LYNN — Gov. Charlie Baker and other state officials and General Electric representatives converged on Lynn Vocational Technical Institute (LVTI) Thursday morning to celebrate a $4.5 million investment in the school to accelerate machinist training.
The money will build a workforce bridge between LVTI and the GE River Works that students trained as machinists can cross into jobs at Lynn’s biggest employer and into other advanced technology jobs.
“This is the beginning of a very significant opportunity for people in Lynn,” Baker told an audience of 60, including LVTI students and faculty, gathered in the school’s library.
The state and GE Foundation money includes $2 million already spent on state-of-the-art machines now inside the school and ready to be unpacked and used for machinist training. The other $2.5 million will be divided between LVTI, Gloucester High School and Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School with Lynn educators spending the city’s share of the money on renovating and expanding the LVTI machine shop, not only for students enrolled in the shop but also for other city high school students interested in receiving after-school machinist training.
“This is a tremendous opportunity not only for us but also for coming generations,” said LVTI senior and machinist student Luz Vasquez.
The major investment in skills training dovetails with increased production at the River Works where GE will build the next-generation ITEP helicopter engine. GE officials in a statement on Wednesday said 1,700 advanced manufacturing jobs remain unfilled due to a skilled workforce shortage, including 200 on the North Shore.
“There is a shortage and if there wasn’t people advocating from the ground up, we wouldn’t be here today,” said state Rep. Peter Capano, former International Union of Electrical Workers Local 201 president.
Capano, Baker and other speakers, including U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, said the state-GE investment in Lynn took years to come together with significant collaboration involving many people.
Baker, Moulton and former U.S. Sen. Mo Cowan, whose role at GE includes Boston development and operations for the firm, traced the effort back to 2015, when the Baker administration began working to align education, economic development, and workforce policies, and in 2016 when GE announced plans to move its headquarters to Boston and make a $50 million community investment initially oriented to Boston.
“I made a specific request for Lynn,” Moulton said.
The state workforce initiative and GE’s commitment, in Cowan’s words, to “contribute to the community,” sparked planning for an investment in LVTI that tied in GE executives, River Works organized labor representatives, Lynn’s state legislative delegation, local educators, MassHire workforce experts and North Shore Community College.
“This is a recognition that technical education is worth investing in,” said Mayor Thomas M. McGee.
Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, a strong STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) studies advocate, said Massachusetts’ important innovation economy needs an injection of young, well-trained and more diverse workers.
“Innovation economy jobs pay more. This is a tremendous opportunity to plug more communities of color and women into this workforce,” Polito said.
Lynn Schools Superintendent Patrick Tutwiler said planning is underway for using the money to expand LVTI’s machine shop to provide more work training sessions. Once a shop that attracted a handful of students, machinist training has reached its enrollment capacity, said shop department head Barry McCaul.
LVTI sophomore Diego Iraheta received an exciting surprise Thursday when Baker toured the shop and stopped by Iraheta’s workstation to talk.
“I explained to him the calculations I was using. It’s really interesting — I see this as a career,” he said.
