Job Training & SA Ready to Work
In 1990, in the wake of factory closures that left thousands jobless, COPS/Metro established Project QUEST, an innovative job training program with wrap-around support. It has since become recognized nationally as a model for workforce development, graduating more than 15,000 people into high-wage jobs and creating an impact even on the next generation, enabling the children of many graduates to attend college. Since then, COPS/Metro has constantly advocated to fund and expand the program.
When Covid-19 hit, it also left thousands jobless. Leaders saw the opportunity to bring the benefits of Project QUEST to an even larger group of San Antonio residents. They brought the city together with some of its largest employers, and proposed SA Ready to Work, the biggest workforce initiative ever attempted by a city in the United States. Then, they organized around a ballot initiative that passed with 77% of the vote, to allocate $200 Million to the program.
Most Recent News
Apr 11, 2024
[Excerpt]
“If the city paid for it, I would hope the answer is yes,” [Sonia] Rodriguez said after Thursday’s council meeting. “Because that’s the point — that people get the skills, get the certificates, get what they need to be able to actually reach a level of economic stability where they can grow on the career ladder. We want to empower the participants to have those choices.”
COPS/Metro rallied voters to approve the program — and has been one of its most vocal critics.
“There’s no problem with moving and adjusting. We just want to make sure that there’s transparency, of course, and then accountability,” said Rena Oden, another COPS/Metro leader.
San Antonio City Council OKs Subsidies for Empyers to Train Their Workers, San Antonio Express News [pdf]
Garcia: By Frustrating Trial and Error, Ready to Work is Changing Lives, San Antonio Express News [pdf]
Nov 20, 2023
[Photo Credit: Ronald Cortes, San Antonio Express News]
[Excerpt]
"...not enough San Antonians are landing jobs through the city sales-tax funded program, say leaders with the interfaith grassroots advocacy group. The city has failed to meet its goal that 80% of Ready to Work participants will find employment paying at least $15 an hour within six months of finishing their training.
“That’s unacceptable,” said Sister Jane Ann Slater, a COPS/Metro leader. “If they would use the process we know works, they can say, ‘We have these jobs on the table,’ and they would be hired immediately.”
Jun 30, 2023
[Excerpt]
COPS/Metro Alliance, the longtime coalition that advocates for working families and is in many ways responsible for the program’s existence, continues to raise concerns.
Apr 30, 2023
On April 30th, COPS/Metro convened 200 leaders to press Mayor Ron Nirenberg and City Manager Erik Walsh on improving accountability for San Antonio's Ready to Work program by putting jobs on the table, improving the recruitment of quality participants, and holding contractors accountable who receive money for training. (i.e. trained workers are placed in high paying jobs.)
Additionally, leaders pressed Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar and San Antonio Police Chief William McManus on funding for a gun box lock initiative in both the city and county that educate the public about locking up guns and not leaving them in unattended vehicles.
‘Jobs Committed Up Front’: COPS/Metro Presses Mayor for Greater Ready to Work Accountability, San Antonio Express News [pdf]
COPS/Metro Alliance Meeting
Sep 01, 2022
[Excerpt from San Antonio Report]
U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh heaped praise on San Antonio’s city government for its expansive workforce development program, often called the largest of its kind in the country. He said he wishes the federal government could do more.
At a roundtable discussion with local industry leaders and city officials Monday, Walsh called SA Ready to Work — the city’s $230 million program aiming to train thousands of low-wage workers for middle-class careers over the next five years — innovative and exemplary for its heavy collaboration with industry leaders.....
SA Ready to Work opened for enrollment in May, though many pre-registered. In the nearly four months since then, slightly more than 5,400 applicants have signed up — nearly fulfilling what the city anticipated to be enrollment through its entire first year.
Outpacing both contractors so far is Project Quest, the jobs training nonprofit that (like SA Ready to Work) sprang out of COPS/Metro. Project Quest is managing the cases of 112 participants.
[Photo Credit: Alamo Colleges]
San Antonio’s Ready to Work Jobs Training Program Gets the National Attention Leaders Have Sought, San Antonio Express News [pdf]
Labor Secretary Would Like to See Bigger Federal Investments in Ready to Work, San Antonio Report [pdf]
U.S. Secretary of Labor visits the Alamo Colleges District, Alamo Colleges District [pdf]
Nov 17, 2021
[Excerpt]
Everyone in San Antonio knows about flash floods—“Turn Around, Don’t Drown” signs are familiar on certain roads. But in the West Side, a neighborhood established by Mexican Americans who were restricted from more resourced neighborhoods north of downtown, floods were far more commonplace.
“I remember as kids getting pulled out of the [family] station wagon [that almost got swept away],” Mata said. “We were at the time like five or six, I think. But yeah, we didn’t know that was not normal.”
Mata says when you grow up experiencing poverty, “you accept it, normalize it, and blame yourself for it.” What seems normal at the time becomes absurd when you reflect back on it as an adult.
Mata speaks softly and with a kind of wisdom that comes from navigating barriers early in life.....
Mata is retired from two careers—one in federal law enforcement, and another as a lietenant [sic] commander in the Navy Reserves. Nowadays, she spends a lot of her time with COPS/Metro, a community organizing coalition that gathers people from churches, schools, businesses and unions to represent the needs of families and children. Over the last year, Mata and her COPS/Metro partners have spurred the City of San Antonio to create and invest in a workforce training program designed to support people seeking higher-paying jobs.
Retirement from her final job as a probation officer in Del Rio in 2018 brought her back to San Antonio, where she bought a house near Sea World that is still a close enough drive to her old stomping grounds. Those stomping grounds include Holy Family Church, Mata’s church growing up, which is also where COPS/Metro was born.
The coalition’s first fight, all those decades ago? Demanding that the city fix the West Side’s drainage issues.
Mata’s story is coming full circle....
[Photo Credit: Echoes]
Someone Like Virginia, Echoes [pdf]
Jul 03, 2021
[Excerpt]
As San Antonio’s job training program lags and officials try to suss out the details of its next phase, a key backer worries the initiative is in trouble.
COPS/Metro, a grassroots advocacy group, aggressively lobbied city leaders to create an emergency program to help some of the thousands of people thrown out of work amid the pandemic get the skills they needed to land higher-paying jobs.
The group’s leaders later threw their weight behind Mayor Ron Nirenberg when he asked voters in November to use sales tax dollars to create an expanded program.
But months after the idea proved victorious at the polls, members of COPS/Metro have grown increasingly disillusioned with how the city’s job training efforts have played out. They feel city officials have all but ignored their concerns. The group’s leaders are disappointed in the meager number of participants who have obtained training certificates and landed jobs through the emergency program — dubbed Train for Jobs SA....
“It’s too important,” [Sonia] Rodriguez said. “This one is too big to fail.”
[Photo Credit: Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express News]
'Too Big to Fail': San Antonio's Fledgling Job Training Program Under Scrutiny, San Antonio Express-News
Apr 13, 2021
Back in 1992, she was an organizer for COPS/Metro Alliance when the powerful community organization designed and persuaded the City to financially back Project Quest, which early on and to this day has been recognized as one of the most successful job training programs in the country. In 2011, when Project Quest was plagued with controversy from failings due not to corruption but to incompetence, Sister Pearl was brought in to turn it around. She did and ran the organization for six years.
Now the City of San Antonio is embarking on SA: Ready to Work, a program approved by the voters last November that will spend $154 million over five or six years in an effort to train the city’s working poor for good-paying jobs that the city is now generating.
[Photo Credit: Nick Wagner/San Antonio Report]
Solid Advice For Erik Walsh: Talk To The Nun, San Antonio Report [pdf]
