Airport – Courtesy: Peter Titmuss – Shutterstock
An estimated $300 million in freight hubs, the new “Airglades” airport is expected to alter the economy of one of the poorest counties in Florida.
The project, which could create more than 1,400 new, highly trained employment in this mostly agricultural region on the border of the Everglades, is seen by local authorities as a generational opportunity. But the instructors in the area will need to overcome some challenging circumstances if they are to live up to the promise.
In addition to having one of the highest rates of non-English language proficiency in Florida, nearly half of the working-age adults in Hendry County do not possess a high school diploma. Educators must assist citizens in obtaining their GEDs and learning English before local leaders can prepare them for jobs in engineering and manufacturing.
According to county schools superintendent Michael Swindle, “we have some of God’s most beautiful country that has never been touched by man,” but “by all the metrics you would judge a county on, we’re either No. 1 or No. 2 in the ugly categories.”
Community organizations and educational institutions are striving to address the teacher shortage and increase funding for adult education while the airport project seeks clearance.
There are several political obstacles among the difficulties. The majority of workers in the county are Latino and Black. In Florida, where lawmakers have outlawed programs that consider a person’s race or national origin when determining how they should be treated, attempts to modify schooling to better serve such populations have come under fire. Teachers claim that recruitment new teachers is made more difficult by the political environment.
The Federal Aviation Administration must still approve the plan to turn the small, county-owned airport into a commercial enterprise. This will be contingent in part on the airport’s ability to demonstrate its potential as a perishable goods hub by securing contracts with Latin American vendors.
In the meantime, the county’s two adult education centers grew thanks to funding from the FutureMakers Coalition, a local group that has led efforts to retrain educators throughout southwest Florida. It also covers the cost of hiring a counselor to assist adults who want to switch occupations or acquire new skills.
The adult education center in LaBelle, the 5,000-person county seat, is full of Spanish-speaking pupils.
Since many of them have jobs or children at home, Silvia Gullett, their instructor, has had to be resourceful in order to accommodate their needs. She created a WhatsApp group where students could coordinate childcare shifts or carpooling. Gullett texts pupils to find out why they are absent from class. She doesn’t accept simple justifications.
Some of my students initially expressed no interest in continuing. The only person who can stop someone is themselves, is what I try to teach people,” said Gullett, who began her teaching career in Florida twenty years ago after being born in Peru.
Sparks fly as dozens of students in respirator masks and heavy gloves work toward the industrial certificates required to enter the workforce at the county’s other adult education center, located in Clewiston. Samantha Garza, a 21-year-old student at a community college in Fort Myers, changed her course of study after seeing YouTube videos featuring female welders.
Numerous local firms are eager to hire the pupils even before the airport arrives. U.S. Sugar, the massive farming company based in Clewiston, has so many pressing demands that it launched an internal welding program as its current workforce approaches retirement age.
Nathan Hollis, an industrial skills trainer for the organization, stated, “We’re trying to close that generation gap between mechanics and welders.”
It has been difficult to find enough instructors to provide the instruction. Swindle had to entice a school bus mechanic out of retirement to head the diesel mechanics program and hire a U.S. Sugar worker to teach welding.
Nevertheless, the program has been so successful that the county is opening a second training center in LaBelle with an emphasis on plumbing and HVAC utilizing contributions and tuition income.
Certain initiatives have generated criticism, such as the “white privilege” slide that was displayed during a FutureMakers-led voluntary meeting with non-instructional personnel. Conservative activists took offense and accused the organizers of racism. The event occurred eight days prior to Gov. Ron DeSantis signing the “Stop WOKE Act,” yet a Republican city commissioner in LaBelle said it did not comply with the law. According to FutureMakers, the slide is no longer used in presentations.
According to Swindle, the political environment in Florida has made it challenging to recruit K–12 educators. Swindle claimed that many of his instructors in a place where DeSantis’ education policies have tapped into the fervor of the culture war feel abandoned.
“The discourse around public education is abhorrent. It hurts us, that much is certain,” Swindle remarked.
The lack of teachers in the area makes it difficult for local schools to prepare students for careers in construction, nursing, and other professions in addition to mechanics and welders, who would be needed to support potential immigration from the airport.
“There isn’t a physics or chemistry instructor at our high school. We’ve had unfilled positions for three years, and not a single person has applied,” Swindle claimed.
With assistance from a $23 million Good Jobs Challenge grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the county has been doing more marketing campaigns to recruit educators and paying paraprofessionals to obtain licenses so they can become teachers.
The longtime residence of Swindle is in jeopardy.
The superintendent is aware of the location of the alligators, where they are lazing on the many acres of canals used to water sugarcane plantations. He teaches his sons how to use his knife to chop out the hearts of palm trees, just as their predecessors did to endure harsher times. He is aware of which sabal palms produce the tastiest swamp cabbage.
However, it is impossible to predict if all of his retraining attempts would be effective. Even still, the airport may not open, particularly if the county cannot demonstrate that it will have the labor to maintain it.
Officials are currently working to test their capacity to launch new training programs while trying to meet the demands of the labor market. They anticipate having roughly two years to train a new crop of logistics operators, agricultural customs inspectors, and other aviation-specific personnel once airport construction gets underway.
Swindle stated, “We’re not just talking about an airport.” “We see this as a chance to improve the situation with regard to unemployment and poverty.”
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Chris began his writing as a hobby while attending Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. Today he and his wife live in the Orlando area with their three children and dog.
