State grants $1.5M for advanced manufacturing training
Courtesy Andy Metzger/SHNS
Gov. Charlie Baker explained his allegiance to Swampscott High School after receiving a Lynn Tech hat during an training grant announcement on Thursday.
The Baker administration announced $1.5 million in grants for advanced manufacturing training programs on Thursday at Lynn Vocational Technical Institute, which educates high school students and hosts a program to train out-of-work adults.
Funding for the grant program increased from $860,000 last year, according to figures provided by an administration official.
"One of the themes of this administration is investing in what works," Education Secretary James Peyser said at an event in one of the school's shops.
The 2015 Advanced Manufacturing Training Program Workforce Development Grant award winners include the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership in Worcester.
Phil O'Donnell, of Lynn, said he had been out of work since November 2014, after the security company he worked for lost a contract, when he signed up for a free nine-month program at the institute this October.
"The jobs are out there. It's just learning the skills to get hired," O'Donnell told the News Service.
Gov. Charlie Baker announced the $1.5 million in grants for 10 different organizations after a tour of the shops - where he admired a decorative, steel jack-o-lantern holder built by Justin Lewis, a senior at the school.
Companies partnering with organizations benefitting from the grant program include Sinicon Plastics Inc., a plastics molding company in Dalton; golfing goods manufacturer Titleist, which has plants in and around New Bedford; and Essex Engineering, a machine shop in Lynn.
"The opportunity to do something great is there," said Baker, who recalled his first National Governors Association meeting earlier this year where he said the majority of governors there said "skill-building" was their number-one economic development issue.
Lynn Tech Principal Robert Buontempo Jr. presented Baker with gifts of a handcrafted cardholder and a Lynn Tech winter hat, the latter of which posed a quandary for the Swampscott Republican.
"The thing to remember here is my boys both played sports for Swampscott High School, and if I ever showed up in a Lynn Tech hat that would be a big problem," said Baker, who said his daughter - currently a student at Miami University in Ohio - would "love" the hat.
The program housed at the Lynn school is called the E-Team Machinist Training Program, according to Sen. Tom McGee, a Lynn Democrat, who said it started off with an earmark sponsored by him and Rep. Robert Fennell when they were freshmen representatives in 1995.
Peter Capano, a Lynn city councilor and president of Local 201 IUE/CWA, said there are probably 200 E-Team graduates at General Electric, which has a Lynn manufacturing center, and he said three of four most recent hires were graduates of the program.
McGee is chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Committee and has greeted the Republican governor in his city twice in the past two weeks.
"There's many things we disagree on in political life, and we'll continue to highlight those, but there's also areas that you always find common ground on, particularly when it talks about creating jobs," McGee told the News Service. He said, "This is my district. I care about it deeply."
Other organizations benefitting from the grants are Tech Foundry in Springfield, the Northeast Advanced Manufacturing Consortium in Lawrence and the city of Somerville.
"This works - this grant program - and so we'd certainly like to scale it more throughout the Commonwealth," Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Ron Walker told the News Service.
Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Mitchell Chester said vocational schools in Massachusetts are "largely high-performing," and said Lynn Tech is "doing a great job."
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