How Idaho uses data to fill in-demand jobs
Ariel Skelley via Getty Images
By
Chris Teale
The Idaho LAUNCH scholarship program grants students up to $8,000 to cover tuition and fees at eligible institutions, if they are looking to be trained in an area that needs more workers.
From now until mid-June, depending on their location, thousands of high school students in Idaho will graduate and then have the intimidating task of working out what to do next.
Helping ease that transition is the Idaho Workforce Development Council, an independent state agency that supports various projects to build the state’s workforce, including through apprenticeships, adult learning and other training. It also houses Idaho LAUNCH, which exists for adults and high school students.
For the latter, Idaho LAUNCH offers students a one-time grant to cover 80% of their tuition and fees at eligible state institutions, worth up to $8,000. That money is contingent on students applying to study in what the state determines is an in-demand career path. And this year, almost 10,000 students in the Class of 2025 will receive the award.
The council determines an in-demand career with a matrix that looks at job openings, the economic strength of an area within the state, and the education and training required. The state also pulls in data from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics to come up with its matrix.
Route Fifty recently sat down with Sherawn Reberry, Idaho LAUNCH’s program manager, to learn more.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Route Fifty: Could you start by telling me about some of the work that you guys do at Idaho LAUNCH?
SHERAWN REBERRY: Idaho LAUNCH has been in existence before the student program came about; we had Idaho LAUNCH for adults. It was conceived during COVID, so a couple of years before I came to the council. When COVID happened, everything had to shift, and it fell right in line with the needs during that time period. To start LAUNCH, the workforce development council did a survey of employers throughout the state of Idaho, trying to understand what skills they were missing in those that were applying for their jobs or current employees, and the skills that they needed to help them obtain. It was a pretty good return on that survey. I want to say it was well over a 60% return rate. That outlined those skills that were missing.
Then the council began working forward with Idaho LAUNCH for adults. On the adult side, a grant pays 80% of tuition and fees, up to $3,500 on the adult side, for those workforce training skills. Most of the training opportunities for adults are out of the workforce, training centers, private providers, those types of things.
On the student side, the governor had this idea for ongoing funding that the legislature does have to allocate on an annual basis, a fund of $75 million that provides grants you have to apply for when you're a senior in high school. It pays 80% of tuition and fees up to $8,000. The training that we allow students to go through, everything has to be aligned to an in-demand career. It is a very data-driven process trying to figure out what those in-demand careers are, and the statute for LAUNCH has us do that on an annual basis.
Students must apply in their senior year of high school. The requirements are they have to graduate from an Idaho high school, which means a public school, a private school, a charter school, or you can be a homeschool student or a GED student — as long as, with GED, you are under the age of 21 by the application deadline each year. The application opens Oct. 1, it closes April 15, and they have to enroll in and apply to one of the Idaho eligible training providers that we have and attend the following fall, so there is no allowance for a gap year.
We do, however, allow six reasons for an extension. We allow an extension for military service; religious service; volunteer service, if it's specific to AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps; if the student is getting put on a wait list, because many of those workforce training programs get full and so you have to wait to get enrolled; [and] health reasons, if the training provider is unable to meet the family and medical leave requirements for accommodation. Last year, we did have to add a sixth reason, and that was for incarceration, because we saw it on the adult side and the student side. They make choices, there are consequences to their choices, but we also want to ensure that they have somewhere to go when they come out in order to continue that training and hopefully lead to being that productive citizen in your community.
Route Fifty: I have to imagine you've got a bucket full of students and a bucket full of in-demand careers. How do you go about matching those up?
REBERRY: The students apply in a program called Scholarship Idaho, and when they apply there, we have all the training providers that are allowed and all the programs at the institutions that are training providers. We use [Classification of Instructional Programs] codes and have taken and aligned those programs to those in-demand careers. All the programs we allow are aligned to an in-demand career. Psychology is not an in-demand career, so if they want to be a psychology major, they would not be able to find anything on that list that would allow them to apply, because when they apply, they have to choose the institution and the program.
Route Fifty: Is that hard to administer? Is it hard to keep track of all this stuff? How do you do it?
REBERRY: It's a process. We work very closely with the state board of education. Each of the institutions, the community colleges and the four-year public institutions, all their programs have to be approved through the state board office. Those programs automatically get added into Scholarship Idaho. Then we have to be responsible for all the private providers who we work with as well, getting those programs in so students have the ability to choose public or private.
It is very much a collaborative effort with those over at the state board office who have to keep up with all the new programs. And there's different times of year that new programs get added. If private providers want new programs added, there's a process in which they go through sending them to us, and we go through an approval process.
Route Fifty: Has it been challenging to get all these moving parts in place?
REBERRY: It's been a lot of hard work. It's been a lot of collaboration and a lot of different entities coming together. Have there been roadblocks? Yes, always. What project doesn't have something? But honestly, I feel so grateful that we're doing this, and the people that have come together to make it work. It's just amazing.
Right now, my inbox is a little full with questions from students and parents, because about two weeks ago, we sent out for the class of 2025 our final awards, and we sent out 9,925 awards. That creates, in and of itself, a host of questions.
I’m struck by the thankfulness and the gratitude of these students, because so many of them would not be able to go on. Some people say, “It's only $8,000.” But $8,000 can be the difference between going on after high school or stopping and trying to make $8,000 to go on. There are so many stories that we could tell about kids, so it's amazing. It's taken a lot of work, a lot of collaboration, lots of conversations.
Route Fifty: How have you made the process better?
REBERRY: The reason we chose to have students apply where they were applying in Scholarship Idaho, is because that system already existed, and we didn't want to come in as this entity running another state-sponsored grant and have students create different accounts in different places. That's why we chose to partner and work with the teams that were already building systems where students were already applying for existing scholarships that the state sponsors.
Once they get their final awards, we did have to implement a new system on our side, because once students are out of that state system, it wasn't built to hold an invoice. That's where Appian came in with our partners at Ignyte to help us build the system. When students get that final award offer, they get an email, and that email then explains to go to the grant management system with a username and temporary password. When they go in, that's where it begins, making sure that all their things are in place. And by things, I mean that they are an Idaho resident, so they have to upload a driver's license, and then they do have to verify that they graduated from high school, so they have to upload a diploma. One of the other collaborations that we have is we were able to work with our Department of Motor Vehicles so that students could input their driver's license number, and it could automatically ping the DMV so it would verify for us, saving our team a lot of work. Then we have to look at all the diplomas.
They can't finalize any of their awards until after graduation, so we've set up the system where they can prove their identity and residency and everything. We require them to do a career pathway plan. We have tools that they can use, and essentially, it's just to help ensure that they've really thought about their interests, their values. What do they like to do? Where do they see themselves? We have three different activities that we send them through to do that career planning.
Route Fifty: What are some of the lessons that you've learned from putting this together? What's struck you in this whole thing?
REBERRY: Just the gratitude, first of all, that students have. I think it really is a need. It is nothing that you can take for granted. Not all families are able to help students move to that next step, so it really is helping to propel these students. On the adult side, for those adults that are either upskilling or going back because they didn't start where they wanted to be, the gratefulness of those adults is very apparent as well. I have never heard anybody say they feel like they deserve it, but that it is that next step for them to help them get there and contribute to their communities. Lessons learned, too, about how to work with other agencies, because not everybody always has that same end point in mind.
Route Fifty: What's next on the horizon for you guys? You've got loads of people graduating right now, but what are you working on next?
REBERRY: Continuing to better this system, looking at those in-demand careers, working with our legislature to ensure that they understand the support they have provided, how positive that is, and what it means for Idaho. Futuristically, when we look on the adult side of LAUNCH, we require that if they go through training, they must remain in Idaho for at least one year after the training. Then we look at data and look at those adults from one year, two years, three years out from their training, and what we're finding with those adults from their training is that they are increasing their annual salaries anywhere from $15,000 annually, up to $25,000 annually. We're providing that training at $3,500 for adults, but then thinking about that return on investment that they are giving back to the state once they are in that new job is amazing.
The state board office is able to look at the public institutions, so what we can tell from the data on the public side is that there has been an increase in enrollment at our public institutions for the class of 2025. What was heartwarming to me is that we saw a 23% increase of students that had a 2.7 grade point average or lower continuing on. Many scholarships and grant opportunities don't necessarily recognize a 2.7 GPA or lower, and so 23% more of those students going on, to me, is really hitting the mark. After 31 years in the education system, not everybody sees themselves as going on, so if this is giving them that added confidence to go on because somebody is believing in them, then that in and of itself is wonderful. Overall, we had a 15% surge in community college enrollment, and then we had about a 16% increase in our technical college enrollment.
Route Fifty: Is there anything I didn't ask you that you wanted to make sure we talked about? Any final thoughts to share?
REBERRY: I do always like to give thanks to Gov. Brad Little, our lieutenant governor and our legislature for putting this out there and for believing in the work that we're doing and providing this for students.