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Georgia

In Georgia, Gov. Roy Barnes' work-force concern this legislative session were in the form of education reform. He recently signed into law the A+ Education Reform Act of 2000, which requires teachers and local school districts to take responsibility and accountability for their students' education. Barnes took this reform one step further and charged not only the primary public schools with accountability, but the technical schools and university systems as well.

Several changes will be made due to this new system. First of all, teachers and schools will be rewarded for improvements in test scores, and the system will also identify schools that need additional assistance. In the state's hard-to-fill areas, such as math and science in trouble spots like rural Georgia, teachers will no longer be paid the same salaries, and signing bonuses will be given to attract the best and the brightest teachers to the state. Teachers will also be tested on technological competency before they are hired or re-certified.

Georgia is bringing together higher education and industry to create the highly skilled work force like this student at the University of Georgia.

The state has also moved forward in technical school reform and incentives for training. "Probably the biggest thing to come down the pipeline was the formula funding for the technical schools, which they've never had," says Tom Croteau, director of Georgia Workforce Development. "The universities have always had formula funding, but this will help the technical school system in the state a great deal. The governor has also budgeted somewhere in the area of $12 million to $15 million to help with equipment at the tech schools across the state."

Other legislative changes include the tweaking of Georgia's BEST incentive package. The new package now provides companies the opportunity to take a tax credit of 50 percent of training costs up to $500 an employee for retraining. "So if you have new machinery or you're upgrading your technology and you need to retrain people, you get a tax break on that," Croteau explains.

All of these changes, Croteau says, just add to the wide variety of work-force development programs the state already offers. Among those he mentions are the Hope Scholarship, which provides a free college education for students maintaining certain grade-point averages, and the Quick Start Program, which is a nationally known, no-cost state training program.

Georgia's efforts are winning major investments throughout the state. Gov. Barnes noted at a recent Etrade location announcement that state-funded training programs will be used to help prepare the online brokerage group's employees for jobs in customer service and information technology.

Etrade Group is building a $500 million operations center and adding more than 1,000 jobs to its operation in Alpharetta, a northern suburb of Atlanta. Nearly one-third of the firm's 3,000 employees work out of its Alpharetta offices, the company's largest operation outside its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

Georgia's university system is also providing the type of work force needed for the new high-tech economy, especially in electronic design and high-bandwidth communication. For example, Motorola and Lucent formed a joint venture, called Star*Core, to take part in Gov. Barnes' Yamacraw Design Center, citing the labor pool as a key to its adding of 150 new electronic design positions this year.

"Not only will our association with the Yamacraw Mission help us attract more top talent to our design center in Georgia, but it will allow us to draw on the research and development work that is directed through the Mission to offer new and exciting technology solutions to our customers," says Jim Boddie, executive director of the Star*Core Technology Center. "We also believe the partnership will help Star*Core grow its relationship with Georgia Tech, one of the leading universities in terms of digital signal processing (DSP) graduates and DSP research."