Hudson talks education with RCC administrators

Laura Edington -

Local school administrators, professors and legislators met with U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, of North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District, on Monday in Hamlet to discuss job creation through workforce training and the SKILLS Act.

Richmond Community College was Hudson’s first stop on his district tour, which will run through April 4.

Hudson, a member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said federal Workforce programs are broken.

He said he has always been impressed with RCC and the college’s focus on community needs. According to Hudson, one of the top issues today is jobs and he is concerned about current employers in the community not having the trained workforce they need to expand.

“Community colleges are a tremendous investment in workforce training,” said North Carolina State Senator Gene McLaurin of Rockingham.

Some in attendance suggested a relaxation of federal regulations on education.

“We need more flexibility to meet local needs,” said RCC President Dale McInnis about restrictive federal regulations.

Wiley Mabe, chairman of the Richmond County Board of Education, said, “It seems like the folks that make the decisions are so far away. They don’t come to the community … ”

State Representative Ken Goodman, of Rockingham, said focus needs to be placed on regulatory reform and reducing federal regulations. He said the regulations have good intents but eventually “… take on a life of their own,” and the biggest thing rural communities need is an educated workforce. “We need to find ways to teach people that if they don’t educate their children, we’re hopeless,” he said.

McInnis agreed with Goodman and said Richmond County still has a number of people without a high school diploma or General Educational Development, or G.E.D.

“Local communities need the flexibility to do what’s best for the local community,” Hudson said. He also talked about the bill he cosponsored on March 7. Called Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills (SKILLS) Act, the bill passed the House on March 15 and was introduced by U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, for North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District.

Hudson pointed out that there are 12 million unemployed Americans but there are 3.6 million jobs that are open. “My top priority is getting the people of North Carolina back to work, and this legislation empowers state and local officials to efficiently and effectively address our community’s workforce needs by consolidating programs and services at the local level. State and local governments know the needs of their local workforce much more than bureaucrats in Washington. It is time that we give the hundreds of thousands of unemployed North Carolinians the tools to get back to work, and the SKILLS Act does just that.”

The SKILLS Act would ensure workers are trained for in-demand jobs by giving local employers more input in job training programs, replace the Workforce Development System with the Workforce Investment Fund, a single source of support for workers and employers and require an independent evaluation of each training program every five years, according to Hudson.