SEATTLE — Next to an atrium filled with historic airplanes at the Museum of Flight, Boeing celebrated hiring more than a thousand Washington high school graduates from the Core Plus Aerospace program on Tuesday morning.
The thousandth graduate milestone comes at a time when demand for Boeing’s jetliners is high after the pandemic, said Scott Stocker, vice president of manufacturing and safety for Boeing commercial airplanes, who spoke at the event.
And across the state, Boeing and other companies are hungry for new employees as the baby-boom generation leaves the workforce, said state Superintendent Chris Reykdal.
The two-year program teaches high schoolers how to build airplanes. For eight years, it’s been training students on their high school campus or at a nearby skills center how to drill, counter sink, install rivets, read blueprints, do precision measurements and more.
These jobs pay a good wage — the first thousand students are collectively making about $100 million in salary and benefits annually, said Reykdal. That works out to an average of $100,000 per graduate.
“It turns out we still have to build stuff,” said Reykdal, who came up from Olympia for the event. “We still have to create, we still have to fabricate and connect. We’re still living in a physical world. … It doesn’t fly without assembly, it doesn’t roll without assembly.”
The program gets state support. The Washington Legislature passed a law in 2015 that budgets funds annually for schools to launch and expand Core Plus programs. School districts can apply for money for equipment for the classes and to train teachers on the Core Plus Aerospace curriculum.
The state budgeted $900,000 for 2024 and another $900,000 for 2025 to the Core Plus Aerospace program, according to the Washington State Office of Financial Management.
The state has created a framework for the Core Plus Aerospace classes so it’s an easy lift for school districts to adopt it, said Angie Mason-Smith, program director at Washington STEM, a statewide education nonprofit focused on leveraging STEM for social change.
The biggest barrier is a shortage of teachers who have the credentials to teach the class, she added, but the state provides funding to change that as well.
Creed Nelson, a retired teacher who taught Core Plus Aerospace classes at Lindbergh High School in the Renton School District for eight years, was trained by Boeing to teach the classes.
As an educator, Nelson was used to hearing about programs that are funded for one or two years but then “die quickly,” he said.
“It turns out this program kept growing and growing and growing,” Nelson said. “It’s a life-changing program for students that go through it.”
He taught students that have now been working at Boeing for seven years. Some of his other students said they provide for their entire family using their Boeing salary.
“That’s building a middle class,” Reykdal said.
The program started in 2015 at eight schools. Today it has grown to 50 schools across the state serving over 3,000 students.
Not all graduates get hired by Boeing, but the aerospace giant has played a crucial role in helping school districts land state funding to be able to supply equipment and train their teachers.
Students who don’t get hired at Boeing go on to other jobs in manufacturing, ideally in their local neighborhoods, said Mason-Smith.
Some will go to companies that build the parts that supply Boeing, said Nelson. Other students pursue construction jobs. Some are interested in engineering and find the hands-on skills useful experience.
Kohl Williams, 17, had no idea what he wanted to do when he grew up. Then he was introduced to the Core Plus Aerospace program at Sumner High School in the Sumner-Bonney Lake School District.
When he first tried the class in 10th grade, he was surprised how much he loved it.
“I was just hooked,” Williams said. “It was fun to make functional things.” He made a cellphone holder, a paper clip box and a toolbox out of steel — items he still uses to this day.
Last summer he interned at Boeing, and in the fall of his senior year he signed a letter of intent for Boeing to hire him once he turns 18.
Core Plus “gave me a direction to go in life,” Williams said.
