needed to keep the school running, including operating costs and teacher salaries, Larson said. Without the guarantees, the school would not be able to continue to operate.

Raising enrollment to about 200 students would match the district guarantees.

For the 2014-15 school year, Centennial anticipates sending 30 students to ACE, seven less than it has guaranteed in funding, but the number of students it actually sends could end up lower, Larson said.

Parkrose and Gresham are roughly on target with their projected enrollment for 2014-15, while Reynolds School District is projected to be 13 shy of its guarantee, Larson said.

Gresham Barlow’s Schlachter said the school district partners have become wary about directing students toward ACE Academy. While teachers, principals and counselors consider the charter school’s program to be basically a duplicate of wood shop and technical programs in existence at the schools the students already attend, there’s a larger concern that prevents them from recommending the charter school to students.

Leadership changes affect stability

Schlachter points to a high number of leadership changes at ACE Academy as a key disconnect between the charter school and its educational partners.

Mark Clifford, now in his second year with ACE, is the school’s third executive director since 2008. That kind of turnover has fostered a sense of distrust from school administrators, faculty and counselors who invariably are the ones recommending whether students should attend ACE, Schlachter said.

Word-of mouth is critical for ACE, which relies on students from its partnering districts along with other schools and home-schooled students to leave their home schools and sometimes travel across town for afternoon classes, Schlachter said.

“As a board, we believe, and I believe, that [ACE is] a very viable program,” Schlachter said. “But if you keep bringing in a different leader, you have to establish a position of trust. My hope is that [Clifford] can build those relationships. That is the biggest challenge.”

Clifford, who spent his first year assessing programs and changing some personnel at the charter school, acknowledged that ACE has fallen short in making itself attractive to students and their academic advisors. The school also has not connected with industry leaders in the way it was originally intended to, he said.

For the coming school year, Clifford has revamped the school’s construction program to have students build one mini-house per year. Clifford has inked an agreement with the Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute to work with ACE staff to lead students through the process and he plans to bring other trades on board and turn to the industry for donations of construction materials, he said.

“This is going to be a very unique program,” he said. “Right now, we only have the carpenters inked, but we’re going to get everybody.”

Having students work on such a large-scale, real-world project would accomplish two goals, according to Clifford. Ideally, the 400-square-foot mini-houses will be sold for between $28,000 and $60,000, drumming up revenue for ACE Academy. Having a house-building program also hopefully will attract students looking for a challenging experience.

“We’ve done chicken coops, dog houses and sheds,” Clifford said. “I said, ‘That wasn’t good enough. We need to do more.'”

ACE Academy also is addressing how it implements its English, math and science programs. In recent years, most of the works in those subjects has been done online. But in year-end surveys, students called for more classroom time for learning those core subjects.

“We weren’t seeing the outcomes we were hoping for,” Clifford said. “We’re shifting to a more traditional approach with some [classroom] integration.”

ACE also is trying to boost its industry connections by starting what will be the first high-school student chapter of AGC in the U.S., Clifford said.

Thirty students have signed up initially for the student-led organization, which will open up networking opportunities and connect students with industry professionals. The student chapter will kick off with an afternoon barbecue Aug. 26 at the ACE Academy, Clifford said.

Long-term goals

Clifford and others who support ACE Academy aren’t just taking a short-term approach to fixing the charter school’s challenges.

If the mini-house project turns out to be a money maker, Clifford says the house-building program could be expanded to include presold custom homes with solar panels and up to eight different models.

A revenue stream of that capacity combined with an ability to hit target enrollment numbers wouldn’t just help the charter school step away from its reliance on the money that comes in from district partners. It also would allow ACE Academy to require less assistance from private partners within the construction industry, said Tom Goodhue, executive director of Oregon Building Congress and an ACE board member.

Out of ACE Academy’s $988,213 budget, for example, $709,000 comes from state dollars funneled through its four school district partners. The charter school also has about $150,000 in reserves and $118,000 in donations, including $53,500 given by the Associated General Contractors Education Foundation.

Goodhue would like to see the charter school eventually step away completely from its reliance on private-industry donations. Becoming financially self-sufficient, Goodhue said, is crucial in order to grow ACE Academy’s programs in a sustainable way.

“That extra revenue would put the school over the top,” he said.

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