Workforce Update: Aerospace Feeder Program Coming Soon!

Nineteen-year-old Brian Martin of Venice is fortunate and knows it. He's had a passion for planes since he was a kid and now, just a year out of high school, he's ready to launch his career in aviation. He's also excited about the salary prospects.

"It's crazy because you can make such good money. Just two years out of high school, 20, 21, 22, depending on your age, you can make 100 grand a year, six figures a year," Martin said.

Martin was able to jump-start his career by taking aviation industry classes at Charlotte Technical College while still at Charlotte High School. In November, he'll get his certification in airframe and powerplant.

"You can go work for a big airline. Go work for government. There's so many things you can go do," Martin said.

It's this type of career opportunity that has Charlotte County School District leaders working to expand the district'saviation program by building a hangar actually on the Charlotte High School campus for a new aerospace program.

School leaders hope that will remove one deterrent for students who might have passed on the program in the past: the travel time required to get to the technical college located at the Punta Gorda airport.

"To me losing that time, it's just - you're taking away from your high school life," Martin said.

For students like him, jump-starting a career in high school can also save thousands of dollars in training expenses since the school district picks up the tab.

"This is the place to be if you like to work with your hands. And even if aviation ends up not being your career, you can go to NASCAR. You can work on metal, medical equipment. You can work on elevators, escalators. There's a million other industries that this program prepares you for," said Amanda Fox, an aviation maintenance specialist at Charlotte Technical College.

County leaders say the entire region benefits from a program like this. That's why they're asking elected leaders like Congressman Greg Steube for help securing government dollars to pay for the hangar.

Steube recently visited Charlotte High to learn more about the program and why district leaders feel growing this aviation program is important to the local economy.

"When we look at what Charlotte County has become, we have a very large service-based economy. We are already partially a bedroom community, to our communities to the north and south," said Derrick Rooney, president of the Charlotte County Economic Development Partnership. "We need to look to diversify, we need to look to the platform that we have here. And that platform, I believe, is the airport."

But James Parish, the CEO of the airport authority, says growing the airport- a top economic engine in the county - has one big obstacle.

"One of the problems we've had for about 18 years that I've been at the airport, was always when we had an industry come to us. They're like, 'well, where's my workforce?'" Parish said. "We have great retirees, but we were missing that young workforce."

Brian Granstra, the director of career and education for Charlotte Schools, believes that the future hangar is part of the solution. He said it will expose more teens to Florida's booming aviation industry, one which is facing critical employee shortages nationally and internationally.

Granstra points to the success of Brevard County's Eau Gallie High on the Space Coast where he says students have landed jobs with companies like Lockheed Martin, Space X and Blue Origin. It's a program that's serving as a model for Charlotte High School's new AeroSpace program.

"So the space industry, as we know, does much of their launching from Cape Canaveral and they do some of their assembly in Cape Canaveral, as well the privatization of the space industry. Many of their suppliers are throughout the country in Georgia, Alabama, and Texas. So, with Space Florida, we're hoping to lure some of those businesses into Charlotte County by having a talented workforce and also getting them incentives to move here," Granstra said.