- Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday announced the allocation of $9 million across three schools to help strengthen workforce education programs
- The three schools — South Florida State College, St. Petersburg College, and Daytona State College — will partner with local school districts to facilitate interest in younger people in pursuing in-demand career fields
- This specific program will focus on first responder careers such as law enforcement, emergency management, and healthcare
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday awarded South Florida State College, St. Petersburg College, and Daytona State College a total of $9 million for workforce education programs.
The funds will support programs that help students graduate and enter careers in emergency management, law enforcement, health care, and education. The funding allocation comes as the highlighted fields endure a critical shortage of workers dating back to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was great to award $9 million for workforce education programs that will help Floridians who were impacted by Hurricane Ian,” said DeSantis. “As we rebuild and recover from this storm, training highly skilled individuals to work in health care, law enforcement, emergency management, and education will help communities now and prepare them for the future.”
The trio of schools was selected due to their locations respective to the path of Hurricane Ian, exposing a need for additional first responder positions to be filled.
The dispersed awards are $2.8 million to South Florida State College and Daytona State College, with the remaining $3.4 million going to St. Petersburg College.
Across the next three years, 2,000 students are expected to graduate from the programs.
“With today’s announcement, Florida will continue to effectively support these critical workforce pipelines to fill critical positions,” said Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz, Jr. “As we continue to recover from Hurricane Ian, Governor Ron DeSantis is helping to ensure our workforce education meets the modern demands of Florida’s growing economy.”
Furthermore, the universities will form regional collaborations with school districts to create professional academies in hopes that providing exposure to such areas of the professional world will facilitate interest among younger individuals.
Future initiatives will encompass, among other things, emergency management, law enforcement, health care, and education.
During the 2020-2021 school year, Florida had the highest number of students enrolled in Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs in state history with more than 772,000 K-12 CTE and over 380,000 postsecondary CTE students.