OLYMPIA, Wash. — Community and technical colleges are calling for investment from Washington state lawmakers this legislative session. Staff at community and technical colleges have launched the Reinvest in Our Colleges campaign and are asking for $500 million in permanent funding over the next two years.

Nearly 60 percent of postsecondary students in the state attend or graduate from CTCs, but those 34 colleges receive less than 40 percent of the state's higher education funding. Jim Howe, vice president for legislative affairs with the American Federation of Teachers of Washington and also a faculty member at Lake Washington Institute of Technology, said CTCs can fill the state's growing labor gap.

"There's a shortage of workers in so many fields - high-tech and nursing and things like that - and we're the ones that can supply those,” Howe said. “But it's a heavy lift, and we're struggling with our funding already."

In 2013, the Washington Student Achievement Council set a goal that 70 percent of adults would have postsecondary credentials by 2023. To achieve that goal, the colleges will need to graduate more than 45,000 students a year, roughly 12,000 more students than they currently graduate.

Howe said pay needs to be competitive to retain faculty. Forty percent of staff only make three-quarters of market-value salaries.

House Bill 1300 would create the Reinvest in Our Colleges program, with goals to increase compensation for faculty, establish an office for diversity and equity, and provide better wages for faculty and staff that work with incarcerated populations. The bill also calls for funding to increase the number of counselors at the colleges.

Earl Martin, a counselor at Everett Community College, said another bill, HB 1355, would set ratios for the number of students to each counselor.

"The last time the state had a standard was many years ago and they called for 1-to-500. But that was just a policy recommendation, never put into code,” Martin said. “We're asking for almost twice as high as that at the 900 level."

Martin said counselors are key for getting students ready to be part of the workforce. He also noted that community and technical colleges are the affordable - and sometimes only - option for Washingtonians. On average, tuition costs per quarter at CTCs are nearly 40 percent less than at a university, and nearly 65 percent less than at a research university.


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West Virginia is among a handful of states with the highest increases in educational attainment between 2019 and 2021, according to a new report from the Lumina Foundation.

Overall, around 44% of adults age 25-64 have completed a degree or certification, but the state still lags behind the national average of around 53%.

Sarah Armstrong Tucker, chancellor of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, explained several initiatives are in place to try to make college completion within reach, including shifting to an open educational resource model, where textbooks are free online and low-cost to print.

"We know that the cost of textbooks is an impediment for students," Tucker observed. "A lot of students actually drop after they find out how much money they have to pay for in books."

In 2019, lawmakers passed House Bill 2853, which established the West Virginia Program for Open Educational Resources, making it easier to share and redistribute learning and resource materials.

According to the Education Data Initiative, college students spend on average between $628 and $1,400 each year on books and supplies.

Tucker pointed out over the past few years, West Virginia's colleges have focused more on mental health, overcoming Covid challenges, and assisting student parents who are navigating work and caregiving on top of classes.

"Community colleges have been really focused on making sure that we have students who are able to work while they're going to school and are able to receive benefits," Tucker noted. "So that they can help to support their families."

Tucker added the state is now working to expand opportunities for high school students to take college-level classes. She added the Dual Enrollment Initiative seeks state funding, so parents don't have to pay tuition for dual enrollment.

"Low-income students, first-generation students are much more likely to go to college. If they take dual enrollment courses, they're much more likely to graduate college if they take dual-enrollment courses."

According to state data, Nearly 67% of students in the class of 2021 who took dual enrollment courses went to a community college or a four-year institution after graduation.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.

The state's "divisive concepts" law is preventing educators from holding rational discussions about race relations in America, New Hampshire civil rights leaders said. February is Black History Month, a dedicated time for students to learn about the struggles and triumphs of African Americans despite systemic racism.
James McKim, president of the Manchester chapter of the NAACP of Manchester said the law has caused educators to fear reprisals for even mentioning the word "race" in their classrooms.

"This is the true history of our country that we need to be teaching and the history of how Black people, African Americans, have contributed is a part of that history," Kim said.

Supporters of the law say it merely prevents the teaching of discrimination but educators say they have received little guidance from the Department of Education on what they can teach.

Public opposition to the "divisive concepts" law remains high and legislation has been introduced to repeal it. Civil rights leaders say the law has emboldened New Hampshire's growing number of white-supremacist groups.

Grace Kindeke, program coordinator with the American Friends Service Committee, said the original divisive concepts bill was always meant to divide communities.

"So, we've created an environment where hate is able to flourish, and despite what the bill claims that it does, what it actually does is it really helps to nourish that kind of hateful environment," Kindeke said.

Kindeke added communities grow stronger when they are honest about the impacts of white supremacy and where it manifests in state policies and institutions.

Honest classroom discussion about the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvan Martin is what led Ronelle Tshiela of Black Lives Matter Manchester to attend law school. She worries the "divisive concepts" law will stifle those same discussions today.

"That is very disheartening to me," she said. "And it also worries me because when you don't have conversations like this it leads people to repeat the same behaviors."

Tshiela said educators should not have to fear facilitating tough conversations in the classroom, but those fears may be short-lived. The U.S. District Court of New Hampshire recently ruled in favor of allowing a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of New Hampshire and teachers' unions against the "divisive concepts" law to move forward.

Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly has announced a $450 million investment in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park to develop new drugs, and put more people to work in the state.

It is the latest in a series of investments in North Carolina's research sector, designed to put more medications and more jobs in the pipeline.

Edgardo Hernandez, president of global manufacturing for Lilly, said it builds on investments the company has already made in the area, and will help them keep up with the soaring demand for pharmaceuticals.

"We are building capacity ahead of these promising medicines, including medicines for Alzheimer's disease, medicines for immunology, and medicines for diabetes," Hernandez outlined. "An extensive pipeline of new molecular entities that we are testing in the clinic to commercialize."

In addition to being used to create pharmaceuticals, the investment will also boost enrollment at trade schools and universities, but especially at Durham Technical Community College, which has an agreement with Lilly to train the students the company needs for many of its jobs.

So far, Lilly's recent investments have created at least 350 jobs in the pharmaceutical field, and the new money is projected to mean 100 more. Once trained, Hernandez explained the employees will do a wide variety of industry jobs.

"It goes from scientists, engineers and pharmacists to operators that operate our lines and maintenance technicians, lab technicians and even logistics and warehouse operators," Hernandez noted.

Nationwide, employers have said there is a shortage of work-ready high school graduates in lots of industries, and an investment in community colleges such as Durham and other trade schools will help train workers to address the problem in the rapidly expanding pharmaceutical sector.