Opportunity Grants will open doors

Real economic growth in the modern world must be built upon a firm foundation: the skills, education and hard work of each person. No natural resource is more important today than what economists call "human capital." The education and skills of each person are what will determine our economic future.

America believed this once, and invested accordingly. As anyone knows who remembers WWII, the GI Bill sent millions of people to college. For several decades, the U.S. had the best-educated population in the world, and our economy boomed.

But now, skilled jobs at all levels in Washington state and across the country are going unfilled -- not only those requiring college degrees but also jobs in technical fields and the trades. This means less productivity for businesses, and fewer people gaining secure, family-supporting jobs.

Fortunately, our state is doing something about it: the Opportunity Grants bill, which has just passed the House and Senate in Olympia and is awaiting Gov. Chris Gregoire's signature. The grants allow low-income people to move into college, apprenticeships and job skills training they could not otherwise afford, just as the GI Bill did for a generation of working-class soldiers six decades ago.

Depending on how much funding the Legislature decides to allocate to Opportunity Grants, this program could train thousands of workers in aerospace, health care, construction, biotechnology and other critical fields. Thousands of families could be lifted out of the ranks of the working poor and solidly into the middle class -- not just now, but in future generations. After all, how many of us can trace our own college degrees back to that first family member who went to college on the GI Bill?

Opportunity Grants are based on proven models, including In-Demand Scholars, a private-sector partnership that trained high school and college students for high-skilled jobs using federal funding secured by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. In-Demand was created by the Washington Workforce Association, the Association of Washington Business and the Washington State Labor Council to create strong student-to-business connections and help students who would not otherwise have had access to training. Originally intended to serve about 70 students, it exceeded its goal by serving 144. This success is due to strong ties to local employers and unions, a model that is also built into Opportunity Grants.

The new Opportunity Grants bill has incorporated these successes into a permanent statewide solution that will bring more Washingtonians into stable and family-supporting careers. Not only that, it will keep skills that employers need here in our workforce. As local business leader Gordy Anderson, director of global sales administration for Terex Corp., put it, "It is vital to our economy and our competitiveness for workers to have access to training and education."

The funding levels for Opportunity Grants will be determined in final budget negotiations this week. We hope lawmakers will see this as the opportunity it is, not just for individual residents and families, but for our state in the long term. With appropriate investment, we can give our economy a firm foundation.