 I'm Brent Parton, I'm the Deputy Director in the Center in Education and Skills in New America. It's been really exciting. Thank you. It's been an incredible couple days so I'm excited to kick off our closing part of the day. Yesterday was all about a deep dive of a really powerful partnership here in Charleston. This morning has been all about exchange and best practices of all the great work that's happening across the country. What we want the rest of the afternoon to be is about looking ahead and looking at the potential for youth apprenticeship. We know it can work, we've seen it work, we know people are trying to figure out how to make it work, but what's the real transformative potential of these models? Where could we take this field going forward? So to kick off that discussion we are honored to have a Mayor Randall Woodfinn join us from Birmingham, Alabama. He will be introduced by and interviewed by my boss, Mary Alice McCarthy, who's the Director of the Center in Education and Skills at New America. If you don't know what that is, we are part of our broader education policy program focused on how education connects to economic opportunity. So I'm going to step out of the way and let a great conversation begin. But let's please welcome Mayor Randall Woodfinn. Thank you, Brent. And before I get started I just want to say a few words of thanks. Thanks again to Trident Technical College and President Thorneley and to the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship Program for hosting us here. It's been an incredible time that we've been having here, Mayor. Thank you again a big shout out. Thank you to our national partners for working with us and being side by side and doing this incredible work. We are deeply appreciative. Thank you again to all of our national funders who have put a lot of trust in us and we appreciate this. This is a big bet and I think it's a big bet. We're all going to be glad that we all made together. And just again, thanks to all of you who have come here. Mayor, we have people here from 30 states. They've come from as far as California and Washington. They've come from New Hampshire. They've come from Minnesota. They've come from Alabama. So we are tapping into some real excitement here. So it is my tremendous pleasure and honor to introduce to all of you the Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, Randall Woodfinn. Before we dive into the conversation, I just want to give you a little bit of background on this amazing young Mayor. First, thank you for joining us. Thank you. The Mayor hopped on a plane, came here today, and he's going to turn right around and go back. And while we were talking, he was getting multiple text messages from his office and handling business. So we really appreciate your time. Mayor Woodfinn is a native of Birmingham. He grew up there. He has lots of family there and is deeply rooted in the city. He is a graduate of the prestigious Morehouse College in Atlanta. And while he was there, he became president of the Student Government Association. And I have now read multiple times that Student Government at Morehouse is a varsity sport. So he's also a star athlete. The Mayor is a graduate of Samford University and the Cumberland School of Law there. And after graduating from Samford, he spent the next decade as a criminal prosecutor and a community organizer. In 2013, Randall became the president of the Birmingham School Board and again has throughout his career sort of really focused on education and focused on young people. And then in 2017, he ran for Mayor and upset a two term incumbent and became the youngest Mayor of Birmingham in more than a hundred years. So congratulations on that. And with his election since his election, he's been a very busy man, doubling down on efforts to vitalize Birmingham's economy and in particular to invest in its young people. That's right. And that's something that we all have in common here, Mayor. So we found out about Mayor Woodford because we read an article in the Wall Street Journal that talked about his work to stand up some youth apprenticeship programs in Birmingham. And just so that all of you know, you know, when there are mayors and governors and state legislatures or employers or community colleges that are setting up apprenticeship programs, we are going to find out about you. And then we're going to reach out and we're going to drag you in to our partnership to advance the apprenticeship and put you on stage just like we have here. So no one can hide from us, right? So we found the mayor, we asked him and he graciously accepted our invitation to come. Thank you so much. So Mayor, why don't we just get started with that question? Can you tell us about what you're doing in relation to youth apprenticeship in Birmingham and why you think it's a good thing for Birmingham? I can. Good afternoon, everyone. I am very happy to be here with you all. I understand it has been a day and a half of a whirlwind around like-minded folk who are committed to young people. I share the same thing you all share, which is a passion for and more importantly, being on the solutions end of how do we invest in our youngest generation? So I want to thank you for the work you do. I will tell you, prior to being the Mayor, she said, and thanks for that intro. Yeah. I spent four years on the Birmingham Board of Education. For the last five years, and I've shared this, I've stood on the stage probably bigger than this, of course, and and took the time to shake every high school graduate hand from all the high schools of Birmingham City Schools. And every now and then, every now and then on this stage, there will be a bottleneck. And that bottleneck gave me the opportunity to ask one of the young folk, what are you doing next? And every so often, I heard one of them say, I'm going to college. But I think a lot of us know when we've had the opportunity to apply for college, be accepted into a college, we usually tell somebody who asks us that what school we're going to. And I took that as not necessarily of them lying or telling the field, but more so of them thinking they had to please an adult by seeing what they were going to do next by attending the college, because that's what they've been told that's the only way for them to succeed. I want all of those children who took the time to tell me that, or for any child that's soon to graduate from any of Birmingham City Schools to say, that is not your only option. But I believe anybody that walks across that stage can exercise one of three options. They can go to college or university. They can go into the military, or they can go straight into the workforce. And therein lies the work you all are doing. I believe the opportunity to go straight into the workforce is attached to apprenticeships. And so for me as Mayor of the City of Birmingham, the commitment I've made coming in is knowing that the City of Birmingham is a tale of two cities. On one hand, we have some of the best researchers in the world at UAB and Southern Research. And on the other hand, I am dealing with a 30% poverty rate. I am dealing with four out of 10 adults who are not only unemployed, but just not looking for work. I am dealing with the 16th largest youth unemployment rate in America. And so we have to be intentional about how do we change that. And that intentionality centers around what I'm about to say. The hope I have is that I believe our youngest generation, and people are our greatest asset. And we as an administration have to invest in them. And one of the best ways to invest in them is by embracing apprenticeships. And so by embracing apprenticeships, the initial commitment will be a minimum of a million dollars towards apprenticeships from our administration, which is separate from the school system. And we will create the Birmingham Promise Initiative that allows young folk either a path and a track to a two-year or four-year. And if they choose not to go there, that they can stay with that employer on their apprenticeship track. So, Mayor, when we were chatting, you talked about how you see your role in all this. And what do you bring to it? Can you share with us a little bit about what you see as your role and then how the other partners are also sort of what their work is and who they are? So, I believe my role as it relates to investing in apprenticeships is to be Chief Convener. She mentioned the Wall Street Journal article. That article came out many, many months after the trip we took to Germany. But my team and I, we spent time in Bremen, Stugard and Dozerdorf. And what was cool about the trip was several things. Besides the fact that there was a lot of beer. But that was late at night. Good beer, too. Good beer. During the daytime, we really roll up our sleeves. We took a lot of notes and had the opportunity to embrace all the folk that are making this work. The educators, the employers, the government, and my favorite part was probably the actual apprentices. Spending time with the young folk at their job to be a sponge and absorb their opportunity and their experience. And what I find from that trip and what I find attaching it to coming back home, whether it's Birmingham or just how we do things in America, we suffer from what I call silos. We have our Achilles is silos. What stops us from being progressive enough in apprenticeships is that we're all isolated in our individual fields. So you all in your conference have it right. You all have convened a lot of folk from 30 different states. You're talking about best practices. You go back and you say, hey, here's how we can make it better. But for the average city in America, what we do is say, okay, here, K through 12 system, particularly night through 12. Here's your island. Have at it. Here is your island workforce development agencies. Have at it. Here, employers, you have at it. Two year, four year college system, you have at it in your own isolated way. And even I would say the folk in this room, who are many are in the think tank space, have at it. And we want to treat that if it was right as a straight line. But in my role as chief convener, I believe it's a circle. And I am in the middle of that circle, wanting to convene everybody to the table to say, this should be our process. This should be our way. This should be our investments and our commitment. And this is our strategy. And this is how we execute that strategy to make apprenticeships work for our high school students. Yeah, and you talked about some of the industries that you're particularly interested in and approaching about this. Can you share with us a little bit what you're thinking about that? Right. So I started with our own clusters in our city. I mentioned UAB earlier. UAB is not only the University of Alabama at Birmingham, it's not only the largest employer within the city, it's the largest employer in the state. Attached to that is a lot of issues around health care, health sciences, biotech. And so that's one cluster where I think we should be able to play in as it relates to apprenticeships. But we also have a strong financial services cluster that I think we should support from an apprenticeship aspect as well. In addition to that, logistics and manufacturing and automotive. So those are the areas that we start with. What was cool about the trip is I think in America, when we think about apprenticeships, so when we think about some old day, we think it's only a text to possibly welding or something of that nature where young folk can only use their hand. I think that is a non-cool way to think about apprenticeships. If anything, when I was interacting with a lot of those young people, the places they work, the spaces they work in were, I would say, cleaner than some towers right here in major cities in America. And so in addition to those clusters I just named, in this hand over here, the city of Birmingham with our high schools, we have career academies. The career academies touch on every type of industry you can think of, from construction to health sciences to culinary. And I am missing at least seven more. So at a minimum of ten different career academy options that exist, separate from the traditional apprenticeships we think of, from plumbing and welding, etc. We're going to invest in all of them. And I know people want us to say, well, you got to make this scalable. You got to find a small number of students to make it, see if it's working, if it's going to work, and then you can expand out. That would have been the case probably 20 years ago when the school system had doubled the amount of students it had doubled the amount of schools it had. But with the number of high school graduates I interact with on a yearly basis, which is about anywhere ranging from 1100 to 1300, knowing that probably only 400 to 600 attend college, then I am going to invest in the others to make sure it's not only scalable for that individual student at school, but I think that works for the entire community. Yeah, that sounds fantastic. And just a million dollars I was asking you, like, how does that fit in, you know, in terms of like Birmingham's larger budget? This is a big bet that you're making, it sounds like. It is. So this amount of money has never been put towards apprenticeships at all. I think we've seen in the past, max maybe 275,300 thousand. The reason I am putting the million towards it is because I am sending the signal to the employer that out different clusters that I want you to match the city's funding. That's how big our commitment is. But I am also sending a message to parents and students who make up the community. And so I want to have the largest PTA meeting y'all. When this budget passes it'll pass in May, it'll pass in a couple months. And we'll have the largest PTA meeting in the city and I'll simply tell these parents the same thing I've told you all. Your child is not a failure if they don't go to college. Your child is not a failure if they don't attend a two-year or four-year college or university. And you're not a failure as a parent if your child doesn't go to college. In the state of Alabama it's mandatory to take the ACT. But as I stated earlier we have children that only make in 17 and 18. And for the ones that even make a 20 or 21 that can barely get in with that 30 percent poverty rate I explained to you earlier they can't afford to go or as important afford to stay. And so exercising option of apprenticeships. The conversation with parents is direct. Your child can be as successful by going straight into the workforce. And this is a city role in investing in your child by creating these opportunities around apprenticeships. We believe in your child. We know you believe in your child. Here's a path and another opportunity for your child. And that'll be the conversation we have. And so the money is important but more so changing the culture in our community and getting parents and getting the entire community to embrace and apprenticeships is the real work. And I remember in that Wall Street General article you talked about your conversation with that German manufacturer I think it's ABAT. Yes. Yeah. And and them saying to you know American schools just don't work that way they just won't do it right. And that was that was their impression was that just that you couldn't do this here. How are you going to bring that that high school system the K-12 system along. And what do you think it's going to sort of bring them into the fold. And was he right. I guess that's yeah. I think he was right in some points. This is not easy work. As adults sometimes I want to pick us up and just shake us. The reason I want to shake us is because we do things the same way because they've always been done that way. No it doesn't work. And around education we tend to we tend to make it want to work only by thinking of it from our perspective when we were a child or student or only as adults which is worse. But when you talk to young people you realize that this generation has very a lot of similarities to when we were children and have a lot of differences. And as adults we should be running towards both. And so if I use the example of the Hungarian calendar. Our children in the south spend somewhere between 179 and 180 days in school which is only six months a year. Knowing in the summer when they're out ten weeks. In an urban school system like mine no one has gone to a farm. I think that is just silly. And I think as adults if we want to close the achievement gap we should be spending more time with our children not sticking with the same calendar that's not working. I take that mindset and apply it to apprenticeships and say the following. I got my first job when at the age of 15. I left high school early my junior and senior year and I've been working ever since. And at an early age I understood the value of work ethic and applying. Not just what I learned in school but applying with the soft skills in life. That's helped me be able to sit in this position right now as mayor of my hometown. I think as it relates to apprenticeships and what the person that employer said over in Germany how do you get the American in our culture to embrace apprenticeships. Is really sitting everybody down at the table at one time. It's sitting the high school leadership the superintendent of the school system. The counselors of the school system is sitting down with them the employers. The two year college as well the workforce development agencies. Putting them all in the room and saying imagine what could be if we were all singing from the same hymn sheet. That goes back to me being a chief convener that is my role. That is not easy work but we've already begun to lay the foundation of that work. So when we got back from Germany I literally did what I told I just told you all. We put everybody in the room. We put the workforce development agencies in the room which is seven of them in the area. Four of them were present. We had the union in the room at the same time. The unions in the room at the same time. We had several employers in the room which included several German based companies and other automotive companies. We had the two year college system in the room and we had the career technical team from the high school system in the room. All together talking about what's your issue, what's your issue, what's your issue. Okay. Now what is the solution to your issue? When folks started talking about the solution everybody realized the distance between us was the ability of us not talking to it, not talking to each other. So we started that process. So the next steps are now to lay out okay if this career academy exists at your school and the high school students at this end and the employers on this end what is everybody's rolling in the middle to connect this child to that employer at age 16 or 17, the junior or senior in high school. And we just build from there. And sometimes it's incredible to think that those conversations don't happen because there is somebody who can put everybody in the room together and that's a great role for you. Just the last point to that. People aren't going to voluntarily come to that table. And it's not going to be the governor or the president that's going to make that happen. I got a friend in here that's a heavyweight in the Department of Education but he will tell you that it really takes work at the local level on the ground somebody being a chief convener to make everybody come to the table to force this conversation around investing in apprenticeships if we're going to get any return we want on our youngest generation. That sounds good to me and I will say Mayor you know there are a lot of groups here that are sort of in different stages and setting up their youth apprenticeship programs and some of them have sort of tackled some of these issues about how to get how to make this work in the high school how to make it work in the college. And so I'm going to offer on their behalf you know this is a community here that we're forming that we hope can also that you can sort of tap into and learn about and share what's happening in Birmingham and hopefully tap into some other cities and states that are trying to tackle the same issue and learn from that as well because really that's what we're trying to do here is create a learning network so that no city or state is trying to do this entirely on their own. So can I offer up everybody's help for the city of Birmingham. I hope so. All right. So good. So I guess my last question for you is again let's getting back to the you know changing people's mindsets. Where do you think I think young people think about apprenticeships in Birmingham and and what's who's going to do the job of sort of helping them understand what what this means for them and and what the opportunity is. Well my job requires me to be pragmatic. Young people don't even use the word apprenticeship to start there. Young people do have an idea or a dream. They do have an aspiration or something they have seen and want to mimic or do. I think we in the education system talk a lot about career paths. But we don't invest in the career path for our young people. We use the words but we don't put energy and commitment or resources behind those words. And so for me I interact with young people a lot. Speak at schools. I pop up places. Kind of interact with them to fill them out and understand their word choice. More importantly understand their desires. Young people are bored in school. Just like we were. Come on y'all. So who says they have to stay there all day all four years? They should be able to get high school credit hours just like I was my junior senior year. So young people want to work. They do. They want opportunity. They want exposure. I think the adults we have to be responsible for creating that space. And so the more I talk to young people the more I realize the commitment of a minimum of $1 million is easy because this is what it tells me. If they're not exercising one of the three options of going to college military workforce they're going to exercise an option that's not going to work for them their family or the community. And those options won't be good for our society as America. It doesn't matter if it's urban, suburban or rural America. Embracing young people embracing young people is our job as adults. And the field you're in doesn't matter to me what anybody else out of this room says about what you're doing. The work you're doing is as important or I would venture to say more important than a lot of work folk are doing. Because if we double down and in my words triple down on investing in apprenticeships young people will respond. Young people in return will have conversations with their parents and the parents will respond. And that is our that is our biggest commitment we have to stick to. Good. And does anyone have any questions for the for the mayor? We want to I think we've got one right here. Thank you, mayor, for being here. Really appreciate what you're saying about the partnership and what we need to do is responsible adults to be part of the solution. Are you leveraging the AEDC, the AIDT partners and in what in what ways are you doing that? Definitely. AIDT is at the table. For those of us who are out of the know, can we you want to tell them what I did? Sure, I'm sorry. It's Alabama Industrial Development Training. And they're one of the few states like Georgia and Louisiana and others that have what I call full spectrum programs where they do the screening, the recruiting for an employer, the pre training. They do advertising, marketing, all what we call cost avoidance or no cost to the employer. And they do some pass through cost for training for post employment. So the state of Alabama has AIDT centers and clusters in various parts of the state. I think we're in six. I think we're in cluster six. And Miss Cleggen is over our ADT for Birmingham area. She was in that room. I told you all where I convene everybody. This does not this conversation does not work without the people who who define themselves as workforce development agencies or in the workforce space. In my mind, they should be one of the conveners as well because they know every solution. And so, believe it or not, before we talk to the high school folk and CT with CT before we talk with it to your college system before we talk to the employer, we talk with AIDT and other agencies who are in the workforce space because they know every problem. But in my mind, they know every solution as well because they've been on the ground in the work. And so the city of Birmingham, what we decided to do is by engaging them first, they were able to tell us, not only best practices, but helping us define from clusters, the different cluster standpoint, where the gaps, where the deficiencies and then from a resource standpoint, the worst it would be applying that million dollars. So the answer is yes. Okay. Other questions? Yep, we got one way in the back there. You can stand up so they can find you with the microphone. Thank you. Hi, Mayor. Thank you for sharing. I was just curious, you're incredibly supportive and leading the efforts in your area. But for those of us that maybe have, or what is some of the language or what did you find is convincing for other leaders that would help them get on board? That's a, see, she had the hard question. Do you ask somebody, there's a picture that's been going around for quite some time. I'll see how many of y'all have seen this that says anybody, do you want to change and everybody raises your hand? Everybody raised their hand and then it says, are you willing to change and everybody puts their head down? That is a lot of elected officials. Let's talk a good game about changes needed, changes needed. We have to do something different and then when you offer something different, whether it's a school, whether it's at the school board level, people say no because they feel a little pressure from what I call a vocal minority or the elected official in my position, whether it's Mayor or Council at the local level who are afraid to embrace change because they're afraid to fail. And so what I spend my time doing, not just in the different sectors I've spoken with, the superintendent and I are locked, we're locked arms. It just so happens that she attended Spelvin, I attended Morehouse, so we just lucked up and that happened. But we believe in taking risks because what we inherited, whether it's city government or her with the school system, it's not working. And so the language I use to tell people is, yo, what we're currently doing is not working. We can try something different. And even if it fails, learn from it and pivot, try something differently. But what we're currently doing, if we stick with this, we know it's not working. Come on on this journey with me, let me show you the path to how we're gonna get there. And sometimes I have to be an extreme nerd and lay it out for people. And then sometimes I have to just use plain language like I've used with you all this afternoon to say, are you willing to take a risk? And I would venture to say for any of you in any of your communities that you're a part of, whether you're a part of the Think Tank, the workforce agency, the two year college, they're in the employees in this room, shout out to all the funders in this room, get folks motivated by telling them, this works because in America, what I believe is, we as a country know what we're currently doing is not working. We should run towards apprenticeships full speed. Like we shouldn't walk towards them, we shouldn't crawl towards them. We should literally run full speed towards apprenticeships because the current model of saying that our children should only go to college or to university is just, that's, it's not right. So motivate people by telling them there's nothing to fear. Strong words, yeah. Any other questions out there for the mayor? Okay, I think we're... I think they're sleepy. They have a stomach. I just had lunch. It's hard to talk to people. I think it's hard to follow up on those really moving last words. So those were very motivational. Thank you, mayor, for joining us. Let's give the mayor a big hand.