Paul Bass Photo
Newly graduated carpenters (standing from left): Vivienne Salibar, Gina Aponte, Rickey Smith, Jorge Siancas.
Rickey Smith got a diploma on Monday — and a job to start on Tuesday.
Smith was among 51 adults who finished the latest session of a New Haven school formed to plug local people into construction-related jobs through a “construction workforce initiative.”
His graduation took place in a crowded tent in the parking lot of the Cozzi‑J. Miller-Pearson Career Development School on Dixwell Avenue.
The city’s Commission on Equal Opportunities (CEO) formed the school with the building trades unions, Yale, and the state. It gives local people 12 weeks of training in a specific trade — carpentry, electrician work, heating & plumbing, painting, sheet metal work, or cement finishing and bricklaying — then seeks to send them to local construction jobs.
It’s one of several efforts underway to try to connect local unemployed or underemployed New Haveners with the city’s mini-building boom.
Smith (in the shades in the photo at the top of the story) took the carpentry course. He said he starts work Tuesday framing some of the new apartments going up as part of the $33 million first phase of replacement construction at the old Rockview projects in West Rock. Smith, who’s 22, also became a dad recently. He said he pursued carpentry because it runs in his family — his uncle has a carpentry business down south.
“I hope to see you on future construction projects as we continue to build New Haven,” city development chief Kelly Murphy (at right in photo alongside the housing authority’s Jimmy Miller, a prime backer of the school) told the graduates. She said the city has trained 4,400 people through the program since its 2007 inception.
The graduation doubled as a ceremony for the completion of the school building itself to serve as a permanent home for the program. As part of their training, the students renovated the abandoned shell of a former auto repair shop at 316 Dixwell. (Click here for a previous story on that aspect of the project.) Donations poured in from Yale, the housing authority, the glaziers union (windows), the plumbing and pipefitters union (heating and copiers), Suzio concrete (asphalt), among others.
The event drew jubilant friends and relatives of the graduates as well as assorted city muckamucks.
Mayoral candidate Justin Elicker popped in, …
… as did mayoral candidate Henry Fernandez, pictured with CEO CEO Nichole Jefferson, the powerhouse behind the school rebuilding and the training program.
This seems like a very good program. This could be a first step for many in owning a home and revitalizing our housing stock.
I'm curious why we don't see any Yale Union representatives (Locals 34, 35) there. Supposedly these folks were elected on a "mandate" for good jobs and equal opportunity. Its strange and ironic that they failed to appear.