March 13, 2017
By Paragon News Director Paul Joseph –
It’s close to being official. Workforce development in Northwest and Southwest Oklahoma is consolidating.
A new regulation in the state of Oklahoma requires a workforce investment board to encompass an area that has a population of 200,000 or more. That’s causing some big changes in Southwestern and Northwestern Oklahoma. It’s forcing consolidation.
That’s because the eight counties that are part of the South Western Oklahoma Development Authority SWODA currently don’t not meet that requirement.
Executive Director of SWODA, Debora Glasgow and her staff have been visiting all of the county commission meetings and with mayors throughout Southwest Oklahoma asking for their understanding. Additionally, they’ve been giving her their support to consolidate in order to continue workforce development activities in the area.
According to SWODA’s Carol Sims, the Director of the Southwest Workforce Board, consolidating is the only way to meet the population requirement.
She says a letter of intent has been sent to the chief local elected official of the Northwestern Workforce Development Board, C.J. Rose, with the news that all county commissioners from all eight of the counties in the Southwest Workforce Development Board and lead mayors voted unanimously to consolidate and create one workforce development area starting July 1.
But, not only does Southwest Oklahoma have to get permission to consolidate, so does Northwest Oklahoma.
Sims says the counties still get the workforce money. It still funnels through all of the various county commissions into the separate county workforce boards.
Though the changes are fairly major, behind the scenes, those that use the services of workforce development shouldn’t see any of those changes – shouldn’t see anything any different.
Sims says it’ll become a big area to administer and oversee.
According to Glasgow, SWODA has income-based programs that help reach out to those who might not have the opportunity to go to school. Those programs include dislocated workers, adults and youth and if a person qualifies for the program, they can learn some soft skills that help them show up and look presentable for work.
According to the Southwest Oklahoma workforce Investment Board’s website, the board intends to be an economic and workforce development service to the community, the employee and the employer.
Their goal is to “promote life-long learning, promote a skilled workforce for the region, promote the Oklahoma Career Ready Certificate and WorkKeys assessments, explore and utilize the industry cluster concept, and benchmark and provide meaningful data to improve services in the area.
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