THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE STORY BY JENNIFER BAILEY
DANVILLE — Efforts to get students prepared and stay here to be part of the local workforce are back at it again.
Vermilion Advantage has reformed the Workforce Education Committee, said Vermilion Advantage President and CEO Mike Marron.
“Vermilion Advantage, in the aftermath of some of the issues that have happened over the last few years, we had a little bit of a disagreement
with the education community,” Marron said to the Step Up community group Friday in an update on the economic development organization.
With the Workforce Education Committee, education representatives, including superintendents and guidance counselors, have met with industry
representatives such as Gary Tucker with thyssenkrupp Dynamic Components, Linda Darby-Dowers with Greenwood Inc./Trigard and Deanna Witzel with McDonald’s.
Marron said they’ve been meeting every month since December and have been formulating a plan on how to address the workforce education needs in the community.
Vermilion Advantage CEO Mike Marron
“We are really close to coming up with a pretty solid plan to move forward that is backed both by education and by industry. It’s going to formulate
around probably by hiring a workforce education coordinator to help industry, help entities like thyssenkrupp or Trigard to have a very strong presence in our schools and to aggressively engage our students from a very young age so that they are aware of all the wonderful opportunities that we have in this community,” Marron said.
Danville Area Community College also has been involved with the process.
Westville School District Superintendent Seth Miller said it’s nice to see people work together with the Workforce Education Committee.
“We are seeing more synergy and cooperation between our educational community and the employment community, our employers trying to meet the
needs here locally,” Miller said.
He said a great example of the work the committee has done, on short notice, was efforts around the career fair with the Quaker Oats closure
news.
In other Vermilion Advantage updates, on the topic of expanding broadband internet access in the county for businesses and residents, Vermilion Advantage acquired $200,000 from American Rescue Plan Act funding from the Vermilion County Board for a broadband internet initiative.
Marron said there will be three different projects with the funding: $20,000 will go to digital equity grants to help struggling small businesses get help with internet access, about $70,000 will be for a feasibility study to create a plan in order to receive state/federal money for a broadband network to be implemented, and the bulk of the money will go to a local grant working with local internet providers to help build out the broadband network in the rural parts of the county.
“The goals are two-fold — to expand access in rural Vermilion County, but also to hopefully provide options that will drive down the cost in areas like the city of Danville,” Marron said.
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