First Lady Biden says what Vermont is doing is the future of American workforce

SOUTH BURLINGTON - First Lady Jill Biden arrived in Vermont on Executive One Foxtrot amid dark skies and rain but inside the hangar of Beta Technologies, her statements were are as luminous as the high gloss airplanes in the background behind her.

"What you are doing in this community is the future of our workforce and how we grow our economy from the bottom up and the middle out. These aren't red ideas or blue ideas − they're American ideas," she said to an audience of Vermont dignitaries, career and technical program representatives and Beta staff.

Biden and U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona commended Vermont for its investment in career and technical education, providing free community college tuition through the Community College of Vermont, investing in clean energy businesses and electric vehicles. Kyle Clark, Beta CEO, and Gov. Phil Scott were both seen as models of what one can aspire to with a technical education and talked about the stigma surrounding that educational path and the need to break that idea.

The first lady and secretary of education were in Vermont for a couple hours at the South Burlington airport promoting the president's Investing in America agenda, of which the Biden Education Pathway is a component. In addition to at least $850 million going toward local infrastructure, biotech and small business in Vermont, Biden said her husband's plan includes free high quality universal Pre-K, provides access to two years of affordable community college with the ability to go on to a four-year later if desired and connects to good-paying jobs in emerging industries.

'Investing in education is about investing in America'

The two met with a couple of Beta interns, one of which was a high school senior taking college courses in addition to interning at the electric aerospace company. Three students from North Country Career Center in Newport told the guests about developing skills working on electric vehicles. Both Biden and Cardona, in particular, seemed interested to learn from the students and taking those approaches to education back to Washington.

"With dual enrollments, shadowing programs and paid internships, high school students are getting experience and credentials that will give them a jumpstart on college or career," Biden said.

"Investing in education is about investing in America," Cordona said. He said when we show kids they have a bright future right where the are and they don't have to move and we invest in our communities and in our states, we invest in America.

There is an invisible wall between the workforce, higher education institutions and K-12 that has allowed hundreds of thousands of high school students to graduate with no pathway to rewarding careers, Cardona said. In the next four years 70% of jobs will require some form of post-secondary education or credential and that community colleges have a proven track record of providing pathways to great jobs and higher wages, he said.

"There's a tsunami of well paying jobs coming. We need to make sure this generation of students is prepared to ride that wave," he said.

Scott: 'Prioritize progress over politics'

Scott described growing up a gear head with his foot in two worlds between his college courses and vocational program and feeling as if he never truly fit in either. He said we need to make real effort to reduce the stigma around career and technical education and trades training because there are great careers for talented, hard-working kids.

"Our job is to make these educational paths easy to find, interesting to explore and rewarding to pursue."

Scott acknowledged that he, a Republican governor, was aligning with the Democratic president and first lady on these issues and how partisan politics had become polarizing, impeding progress.

"In my experience, pure down and dirty partisan politics has never contributed to real solutions, not once," Scott said. "Today is a reminder that we can and we should prioritize progress over politics especially on issues where the majority of Americans agree like the importance of investments in infrastructure, on trades and technical education and on equal economic opportunities from region to region."

Many of the same ideas were echoed in speeches from Sen. Peter Welch, Rep. Becca Balint, Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger and Jane Sanders − wife to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with previous roles in higher education leadership and a friend of Jill Biden's.

Many high school students don't know how to get from earning their diplomas to earning a living, Biden said. "Just look around us right now. The students who are with us today are learning what it takes to design airplanes and maintain electric vehicles."

Contact reporter April Barton at abarton@freepressmedia.com or 802-660-1854. Follow her on Twitter @aprildbarton.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: First Lady Jill Biden and U.S. education secretary visit Vermont