Education and Workforce
The ability to attract and retain talent is essential for business stability and expansion. A skilled and educated workforce remains a critical priority for the business community in every region of the Commonwealth and in every industry.
As demographics continue to shift, it becomes increasingly important to maximize workforce participation and avoid underemployment. However, the lack of cost-effective childcare options presents a barrier to workforce participation, hindering immediate employment and long-term economic growth. Addressing workforce participation also requires programs and outreach to special populations to ensure those individuals’ ability to contribute to personal and overall economic growth.
Programs must also adapt to the changing landscape to stay competitive. Direct engagement with employers to identify high-demand jobs, provide work-based learning opportunities, and integrate new technologies into instructional materials and techniques will ensure workers at every stage—new entrants, returners, and career changers—are matched to the most productive opportunities. Improved data collection across the entire education and workforce continuum will ensure the best return on investments and provide accountability for student outcomes.
The recommendations in this section provide a comprehensive policy framework to position Virginia as the top state for talent through 2035 and beyond.
Recommendations
- Prioritize state funding for expanding access to quality, affordable childcare in order to provide a dedicated, predictable, and permanent revenue source
- Increase and benchmark program payment rates to reflect childcare providers’ full cost of delivering quality services to keep classrooms open and retain a talented, adequately compensated childcare workforce
- Ensure that all eligible families have access to childcare through increased investments in and improved coordination of subsidized services (e.g., Child Care Subsidy Program, Mixed Delivery Program, Virginia Preschool Initiative) and through tax credit strategies
- Increase speed to market for new childcare operators and expansion of existing operators by reducing regulatory burden and zoning barriers and seeding entrepreneurial ventures in areas of high demand
- Bolster the workforce that supports early learning and childcare by ensuring access to development and retention programs including the Virginia Recognize B5 program, G3 tuition assistance, and Child Care Assistance Payments for early educators
- Expand work-based learning opportunities, including internships, youth or pre-apprenticeships, job shadowing, and project-based learning, by incentivizing employer participation and reducing barriers to student access, such as scheduling flexibility and transportation, to help students connect classroom instruction with real-world experience
- Support students by enhancing student safety and providing wraparound services, including mental health care, especially through the promotion of proven community-based programs, by encouraging public-private partnerships that offer mentorship and college and career guidance to help students transition beyond high school
- Support initiatives which enable students to graduate from high school with an industry-recognized credential or associate’s degree by expanding access to dual enrollment opportunities and career and technical education (CTE), such as Great Opportunities in Technical and Engineering Careers (GO TEC), and increasing the supply of CTE teachers
- Increase sustainable state and local funding for the renovation or replacement of aging school infrastructure, ensuring safe and modern, technology-enabled learning environments, and to close gaps in state support for students in underserved communities, especially those with disabilities and English learners
- Address teacher staffing concerns through solutions such as licensure reciprocity, recruitment of retired and part-time teachers and transitioning military personnel, affordable professional pathways and tuition assistance, mentorship programs, teacher apprenticeship programs and residencies, high-quality alternative methods to licensure, and higher compensation
- Expand partnerships with technology companies offering free STEM education resources and teacher training programs and integrate digital literacy with an emphasis on artificial intelligence, infrastructure, aerospace, defense, and emerging technologies
- Prepare students for success in life through mastery of fundamental knowledge in reading, writing, and math
- Rapidly scale up the Virginia Innovative Internship Program to increase the supply of paid internships and to facilitate student-employer connections across the Commonwealth, establishing a one-stop shop for internships and work-based learning opportunities, to ensure that businesses and students alike have a centralized location for finding such opportunities, with a clear baseline, scale-up goals, and metrics for measuring progress
- Significantly increase state funding of student financial assistance, including Tuition Assistance Grants (TAG) for students at nonprofit independent colleges and universities, financial aid to Pell-eligible students and others with demonstrated need attending higher education institutions, state support for access and completion at community colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), and other institutions that enroll high percentages of low-income, first-generation, and under-represented students, and workforce credential grants through the Virginia Community College System (VCCS)
- Address college cost transparency and perception issues across the Commonwealth, including promotion of institutional participation in the College Cost Transparency Initiative, and support implementation of tools that provide clear, personalized pricing information to families starting early in high school
- Work with Commonwealth and system-level partners (e.g., VDOE, SCHEV, VCCS) to develop a scalable action plan to implement quality coaching models for personalized career navigation
- Increase retention of graduates from Virginia’s colleges and universities and measure employment outcomes
- Continue to support the Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, delivered by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership in collaboration with VCCS, Virginia’s world-class, customized, job-specific training and recruitment solution for Virginia’s businesses, and identify opportunities to replicate the Talent Accelerator model for a broader set of employers
- Identify and increase funding for innovative programs in the private and public sectors, such as VCCS’s FastForward program, to reskill, upskill, and provide new opportunities for workforce participants, especially those facing industry transitions, job disruptions, and transformations caused by the adoption of new technologies such as artificial intelligence
- Grow apprenticeships and focus on rebuilding our industrial and skilled trades workforce in high-demand occupations, starting this awareness opportunity beginning in elementary school, including by expanding partnerships with companies offering registered apprenticeship programs in technology, logistics, and other growing sectors
- Incentivize the expansion of work-based learning opportunities offered by the business community by offering tax credits and/or matching grants to employers that hire interns
- Ensure successful reentry for justice-involved individuals by strengthening job training and educational opportunities, including expanding access to skills-based education, career readiness, industry-aligned credentials, and degree pathways geared toward needs identified and developed by businesses, prior to their release and supporting access to essential infrastructure needed to obtain and retain employment such as housing, transportation, identification, and other wraparound services
- Develop the talent pipeline of people with disabilities through job training, placement opportunities, and attainment of industry-aligned credentials
- Integrate universal artificial intelligence literacy into the talent pipeline, including in K-12 education, post-secondary education, and workforce training programs
- Ensure that the Virginia Office of Education Economics has the data required (e.g., enhanced wage records) to analyze occupational pathways for all post-secondary programs in Virginia and to produce talent demand-supply gap analyses by occupation, industry, and region to inform state, regional, and institutional plans
- Develop a joint state talent plan, crafted with input from state leaders in K-12, higher education, workforce development, and economic development, to identify targeted, cross-sector alignment opportunities to strengthen talent pipelines for employers and employment outcomes for individuals
- Establish state funding and tuition models for post-secondary education that incentivize expansion of high-wage, high-demand programs of study which cost more to deliver (e.g., nursing, skilled trades, etc.)
Acknowledgements
Education and Workforce Industry Council
CHAIR
Tina Pfalzgraf
Branch
Sharon Alexander
Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association
Ashley Allen
Stride
K.L. Allen, Ed.D.
Western Governors University
Dr. Keisha Anderson
Newport News Shipbuilding, A Division of HII
Joel Andrus
Kemper Consulting (College Board)
Diane Beirne
Primis Bank
Karin Bowles
Virginia Early Childhood Foundation
Lindsey Boyd
Altria
Rhonda Bunn
Canon Virginia, Inc.
Steve Burnette
Daikin Applied
Chad Caples
Genworth
Mike Chinn
Virginia Business Roundtable for Early Education/Endicott Capital
Todd Cohen
Lockheed Martin
Walter Crenshaw
The AES Corporation
Emily Debeniotis
Burke & Herbert Bank
Pamela Del Guercio
Ocean Network Express (North America) Inc.
Keri Douglas
ECPI University
Mark Dreyfus
ECPI University
Jermail Foster
Dominion Energy, Inc.
John Fox
Fox Urban Farms
Elizabeth Fricke
Leonardo DRS
Liz Fuchs
Farmer Focus
Dr. Jennifer Gentry
Virginia Foundation for Community College Education
Tami Gesiskie
Leonardo DRS
Kathy Glazer
Virginia Early Childhood Foundation
David Gottesman
Kaiser Permanente
Tag Greason
QTS Data Centers
Kasia Grzelkowski
VersAbility Resources
William A. Hazel, Jr., MD
Claude Moore Opportunities
Jordan Jones
KinderCare Learning Companies
Elizabeth Juge
S&P Global
Matt Kellam
Dominion Energy, Inc.
Stephen Kimberlin
Forvis Mazars, LLP
Karla Langhus
DCS Corp
Cynthia Lawrence
Carilion Clinic
Emily MacCartney
Virginia Natural Gas, Inc.
Claire Mansfield
The Lego Group
Vanessa Mason
Atlantic Union Bank
Tavis Maxwell
Capital One
Michele McCauley
Apex Systems
Ian McDuffie
Amazon
Kelly McPhaul
Ocean Network Express (North America) Inc.
Paul Meisen
Giant Food
Brenda Moore
Goodwill Industries of the Valleys
Patrick Murray
KinderCare Learning Companies
Emily O’Brion
Kemper Consulting (College Board)
Chris Peace
Council of Independent Colleges in Virginia, Inc.
Jakeeta Plumley
Primis Bank
Chris Quinn
Harrisonburg-Rockingham Chamber of Commerce
Christiane Reeder
Truist
Trace Richburg
Virginia Youth in Government Association
Dr. Myra Sawyers
Cognia
Jamie Seagraves
Capital One
Wendy Shields
Altria
Anthony Simone
Bill of Rights Institute
Tamara Slade
The AES Corporation
Stevie Smith
Giant Food
Zuzana Steen
Micron
Jennifer Stevens
Virginia Ed Strategies
Michelle Storbakken
QuadMed
Loraine Taylor
Carter Machinery
Maria Tedesco
Atlantic Union Bank
Gary R. Thomson, CPA
Thomson Consulting LLC
Warren VanDerWaag
Truist
Paul Velky
PenFed Credit Union
David Wallace
Burke & Herbert Bank
Michele Weatherly
ChamberRVA
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