Spokane Valley companies teach students how to manufacture

SPR’s Doug Nadvornick speaks to Wade Larson of Wagstaff, Inc.

Many employers in the US are struggling to find skilled workers as the country is out of the pandemic. Spokane Valley’s manufacturing interests have chosen the best way to combat this by developing their own workforce.

On Monday, several companies welcomed 20 high school students to the first day of a production and manufacturing academy.

Wade Larson is the HR Director at Wagstaff, Inc. in Spokane Valley. His company is one of the organizers of the academy along with Greater Spokane, the East Valley School District and the Spokane Workforce Council.

“I partnered with the Manufacturing Consortium a little over two years ago and we saw the need to develop a workforce and we saw what the pool was like and we needed something more,” he said. “I was invited to see what Avista had finished with her academy three years ago and I was challenged by Meg Lindsey, who was at GSI at the time, and she just said, ‘What do you think? Can you pull this off with manufacturing? ‘”

They did it two years ago. Wagstaff and other manufacturing companies hosted the first-ever annual High School Academy, a 40-hour week, four-week training course in technology and production.

“You will design your product. You’ll find out how to make 25, 35, even 50 products over the course of the academy. You need to get in touch with customers. You have to sell all of these products, ”said Larson. “We put them in a production environment from start to finish where they have to work together as teams and then as a company as a whole to sell multiple products in a competitive scenario. You have to work through problem solving, critical thinking and production skills just like we do in the real world. “

Larson says 70 students applied for 20 places this year.

“We asked them four questions. What are you looking for in your career? Why would you like to come to us at the academy? What do you hope for from this? What would your contribution to the team be? What do you hope to gain in life? ”He said.

Because of the pandemic, this year’s academy was shortened to three weeks.

“The children are coming in. They know they are going to have an experience, but they don’t know exactly what experience they will have. You don’t know the products. They don’t know who their team members are and they really have no idea what to expect, “he said.

They deserve a scholarship and a diploma. Two years ago, three students received two-year grants for commercial training.

“We’ve spent 20 or 30 years telling the kids that these are dirty jobs and bad jobs and terrible jobs,” Larson said.

“What we didn’t tell these kids is that we have incredibly well-paying jobs. You can now exit high school with your associate degree on dual enrollment and begin earning $ 45,000 to $ 50,000 per year as a certified craftsman. You can go with your associate degree at age 20 if you’ve taken a traditional path with minimal debt and started making $ 50,000 with no overtime. That was before overtime, with full benefit. It’s phenomenal. And within a few years they were making far more money than those of us who took traditional four-year college approaches, “he said.

He says schools and businesses need to give students hands-on opportunities from an early age to learn about manufacturing and to open their eyes to jobs that are not open to the public.

“But we also have to share the success stories so that we can educate the parents. We need to change the way we talk to career counselors. We need to change the way we talk to teachers and parents to let them know that these are well paying jobs. College is not for everyone and we have a huge opportunity, “said Larson.

His company Wagstaff, Inc. is a partner in the Spokane Valley Production and Manufacturing Academy, which will be held over the next three weeks at East Valley and West Valley High Schools.