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LONGVIEW — Education was front and center on Wednesday during the state of the workforce hosted by Longview chamber of commerce. According to our news partner KETK, East Texas business owners, high schools and economy experts attended the meeting and they focused on discussing education and the role it plays in building up local industries. One topic was especially discussed, looking for qualified people to fill critical roles.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still hearing from businesses and industry in the East Texas community, that they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the number of workers that they need nor the skill that those workers actually need to have in order to be successful.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Brenda Kays, president of Kilgore college, said.<\/p>\n
Representatives from Kilgore college, public think tank Texas 2036 and the national skill coalition updated local businesses on the current employment landscape.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We have a very robust labor force in Texas but there are certainly skilled positions, high paying skilled positions, that are having difficulty being filled,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d John Hryhorchuk, from Texas 2036, said.<\/p>\n
He said Texas has a high school graduation rate of 90% but only approximately 30% are pursuing some form of higher education.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We have a very high graduation rate which is fantastic but when you translate that out to the post-secondary credentials attainment space there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a significant drop off,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Hryhorchuk. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And leveraging our universities, community colleges and even our high schools to increase credential attainment is part of a broader statewide and national conversation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The panelists conversation centered around investing into education. The meeting also served as a way to gather information and bounce ideas off each other.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is important we hear firsthand what business, and industry needs so that we can come in and we can fill that gap between what is and what needs to be,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Kays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONGVIEW — Education was front and center on Wednesday during the state of the workforce hosted by Longview chamber of commerce. According to our news partner KETK, East Texas business owners, high schools and economy experts attended the meeting and they focused on discussing education and the role it plays in building up local industries. … Continue reading Longview state of workforce meeting focuses on education<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":1358433,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2024\/09\/Longviewstateof-225x183.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1358424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 12:16:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2024\/09\/Longviewstateof-225x183.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1358424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1358434,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358424\/revisions\/1358434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1358433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1358424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1358424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1358424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}