Maritime trades need workers. New Tacoma student skills center aims to provide them
Today’s high school students could be tomorrow’s stevedores, tugboat captains, green-energy developers and other professionals tied to the shipping industry.
At least that’s the hope of the Port of Tacoma and Tacoma Public Schools.
In fall 2024, the Maritime | 253 program should be teaching skills to high school students from across the South Sound. The program will be based at the new estimated $73 million Port Maritime Center — the port’s new headquarters — which will be built on the Foss Waterway, just south of the 11th Street Bridge.
“The vision here is for this to be kind of a comprehensive job skill training center that keys into our natural advantage of being a port city,” said Eric Johnson, the port’s executive director.
Funding for the program is coming from the state and the port.
Existing and new programs
Maritime | 253 is evolving from an already existing program Tacoma Public Schools (TPS) offers in summer. Currently, eight programs offer credentials in merchant mariner, warehouse and logistics, drones, electrical, environmental services, roofing, plumbers and pipefitters and wildland-fire certification. Students can learn to drive forklifts and operate cranes.
A total of 127 students completed a credentialed program this past summer, TPS said. The program makes them eligible for their merchant-mariner card and apprenticeships.
The new school year-synced programming will be “next level” according to Adam Kulaas, director of innovation learning and career tech education for TPS. While some area high schools have similar programs in manufacturing, welding, boat building and wood technology, Maritime | 253 will focus on four areas: skilled and technical trades, transportation and logistics, technology and innovation, and sustainability.
County wide
Maritime | 253 will offer a centralized location that students from 11 South Sound school districts could attend.
“This is a chance to kind of put it in one place and serve kids throughout the region,” Kulaas said.
The skills center has a construction budget of $35 million. The state Legislature has $8 million earmarked for the skill center over the course of the 2023-25 biennium, according to TPS.
The port worked closely with TPS to develop the curriculum after both Tacoma and Seattle ports identified future needs and the jobs necessary to fulfill them.
“And so this priority urgency was around designing access points, equitable access points to countless career pathways within maritime,” Kulaas said.
It’s not all about shipping
Most of the skills learned in the program would be transferable to a variety of associated industries, Kulaas said.
“There’s crossover to all sorts of career opportunities for students that are high wage, high demand, high skill,” he said.
Drone piloting, for instance, could be used in real estate, land surveying, environmental assessments and general photography. Sustainable fuels could be applied to a multitude of industries.
The students
Students interested in maritime and other industrial career programs are racially diverse, Kulaas said. The summer maritime program was evenly split between girls and boys.
“The two strongest welders in our district are both female; One’s a senior, one’s a junior,” he said. “And so it’s exciting and kind of a pride point that we’ve done something in terms of making sure that we create access and opportunities.”
Kulaas hopes to have 150 TPS students and 150 students from the other school districts enrolled in the program in fall 2024. After the new building is completed, programs should be able to accommodate 600 students in morning and afternoon schedules.
For the port, the center could be a boon for new employees in a tight job market.
“The maritime sector, they’re just like every other sector of the economy, and they are desperately worried about having an adequately trained workforce coming online over the next three to five to six years,” Johnson said.
New Port headquarters
Currently, a maze of streets leads to the port’s headquarters at the base of the Sitcum Waterway. It’s a dramatic location with cargo ships tied up just a few feet away and straddle carriers working nearby. But, it’s not convenient to reach from downtown Tacoma.
The new location is on the east side of the Foss Waterway, just south of the 11th Street Bridge and adjacent to a thumb of an inlet called the Wheeler-Osgood Waterway, once an outlet of the Puyallup River.
Today, the site is a dirt lot with down-on-its-luck machinery and vehicles.
“It’s kind of an eyesore, to be honest with you,” Johnson said. “There’s not much there.”
Testing confirmed that the site was once open water and not land occupied by the Puyallup Tribe, he said.
Johnson doesn’t expect the new headquarters, with a $38 million construction budget, to be any bigger than its current building. It’s not been decided if the port’s headquarters and the skill center will be two buildings or one.
The current administration building will stay in place but it’s eventual purpose has yet to be determined, according to port spokesperson Graham Johnson. It’s likely that operations will stay in the building, he said.
Skill Center partnership
Port of Tacoma Commissioner Deanna Keller said she heard from a number of people, both constituents and fellow government officials, that port jobs were difficult to access, particularly for women and people of color. She thinks the skill center would help level the playing field.
Her fellow commissioners immediately embraced the idea that could potentially create a pipeline for students into skilled, high-paying jobs.
“I think it’s a new era,” Keller said. “And I think it’s a new opportunity for all of us to take a look as governments to come together and to pool our resources for the benefit of the citizens we serve.”
A public open house on the project will be held on Nov. 29 from 4:30-7:30 p.m. at Foss Waterway Seaport, 705 Dock Street, Tacoma.
This story was originally published November 21, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
