literacy, business ownership, or buying into existing trades and services businesses as older owners exit the workforce. REAFFIRMING THE VALUE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS AS A PUBLIC GOOD Woods closes the discussion by zooming out. For him, the career readiness conversation is inseparable from a broader societal question: what role should public schools play, and what are we truly incentivizing them to do? “In this country, we’ve come to question the notion of public goods, and that includes the value that public schools add,” he says.“Schools should prepare citizens as well as prepare workers—and those goals do come into conflict.” His hope is that Texas can strike a more practical balance: ensuring students receive strong foundational academics while removing measurement systems that reward “dubious value” at the expense of skills needed for the majority of students’ adult lives. “The goal of this group is to better balance that,” Woods says.“So students are better prepared for the workforce, and workforce leaders are more pleased with what they’re getting out of our public schools.” A FRAMEWORK BUILT FOR SCALE—AND BUILT FOR SPEED What emerges from the Workforce Education Collaborative is not simply a committee conversation. It is an attempt to design a statewide blueprint for the future of work—one that can scale across Texas, adapt to regional realities, incorporate employer engagement in practical ways, and modernize the incentives that drive school decision-making. In a labor market being reshaped by technology, workforce shortages, and rapidly shifting career expectations, the collaborative’s message is clear: this is no longer a “someday” initiative. As Nemec puts it, “We’re out of time. We’ve got AI coming, we’ve got all these changes coming, we’ve got a world that’s changing… and it is on us to act like the adults and figure this out.” 406 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 07, ISSUE 01
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