He said the Dayton region needs creative and aggressive strategies to develop its workforce and create conditions conducive to keeping high-end workers. He said the proposals hopefully will become workable initiatives in coming years that other organizations will oversee.
“If we are trying to increase the number of young people who get degrees and credentials, they want a Dayton that is user-friendly for a young person,” he said.
Learn to Earn is a nonprofit whose mission is to ensure local students succeed in school and the workplace.
Learn to Earn at first focused primarily on “intellectual capital issues,” or helping prepare youth for school, graduation and job readiness, Lasley said.
The nonprofit now is exploring ways to meet the needs of employers, encourage workers to stay in the region and pursue careers in core industries with the best job opportunities.
During a presentation to Montgomery County commissioners Tuesday, Lasley talked about the benefits of a loan forgiveness program for students who attend at least two years of high school in the county and then obtain post-secondary credentials.
The idea is to forgive a portion of the loans of students who graduate with degrees or certificates in high-demand fields.
The funding for the program would likely come from employers in need of workers as well as the state, which could provide matching funds, Lasley said. Students would go to work for those companies, and the state would be able to keep and fortify important industries.
Earlier this year, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley also called for creating a loan forgiveness program as part of her City of Learners initiative.
Another proposal is to offer opportunities for students to pursue specialized credentials in industries that have trouble finding skilled workers.
Students would be screened in high school for specialized careers and then receive job shadowing and internships before they work on obtaining post-secondary certification, Lasley said.
The Ponitz Career Technology Center and Miami Valley Career Technology Center already provide students with technical skills and specialized training, but expanding these types of opportunities to more students would help close the skills gap and improve the chances students will get good jobs, Lasley said.
Currently, students in career technical programs often have to travel far distances to get to school, and their local school districts stand to lose state funding when they transfer to these programs, Lasley said.
“That’s going to require more collaboration and planning among school districts,” he said.
Helping students excel in school and graduate is vital, Lasley said, but there are limited benefits to the region if those talented young people pick up and move.
One proposal is to give free residential properties to recent college graduates or young people with in-demand degrees.
The homes would be in areas likely near the urban core that have foreclosure problems.
The young people would have to pay the applicable taxes and invest a certain amount in the properties. But after five years, the homes would be theirs to keep or sell.
Young professionals, of course, often do not want to live in blighted areas.
But they would be more willing to consider it if they knew many surrounding homes were being given to other young professionals who were also investing in them, Lasley said. The idea is for “workforce residential zones” that have defined development and improvement plans.
Other communities have tried similar strategies. A nonprofit in Detroit is giving homes away to promising writers who relocate to the Motor City. Dayton already gives abandoned delinquent properties to people who will invest in them or remove the blight.
Lasley, Whaley and other local leaders recently were on a conference call and discussed revitalization ideas with representatives from Purpose Built Communities, a nonprofit co-founded by billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett.
Representatives will visit Dayton in coming months to look at some neighborhoods that could be eligible for the Purpose Built Communities model of urban revival, Whaley said.
“We want to see if there are best practices they’ve identified to move forward to really re-create a neighborhood,” Whaley said.
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