Following years of high-skill job growth in the Pikes Peak region, its public school districts and businesses alike have taken strides in working together to build up tomorrow’s workforce.

While each local school district has historically offered its own career and technical education programs, also referred to as “vocational education” or “tech ed” over the years, industry and education leaders alike agreed that the societal need for this education crossed beyond district boundaries.

Colorado Springs School District 11 career and technical education director Duane Roberson recalled what a local employer told him years ago while speaking at a recent career summit.

“He said, ‘Duane, I own a business in one school district, I live in a second school district and my kids are in a third school district,’” said Roberson. “He said, ‘I don’t understand all of the school districts, but I know is that I need a workforce for every one of the school districts.’”

In the years since, Roberson, also a committee member with the Colorado Association for Career & Technical Administrators, has worked with neighboring school districts to bolster all offerings throughout the entire region. He and other districts’ program directors meet monthly to discuss and share practices in each other’s programs.

New facilities have also been built and programming expanded over this time to teach students the skills for burgeoning industries in the region. Beginning this schoolyear, Calhan School District RJ-1 opened a new facility that features nine welding bays, woodworking and metal shops, a fully staffed kitchen, and new classrooms. In October, District 49 cut the ribbon to a new wing for career technical education pathways at Vista Ridge High School to increase student capacity.

A large part of the increased offerings is the shared vision of workforce development across the board.

“What we are are 17 strong school districts that talk to each other regularly and collaboratively,” Roberson told the crowd. “We meet all the time with leadership and we encourage teachers to talk across school districts. Because an engineering program in one school district can only be as strong as the engineering program in another school district.”

The career pathways summit, held at Fountain-Fort Carson High School Oct. 29, brought together local business leaders, educators and students throughout the region to highlight the impacts of career and technical education in the region.

The summit was the first of its kind and put on by the Pikes Peak Business Education Association (PPBEA) to allow attendees to explore how potential partnerships might address the workforce needs of the ever-growing local economy. School district representatives and business leaders met with local students before breaking out into meetings to discuss the current landscape of different career pathways like hospitality, health sciences, skilled trades, culinary and manufacturing.

According to the PPBEA, the career fields with the most job openings in Teller and El Paso counties this year have been nursing and health sciences and cybersecurity and computer science at 20,323 and 18,082 openings, respectively.

Similarly, an October progress report in El Paso County listed registered nurses, software engineers and maintenance/repair workers among the top 10 job openings. In the same report, the number of workers available per job opening was calculated at 0.87.

To help fill these workforce needs, the PPBEA formed in 2019 to increase the local talent pool, help address chronically unfilled jobs and enhance K-12 education through career-connected learning for students like internships and worksite visits. Operating under the Pikes Peak Workforce Center, it has grown to work with over 12,000 students this past year.

PPBEA director Bob Gemignani said it formed following his tenure as a workforce learning manager in D-49, where he helped design and implement its occupational training program and business partnerships and other school districts took notice. Despite the recent progress with these collaborations, he said student engagement remains the key to filling current job gaps.

“At scale, we need to get these high school kids better informed and more motivated to look at these pathway programs, not just take their regular academics and a throwaway class,” he said.

Recent responses

According to the 2023 state talent pipeline report, roughly 35% of Tier 2 Top Jobs required only a high school diploma or equivalent, showing a shift in demand for training requirements rather than postsecondary degrees for some jobs. The report also noted that the lower educational attainment requirements for in-demand jobs would likely lead to employers opting for candidates with some type of previous job training.

Across the state, legislative action has taken place to address overall workforce needs, Recent state legislation like Senate Bill 24-104 and House Bill 22-1215 has worked to improve the connectedness of high school students to career pathways like career and technical education, apprenticeships and postsecondary coursework available for them to take. Recommendations from the state Secondary, Postsecondary and Work-based Learning Integration Task Force outline a need for increased communication to access, report and track all career pathway options throughout the state. It also recommends that every Coloradoan have no-cost access to a quality short-term credential, quality work-based learning experience or college credits by age 21.

In Colorado Springs, the position of workforce administrator was recently resurrected by Mayor Yemi Mobolade to meet the economic development goals laid out in his strategic framework. Among these goals are building school district K-12 partnerships for “workforce for tomorrow” jobs and training focused on sectors in the region and specifically supporting cybersecurity and space education to become a direct feeder to higher education and industry.

With these in mind, city workforce administrator Robin Lovewell has met with local high schools and program directors to observe their current offerings to students and make connections with local businesses for internships or presentations. She noted the growth and expansion of what is now considered career and technical education and what specifically is offered in the Pike Peak region.

“I think back in the day, when you think of voc ed, you think more of the trades … but there is so many more,” Lovewell said. “There’s business, there’s aviation, there’s manufacturing, there’s health care, graphic arts, multimedia. So, there are so many different career fields that kids have an opportunity to get trained in.”

Going forward

As far as El Paso and Teller counties are concerned, the recent momentum shows no signs of slowing down.

Earlier this year, the state Department of Education approved an incoming innovation zone for D-11 that will partner high school students with the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Cybersecurity and Research Center, the National Cybersecurity Center and industry professionals. Students will also be able to earn dual enrollment credits at UCCS and Pike Peak State College and certifications through their classwork.

Lovewell also said that D-11 is in discussions with the city to potentially develop a new student cohort with a focus on city government work.

In addition to the UCCS’s bachelor degree program in aerospace engineering, which launched in 2022, a new engineering center opened in 2024 to house modern research labs and instructional spaces. This year, Pikes Peak State College began offering its own bachelor’s in cybersecurity.

Up in Lewis-Palmer D-38, a brand-new career and technical education facility that will provide students the opportunity to earn both certifications and college credits for career pathways is slated for completion by the start of the 2025-26 school year. Career pathways mentioned include manufacturing and skilled trades in addition to newer offerings like health care and cybersecurity.

Out east, the Pikes Peak Board of Cooperative Educational Services approved the location for a new trade school campus near Peyton. If finalized, it would serve students in rural school districts like Big Sandy, Calhan, Edison, Elbert, Ellicott, Hanover, Miami-Yoder and Peyton.

As for established programming in the region, interest continues to grow.

Lovewell recalled during her visit to Air Academy High School in August that there was a waitlist of 100 students for the school’s aviation program.

To keep this momentum going, Gemignani said that student engagement with career and technical education may continue to grow if it were presented more as core classwork rather than voluntary classwork for students, given the possibilities they can present.

“By the time they graduate, they’ve got probably three or four classes of college credit,” he said. “They’ve got college credit that potentially qualify them for an entry-level job in that career cluster coming out of high school. Or, if it’s not a job that you can enter with a high school diploma and some credentials, it’ll better put them on a path to make a really solid college decision.”

For students like Fountain-Fort Carson senior Tautinei Aflava, her career and technical education classes offered her the chance to find her calling in life in a way that her core academics couldn’t.

After previously struggling with attendance and her grades, she now has a 3.2 grade-point average and was recently named the CTE student of the year by the Colorado Association of for Career and Technical Education.

In addition to the applicable hands-on work skills she gained through classes like culinary arts and interior design, she said that she’s also learned how to effectively communicate with others, how to enter the workforce and take on leadership roles. Despite being unaware of the statewide award until she was announced this year’s winner, she surmises it was the focus and commitment she exhibited through her daily classwork that won her the distinction.

“It really showed, not just to me but to other people, that I can do what I want, and it proved to me that I wasn’t dumb like I thought I was,” she said.

Her current classes have her going out and working with the local Fountain community and educating them about career and technical education offerings. Going forward, she says she hopes to continue to serve her community through the skills she’s developed through these classes.

“I want to continue that community work,” she said. “I want to be the voice for those people that feel like they aren’t heard.”