Podcast: Flying Classroom, City of Opa-Locka Launch Workforce Development Program

This week, we speak with the Flying Classroom's Barrington Irving and Interim Opa-Locka City Manager Darvin Williams about their recent collaboration to create an aviation workforce development program for the residents of Opa-Locka, Florida. Hosted by Jeremy Kariuki, associate editor of business aviation for Aviation Week Network.

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Rush Transcript 

Jeremy Kariuki: Hello and welcome to the BCA Podcast. I'm Jeremy Kariuki, Associate Editor of Business Aviation. Today, we're speaking with record-breaking pilot Barrington Irving and interim city manager Darvin Williams about their brand new aviation workforce development program in Opa-locka, Florida. Could you just generally describe the nature of this program and what the inaugural class of adults are going to expect when entering this program?

Barrington Irving: So our organization... We have a nonprofit called Experience Aviation. That's where I started in the community. The past several years, industry has been requesting and in some cases begging me to basically help address recruitment challenges, technical skill challenges and so forth, which allowed me to, of course, get with our team at the Flying Classroom and with the city of Opa-locka and with others to basically say, "Hey, let's give this a shot and see how this can work." And I'll explain what happened next.

We partnered with Bombardier, who's an aircraft manufacturer, and I became an ambassador for them. And we did a program where we were identifying technicians who are in school or are coming out of their certification and placing them strategically with different career opportunities at Bombardier. This was just done as a pilot program. Then that spilled over with Atlantic Aviation, who started to hire some of our existing students in the program as well.

When the city saw this alongside with industry, everybody basically said, "Barrington, we want you to do more. We have expectations for you and your team to do more." And they said, "Let us know the support you need to do it." So we basically started the Barrington Irving Technical Training School, and we have our first group of 20 candidates who are going through our program. We have five different companies that will employ every single one of these individuals. And our whole goal and focus is to upskill those who may not necessarily know what they want to pursue in life or they're looking for a change. When you look at the city of Opa-locka there's tons of individuals between the ages of 24 and 50 that they may be working, but they're seeking more in employment. But how do you get that individual to come into our field?

We look at basically, short term training certifications, upskilling these individuals on technician related skills as well as FBO related skills. They all have jobs waiting for them, they're going through a 10-week course, we're pretty much at the midpoint. They'll go through on the job training. And what I like about this is it allows us to focus on not so much the certificate, right? Because yeah, employers are getting folks who are certified. The bigger issue is competency. They want individuals who can come in and actually be able to perform to truly benefit the company. And that's a big thing that our industry is going to have to really focus on because employers want folks with real world experiences, real world context behind what they're doing, not just a certificate. This is what we're offering. And then it's been working quite well.

Jeremy Kariuki: Darvin, if I could bring it back to you. As somebody who worked for the city of Opa-locka, what kind of need is being met by this program with the Flying Classroom?

Darvin Williams: This is a tremendous need tremendously, and I can actually hammer it out with examples. The city of Opa-locka has a unemployment rate of 8.2%. We actually have some language in our charter that requires my office to provide some way to get employment for residents within inside the city limits. There is some language there. It's pretty archaic language, but the intention language is there. So I've tried to implement it through our community development department, and how we've done that is that whenever a big development is coming to the city of Opa-locka, which we have a large industrial industry here, one of the largest in South Florida, surprisingly so. We get a lot of those type of projects from Amazon into the different airport projects. And what we put in the development agreement is language that now requires these big developments coming into the city to hire or attempt to hire residents of the city of Opa-locka.

We just launched that, I'm going to say about maybe 15 months ago. And the first couple of companies are these large warehouses. They were very excited to be partnering with the city, and we had hiring fairs for these projects, and one, it was a strong effort to find talent that could actually take the jobs. And so you had excitement from the developer side, the employer, you had excitement from the city side to be able to find jobs, high paying jobs for our residents or even moderate to strong jobs for our residents.

But then finding that the pool did not have the skillset to be able to take the jobs. And so that has become a real challenge now to where it recently even became a discussion at the commission level at the last commission meeting. So what Barrington is doing is actually providing that gap. "I know you're here and I know you're trying to go there, and I'm going to provide the vehicle for you to get there in between." And that's really what our residents need at this time. And we've seen it play out as recently as the last 15 months very strongly.

Jeremy Kariuki: To continue on that theme of engaging employment in the community, I read that this program is also trying to help promote workforce reentry for people leaving the correction system. Could you speak more to that?

Barrington Irving: Yes. I'll be honest, I'm grateful the city is behind this because as America clamors for, "Okay, where are we going to get people from?" Whether it's aviation or other technical related industries, this country is clamoring for that. And very few actually consider the potential of those who are transitioning back into society.

I am proud to say of the 20 candidates who are participating, two of them, we partnered with Miami-Dade County Corrections that were providing this opportunity to. And in addition to that though, there's about another five individuals who've been arrested in the past and it could have happened years ago, and they're still trying to get their feet under them or... Look, let's be honest, typically you come out of the system, the typical type of job available for you, it's maybe you're a cook at a restaurant somewhere or something like that, and there's nothing wrong with them, but how can we tap into this population of individuals who, yes, they may have made a mistake or got caught up in something they shouldn't have. They've paid their debt to society, they come out, they actually want to do something, but there isn't true infrastructure for them to proceed.

And when you look at an industry like aviation, whether you came out of the system or you didn't come out of the system, it's very difficult for an individual to understand what are the actual pathways I can take to become a technician or to just get in the industry. I may not be able to afford the training. How do I still get there? What's short-term options that can then place me within an aviation oriented company or technical company? And it just honestly blossomed. And I think that's what's really special about this is, yes, aviation is one of the key focuses, but we're also looking at other technical areas, energy, transportation, manufacturing. Everyone's fighting for this DNA of an individual, and I'm a firm believer because we've seen the proof of it. There are those who are seeking second chances who could really provide help, but also capitalize on changing the quality of living for themselves and their families.

Jeremy Kariuki: That's awesome. To get more into the specifics of it, what will the aviation maintenance related training for participants in this program entail and what will participants get in terms of certifications when it comes to completing this course since they're being placed.

Barrington Irving: Sure.

Jeremy Kariuki: ... in different companies around?

Barrington Irving: Sure. So we partnered with Snap-on to provide some NC3 certifications. So for example, everyone has to go through a hand tool and safety course and get certified in them. In addition to that, they then roll into things such as precision measuring, torque, sheet metal, electrical, a number of different subjects that they cover over the course of 10 weeks.

Now, these candidates, they are shifted into different employment areas of focus. We'll have some candidates who will be involved in overhauling landing gears for commercial airlines. We will have other candidates who will be involved with fueling airplanes as well as towing them or welcoming individuals who land at the private jet centers. Here at the airport, we have candidates who will help to go through certain aspects of routine schedule maintenance on private aircraft as well as commercial aircraft. Now, they're not full certified technicians to do all of the tasks, but they can do some of the tasks and then that gets them through the door. And once they start with the employment, we look to continue upskilling those individuals so that they can continue learning and continue elevating themselves and growing.

Jeremy Kariuki: Is there a particular need for A&Ps in the Miami-Dade area?

Barrington Irving: Yes. Not only A&P licensed individuals, there is a major need, but just technicians in general who can be of support, those who can work with sheet metal, those who can serve as aircraft parts, and once again, that's such a big misnomer or misunderstanding I should say, within our field of aviation. Not everything you have to be an A&P certified technician. There are so many other opportunities where you can still be involved in the industry and get your start in the industry, and they're just short of people. I've had folks who said to me, "Look, I need folks to help us take down panels. I need folks to help me service parts." They don't need a full A&P license to do that. There's a massive need here in South Florida. Ever since we launched this project, let's see, three weeks ago, we had another company join on board, and every week we're just getting calls. We're just getting more and more calls, and it's also starting to reverberate through other industries.

Jeremy Kariuki: Darvin, I'd love to switch back over to you. What does the city of Opa-locka hope to achieve through this program, and how do you see this partnership growing over the next few years?

Darvin Williams: What we're looking to achieve is to first make an impact visually. I'm an attorney by trade, and I grew up in a neighborhood in Tennessee, very much like the city of Opa-locka. I had never seen an attorney that looked like me. I had never seen a nurse or doctor that looked like me. Where I was raised, if you grew up to get the job at the post office, you were doing it. You were going to have the woman of your dreams, you were going to have the house of your dreams, you were going to be the man in the neighborhood. So to be able to expand the horizon, the possibility, the visualization of our entire community to say, there is greater opportunities for you here. Our average household income is $35,000 a year. That's household income. So to be able to have one person that could pull down a $65,000 a year job, or even to know someone that does have a $65,000 a year job or greater, it expands the visualization of what can be.

And once you impact that with people, the sky is truly the limit because now you've untapped a power that's going to propel them higher and higher and higher, higher. As the saying goes, nobody believes it can be done until it gets done. I appreciate that Barrington's been able to achieve everything he's been able to achieve without that government support. However, I foresee as we continue to partner together on this and other projects that we just discussed, you'll see government coming in to support because [inaudible 00:14:19]. That is a goal of a good government, is to take the resources that they take from the community as a collective and achieve for them individually what they can't do for themselves.

Jeremy Kariuki: Well, both you, Darvin, Barrington, thank you so much for taking this time to speak with me. This has been an amazing conversation.

Barrington Irving: Thank you for highlighting the story of what's being done. And I think there are similar communities to Opa-locka across this country who want to do something like this, and we just hope it inspires them to do so.

Darvin Williams: Really appreciate the opportunity to talk about some of the great things that we're doing here in the city of Opa-locka, and I hope, as Barrington said, it inspires other cities to support these types of programs, support these types of services for its residents.

Jeremy Kariuki: Thanks for listening to the BCA Podcast by Aviation Week Network. This week's episode was produced by Andrea Copley-Smith. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to like or follow us on your podcast app of choice. If you'd like to support us, please leave a rating wherever you listen. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.