The Island’s only nursing home, Windemere Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, is so short on local employees that it is staffed almost entirely by traveling nurses. Local electricians say that demand for their services is rising but finding workers is getting harder and harder to the point where they have extensive backlogs.
In response to these challenges in industries across the Island, the first ever Island Career Pathways night was born.
Held Wednesday at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School’s Performing Arts Center, the event attempted to bridge the growing gap between young Island residents and the work force
“As long as there are young people living here year-round, we should be doing everything we can to connect them with the Island workforce while they are here,” said Alexandra Coutts, executive director of ACE MV, at last week’s event.
The event was cohosted by ACE MV – an adult community education program that serves 200 young adult learners annually – and the high school.
“This is an exciting time in the world of career pathways,” said Coutts.
Spread about the lobby of the performing art center were tables featuring different employment and career opportunities on the Island and the Cape; and there was pizza to entice students in.
In attendance was Upper Cape Tech Adult and Continuing Education program, Mass Bay Community College, Mass General Brigham, Johnson and Whales University, Plumbers Supply Company, and Cape Cod Community College. At one table, the Communication Ambassadors Partnership (CAP), representative Emily Santana told students about their effort to provide interpreter training to help meet the Islands increasing demand for bilingual professionals.
During a panel discussion, healthcare professionals addressed what they consider an urgent demand for residential employees. According to a brief released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Health Policy last year, the extreme stress the American healthcare workforce was put under by the pandemic led to burnout, exhaustion, and trauma; a little over a quarter of those surveyed by the Massachusetts Medical Society were likely to leave the medical field in the next two years.
David Carron, vice president of Diagnostic and Therapeutic Services at the hospital, said the entry level positions offer on-the-job training and a diverse future of opportunities for career advancement.
Amy Houghton, the contracts and projects administrator for the hospital, said that Windemere, the Islands nursing home, is “almost entirely staffed by traveling employees.”
“We pay a premium for their salaries and we pay their housing costs,” said Houghton. “The cost is through the roof.”
Alongside healthcare professionals were Island trade representatives such as Cole Powers and David Sprague — whose brutal honesty regarding the faults of the mainstream four year education program — brought a laugh to the crowd.
“You could go to college for four years, graduate, and have no experience and nobody who wants to hire you or you can work, earn a living, go to night classes, and get experience that way,” said Powers.
Powers, owner of Powers Electric, has been advocating for an electrical course at the high school since 1990. He has urged students and young Islanders to consider careers in the trades and says his main competitor is the traditional four-year college path that the majority of youth are encouraged to follow.
In 20 years living and working on Island, Powers said that roughly five students from the high school have trained under him and entered the trade. He also noted the increase in remote workers as result of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is leading to more year-round residents and increasing demand for retrofitting homes for year-round living.
“As we try to move away from fossil fuels for things like cars and other things, we move to electric,” said Powers. “Not only is demand for electricians spiking but the number of electricians is still going down.”
Powers recently spoke with the newly elected Massachusetts state representative Thomas Moakley about changing state requirements for the apprentice-to-master ratio. The current regulations require three professionals to one trainee creating a bottleneck in producing new electricians.
Although more than 60 students signed in to the event and more than a dozen attended the panel discussion, Powers said that he would like to see more students take an interest in getting into the trades on Island.
The event follows a recent visit from Spark MV, who aimed to shine a light on the trades for the Islands youth.
This post was updated to more accurately reflect the number of people at the event.
