How to Connect With Vocational Schools - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Sherri Miles of Miles Roofing, Rick Damato of Damato Enterprises, Tim Stephens of Architectural Sheet Metal and John Esbenshade of National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA). You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the video!

Heidi J Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to RoofersCoffeeShop RLW. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and today we are here to talk about workforce development. We always talk about the labor shortage, but this is actually solutions to the labor shortage that has been generating for a long time and is making a huge difference. We have an esteemed panel today. I am so excited to have everyone share their information, really help you as contractors and roofing companies to get involved and to get involved with your local vocational schools, so have your pen and paper out because there's going to be a lot of tips and tricks coming out of this RLW today. To start out with some housekeeping, first of all, I want to thank our sponsor, Johns Manville. Thank you so much for today and for everything that Johns Manville is doing for workforce development, CTE SkillsUSA, you're going to hear all about it today.

Also, this is being recorded and it will be available on demand within the next 24 hours, so be sure to share it out there and get it out to not only your company, but other companies out there to really spread the word. And the chat is open, so please introduce yourself. Let us know where you're from, what's the name of your company. I would like to introduce our panel, everyone who has been so involved with workforce development. First of all, Sherri Miles, welcome back. Thank you so much for being here. And if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your company.

Sherri Miles: Great. Thanks, Heidi for having me. I'm Sherri Miles. I'm a fourth generation roofing contractor in Virginia. Proud to say that Virginia held the first in the nation SkillsUSA competition for commercial roofing three years ago, and we've had participants ever since and have sent two in the past two years to nationals. Super excited to be here. Can't wait to hear all about other's successes.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Awesome. That is great. Thank you. And I always appreciate you being here, Sherri. Thank you with everything that you do. And I am really excited to introduce Rick Damato. Rick, thank you for being here today. This is a real honor. If you could introduce yourself and tell us about what you're doing.

Rick Damato: Well, hi Heidi. Thanks for inviting me here. Damato Enterprises is just me at this point in my life. I still do a little consulting. I do a very little writing, but I'm retired from 50 years in service to roofing contractors in a lot of different roles. My in retirement volunteer work is trying to help push the pile forward where workforce development's concerned. And the one we're talking about today is one of the key levers I believe that we can pull as an industry to help turn this around and raise the level of professionalism in the industry. I'm just really glad to be here. Thank you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: It's been so fun working together on this, Rick. Thank you for everything you do and bringing us all in. Next, I'd like to introduce Tim Stephens. Again. Tim, thank you so much for being here. If you could introduce yourself and tell us about your company.

Tim Stephens: Thanks, Heidi. Tim Stephens with Architecture Sheet Metal in Orlando, Florida. And excited to talk about what we've been doing for the last couple of years building this because it's a really great program. A lot of opportunity there for contractors.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That's great. Thank you for all you do. And everyone's going to hear a lot more about how it all started. And last, but definitely not least, is John Esbenshade with NRCA. John, welcome back. Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.

John Esbenshade: Hi everyone. My name's John Esbenshade, and I serve as NRCA's director of workforce development. And really, I just do all the stuff that the rest of these folks have been thinking about doing for a long time, except that's what I do day in and day out. Always happy to be here and thanks for having me.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Love it. It's so great. I want to finally, and it wasn't last but at least, but I also want to introduce Jamie with Johns Manville, thank you so much for being here. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about what you do with Johns Manville?

Jamie Treglio: Jamie Treglio, I've been in the roofing industry for a few years, but I'm with Johns Manville and we've been involved just with the NRCA and working with this team towards SkillsUSA. It's something I'm passionate about. I have kids that are this age, and so I think it's a great way to introduce this whole industry to new and upcoming kids and people looking to create these great careers.

Heidi J Ellsworth: This is so great. Thank you so much. And so we are going to be going through exactly how you all can get involved with your vocational schools, but we're going to start with some history and where we're at today. I do want to remind everybody the chat is open and I'm seeing everyone coming across the country putting their name and their company. And thank you so much, it's so exciting to have you all here. Any questions you have, any comments or anything, just go ahead and put them in the chat and we'll be taking those throughout the RLW. Let's start with where we are, what is currently happening with the NRCA workforce? John, can you start us out and give us an overview?

John Esbenshade: Sure. But as you know from mid-year meetings, this takes about an hour for me to talk through all the way just on its own, so I'm going to try to give a little bit of condensed version. These are four primary tenants of workforce development initiatives that NRCA are currently launching. The crown jewel, if you will, is SkillsUSA, which by this point most people have heard about. SkillsUSA is an organization designed to train high school and tech college students to become leaders in their field upon graduation, whether or not that be a craft or the construction industry like an electrician or a carpenter or a roofer. But if they're interested in becoming an EMT, if they want to be a cosmetologist or a barber or there's a whole bevy of contests out there under the SkillsUSA umbrella. And now that there is a commercial roofing one, the Association for Career and Technical Education is a much broader lane of individuals working in that same career and technical education space where SkillsUSA is maybe 5,000 teachers across the country, the Association for Career and Technical Education is 25,000 teachers.

It is a much broader net, but we figured that SkillsUSA is a nice starting lane but eventually we want to broaden out into a full ACTE space. For corrections, correctional education and roofing has a little bit more of a history than we did in the other spaces. This is a place that roofers have gone to try to recruit people to go into their labor force. And so what NRCA is trying to do is get some of the standardized training programs that we have developed, namely the track course into some of these facilities. While people are trying to advance their education and prepare for life post-rehabilitation, that that's an option that they can pursue for a good career choice.

And then lastly, are homeschools. Homeschool kids, for one, there is a tremendous amount of variance and individuality that can go into preparing the student's curriculum if they're homeschooled. They also tend to be very tight-knit with their communities, with church groups and things like that. And they tend to have a natural gravitation towards construction so much in the same way where we're just trying to put these trainings into these places that might yield some benefit for the industry in the future. These are the four primary lanes.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And you have a full... Just so everyone knows, there is a full committee who works on this through the NRCA meeting twice a year in person, and then also many meetings virtually. Maybe just tell just a little bit about that, John.

John Esbenshade: Certainly. As a matter of fact, except for Jamie, I think everyone on this call is on the CTE and Workforce Development Committee. And everyone, including Jamie has done a lot of things with that group in terms of empowering these initiatives. And what that group does is we get together and we brainstorm. It's a really interesting little think tank about what can be done, what is being done, what's working, what needs to be improved upon in order to address the workforce shortages in this industry? And I'm not saying that just saying this because I'm on this webinar with y'all, but y'all are a lot of fun to work with. I've worked with groups of people that make it terrible, and you guys usually make it fun, but you guys don't let me slack off either.

Heidi J Ellsworth: It always means more work. I can say that. Let's go back to a little bit of history on this. And Rick, I would love to start with you on just really focusing in on SkillsUSA, but what is it and the history, how did you bring you and I know Tim, a number of people brought in obviously Sherri with the first one. You all brought this to the NRCA. Can you talk about that and to the Roofing Alliance?

Rick Damato: Happy to Heidi. Thanks. SkillsUSA, I'll give you the very Reader's Digest version of a few things that have impressed me about SkillsUSA and some of their history but SkillsUSA actually started in 1965. They weren't known as SkillsUSA then. At that point in time, they were the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America. They were a student based organization, which they still are today. But VICA, V-I-C-A, as they were known and continued to be known right up to 2004 held skills competitions and worked through construction and other skilled trades classrooms. And they really build students and they help build students, not just based on the academics, all that's very much a part of it, but also the hands-on training knowledge, skills knowledge and soft skills like how to talk to people, how to behave in a work situation. It's a very well-rounded program. In 1965, they got started in 1967, they held their first competition featuring 54 competitors in five competitions. For those of us who just got finished with our SkillsUSA national Championship where we had 10 or 20,000 people and literally 130 different competitions from every state and a few territories, that's a big leap.

It's close to 60 years, so it did take a minute, but by 1976, they had 250,000 members and more than 10,000 chapters across the country. In 1995, they started calling their annual event the SkillsUSA Championships. That's what VICA, as it was still known, started calling the competition SkillsUSA National Championships. It wasn't until 2004 that they changed the name of the entire organization to SkillsUSA, which is what it's known as today. In 2017, their membership surpassed the 400,000 mark for the first time in its history, so it's a very large, robust nationwide program. And they provide a vital solution to the ongoing skills gap. That's what SkillsUSA is all about, where more highly skilled jobs are available than there are professionals to handle them. And they've been doing this since 1965. And let's say that again, their vision is to produce the most highly skilled workforce in the world, providing every member of the opportunity for career success.

That is exactly the lane we're in in roofing. We have a great career path. I don't care what part of the industry you're working in or where you start from, there's a great career path here and that's what we're telling the world. And our engagement with the broader career and technical education community allows us the opportunity to tell our story and let everyone know about roofing. And you wanted to know how I happened to veer into this?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yes, yes.

Rick Damato: Well, I retired from a career in wholesale roofing oriented distribution at the end of 2016. And I decided before that in my retirement, what I had hope to do was do a volunteer work with our trade associations, the National Roofing Contractors Association and the Roofing Alliance, which is the foundation of NRCA and the roofing industry. And I decided that workforce development was the number one problem in the industry, has been for a while, it still is. And that's what I would like to work on. In March of 2017, right after I retired, I went to the Career and Educational Foundation of Georgia annual skills' competition that they have in Georgia. And there were some roofing contractors there that were showing roofing as a trade. And there was no competition for roofing. There was no formal engagement with career and technical education. They were just looking for skilled people coming out of trade schools and construction schools.

And I was intrigued, and that's where I learned about SkillsUSA. A few months after that, I went to my first national event in Louisville, Kentucky in 2017, in June I believe it was. And long story short, I was just blown away. Huge event. Hundreds and hundreds of skills on display, thousands and thousands of students competing. And I was just really impressed with what I saw, so that's when I started to learn about SkillsUSA and I saw welding, mining, manufacturing, CNC machines, culinary arts, beauticians, anything you do with your hands, I saw it all. No roofing, zero roofing. And that troubled me a lot because here's this organization, been around since 1965. NRCA has been around since 1886. How did we miss each other? Anyway, I started digging in and after a couple of years of crying and whining and telling the leaders in the industry, this is something we really need to become engaged in, sure enough, I was able to encourage the leaders of the Roofing Alliance to step up and they put the kickstarter fund in for the industry to join SkillsUSA as an industry partner.

And that means you're helping them fund what they do and you are becoming a partner with them. And that partnership, John can talk a lot more about it than I can because as an industry partner, we get a lot of value when we show up at these events and are able to develop courses and do the things that we do. But it got started then. And three years ago we had a demonstration competition. Two years ago we had our first national skills' competition with four competitors. And this year, of course, as you all know, we had, gosh, we had 11 competitors in high school and post-secondary. And it was an amazing event and it continues to grow and expand, and it's really been something to see it grow. And I'm more than pleased that this group of folks on this call is all about making that happen.

Heidi J Ellsworth: It's so good. Tim, to dive in where Rick was, how did you get involved with SkillsUSA and when did it start?

Tim Stephens: I lived in Georgia at the time and was involved with the association there. I was on the exec committee, I don't know quite where I was at on the chairs. And Rick is from Atlanta, Georgia or in Georgia. And so he reached out and was asking why we weren't involved with this. And I didn't really know anything about it at the time. We had a contractor out there, Roof Depot. Ron Heath of Roof Depot met up with me and showed me what he was doing. He was the one that set up and showed up at that CEFCA event, which is the state competition for SkillsUSA but then they have a whole trade demonstration thing. And so he created a space called the World of Roofing there and had organized all this. And so I had tried to get the association to jump on board to say, "Hey, this is something we need to get involved with."

And like Rick said, there was no... Obviously we didn't have a competition, no idea how you can get a competition in place. But when you show up to these events and you see all these kids, and we set up hands-on demonstrations, and we had hundreds of kids coming through welding TPO at the state thing in Georgia, it became something that is like, "Okay, this is a no-brainer. We need to get involved and somehow we need to get these kids involved." And then Rick definitely took that to the national level and blew it up. And we had COVID year that interrupted, COVID interrupted a lot of the progress for a little bit there. But we came out of that. We came out of it hot because the NRCA jumped on it and Sherri jumped on it right away in her state. And then they were smart enough to bring in John knowing, hey, we need somebody full time from the NRCA to push this effort. And it's grown from there. It's been really great to watch it expand.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow. And Sherri, just a little bit of your history with SkillsUSA.

Sherri Miles: I can't remember what year I went to our state competition, which was held in Virginia Beach, which is my hometown. And I showed up and had a table and had samples and asked if I could go inside and watch the competition happening. There was no roofing there. And they're like, "Yeah. No, you can't go in. You're really late to the game here. You need to be a part of this starting the day after this competition ends. You need to be networking with the teachers, with the admins, with whoever you need to get into to get into the school separately." That was a wake-up call but it was also really interesting sitting at that table, not being allowed to go inside, watching the parents, watching them pace back and forth because their kids were inside competing and it was high stakes for them. It was really cool. And I had a lot of conversations with parents as they walked by the table and touched and felt and they're like, "Why aren't you part of this?" And, "Yeah, that's a great question. Next year. Next year we will be."

Really started making relationships, and I'm going to talk about that a lot, making relationships with the people at the school level and getting into school so that we could start developing a curriculum. We were developing a curriculum and trying to get in at the same time, building a plane as it's taking off. But we've learned a lot and I think we've got a nice way of success now that we start in the fall and we get in with, in this case, carpentry classes. It just makes sense. There was no room for roofing anywhere in the building that we were in, so we gave them the schematics for the mock-ups. They were able to build those first in carpentry and then we were able to come in for roofing, so it's been a process. Like Rick said, we've been circling around SkillsUSA for a while and finally was able to get in and start going.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That is so cool. Well, and while you're on that Sherri, maybe take us just a little bit on what your path has been, starting with your state and then getting to the state competition. Maybe just talk a little bit about that.

Sherri Miles: And I will preach this from the highest mountain top, you have to have relationships with the schools, with your CTE boards. I actually got and sat, I sit on still Virginia Beach Public Schools' CTE Advisory Board. And so I'm in there every other month hearing what else other trades are doing, not just construction, but everything else involved in CTE. And having a seat at the table is super important. I'm also able to hear where some funding sources are or where some opportunities may be for other endeavors into roofing.

But so through that was able to meet the carpentry teacher, develop a relationship with him and say, "Hey." He went through track. And then we brought in hands-on guys, my pro certified thermoplastic roofers. I have two of them that go in and teach on rainy days and get the kids ready. In the fall, we do more of a demo for all of the construction cluster. The people in plumbing, HVAC, carpentry, masonry, they all electrical, they all come in and they try roofing. And then we figure out who wants to be part of the competition. And then we really focus on them starting probably early January when they're back in school and doing hands-on, and then they go through the track process as well.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow. Because that is, to start with getting young people interested even in roofing. Tim, talk a little bit about your path, and I know we're going to talk about this ongoing, but how you have taken your young people up and through the competitions?

Tim Stephens: It started in Georgia, carried over in Florida. There's some really great resources to find out the schools that have these programs and you can find out which schools have participated in SkillsUSA. And that was the ones we targeted because we knew that they already knew about the competitions and stuff. And then it is reaching out to a school that's close to you. And I was doing it in Georgia, moved to Florida, so I started here in Florida once the competition was in place. And I just go in for dig, I go meet with the teachers and I talk to them, and they are so hungry for industry to get involved. They're asking for you to show up and for participation, so they gave me a whole day to meet with all of their classes. It would be 300 students and I just would do a PowerPoint.

And it talked about careers in roofing and some of the things we utilize track, which is if you don't know what track is that's NRCA's curriculum for beginning roofers and it's got a bunch of great little things in there. And I showed demonstrations of that but the very best thing to do is just take a heat welder, some TPO and some T-patches and set it up and let those kids try to weld a T-patch. And they love it. They eat it up. And so you show them this and then you get the opportunity of, "Hey, we have a competition that you could participate in and me as a contractor will help coach you through this to get you to compete at a state level. And if you win at your state level to a national level where you could be a state champion."

And from the very beginning, this is what we talked about, the usefulness of this. Imagine if you could go to a school and take a kid and get them to be a state champion and then a national champion. You tell me that that kid's not going to want to come work for you. And it's proof because we're going through that process now and these kids, they do want to come back and work. And now the teachers are hungry and there's more students that want to participate, so it just grows from there. But the key is finding the schools close to you and John has resources to help with that. And there's different programs, there's different ways to find those schools. And then it's just reaching out to them but the teachers are very receptive.

Heidi J Ellsworth: They're going through that. John, we're talking about the national and we just had the nationals with winners, so question I should have asked before, is roofing international yet?

John Esbenshade: Actually, for the first year this year, one of my colleagues, John Goodman is taking a team of US roofers to compete. And I believe it's the International Federation of Dock and Deckers in Switzerland or Austria. I don't know, it's some place that sounds like it's great to go to that's slightly nicer than Atlanta. But for the first time the US is going to have a contingent going there. And eventually we're hoping that all this stuff that we're talking about, whether it be the programs that the alliance are putting together at Clemson and Arizona State, we will connect eventually with some of the stuff that we're doing with SkillsUSA and Career and Technical Education schools.

Now, if you are interested in finding a SkillsUSA school near you, because it seems like a daunting task, in the chat I am dropping a link to a search function where you can search by state. It'll give you the list of all the schools in your state that have SkillsUSA programs, but also building science and construction programs. And if you click on one of the names of those schools, you'll get the advisor contact at that school for that, so you can just go directly and talk to the first person. We understand that in order to get a student eventually into an international competition, it starts with talking to someone that's in your backyard.

Heidi J Ellsworth: They get involved, they get into schools, they understand you stay regional, sometimes national, maybe someday international. But let's talk a little bit about being there. John, maybe you can just give us an overview of what the roofing industry is involved in and some of the results from this year's along with some of the other things like we talked about with National Craft Championships.

John Esbenshade: Sure. The roofing industry now has several different areas of participation in the SkillsUSA umbrella, not only at the regional and state level, but the national contest itself, roofing has three different areas in where we're represented. We have the team works contest, which teams of five from all over the country are tasked with cold reading a planned set and creating a structure that includes carpentry, electrical, masonry, plumbing and now of course a roofing component. And the roof is really a part that separates the winners from the losers. It has to be well-planned, well done, well executed because we did not grade easily on that. Right next to that is the Texpo area, the roofing pavilion if you will, which is our trade show presence at the SkillsUSA contest.

And this year we had a scaffolding built and the folks over at JM were kind enough to actually put a layer of single ply on top of that scaffolding so people could walk up there and get the experience of walking on a commercial roof, which I can tell you that two years ago, no one in the SkillsUSA universe had even considered that roofs were not always sloped or not always steep sloped at least. But not only could people walk up there and get the experience of walking on a commercial roof, they could then learn how to do some of it from the people at JM who were going to teach kids how to weld a seam. And those were some of the hardest work and folk all week at the SkillsUSA National Contest because they were burning through rolls of single ply just as people one after another came through, including Ty Pennington from... What's the name of the show that he was on again?

Jamie Treglio: HGTV.

John Esbenshade: HGTV.

Heidi J Ellsworth: There we go.

John Esbenshade: He's not one of the shows that saw when I'm on the stationary bike in the morning. But for the people that knew who he was, they thought it was a really big deal. And then of course you have the commercial roofing competition itself, which is the 11 mockups brought across the Georgia World Congress Center, people from all over the country. And it's something about having that tension in the air. You can feel that those kids are like, they're into it, they're focused. It's been building up to that. For the results, it was really close to the top and the secondary where we had eight competitors, the kid who competed last year who was not happy with how he placed, came back after a year of training and just narrowly edged out a competition from Florida for first and second place in the secondary division.

And then the winner on the post-secondary side, a kid named Tyler who was by and large, mostly self-taught. He spent time on YouTube videos. He connected with a contractor who was going to help him get some material with a local distributor, and then he really took up the torch and ran with it on his own. The National Craft Championship is something that's for the apprentices of the world. We have 17 ABC chapters that are currently using the National Center for Construction Education and Research's Roofing Program, NCCER's Roofing, in order to have a formal apprenticeship, a two-year apprenticeship program that's available in 17 different chapters. And this year we had our first demo contest for the National Craft Championships as well, so it's been a busy year with all this stuff and getting into this competitive space, but this has a seeding effect that's really easy to see. And it's been a lot of fun to watch.

Heidi J Ellsworth: You can just see it. It just keeps growing and growing and it really takes the whole industry of everybody who's involved, not just with the NRCA. And I think everybody saw this at the beginning, this is for everyone, so you don't have to be an NRCA member. This is for everyone in the roofing industry, of course, we always say you should be an NRCA member, but it really is open to all. I want to start with Jamie because one of the things that Rick and I were put onto a subcommittee was to get sponsors. And I have tell you, maybe when we first started talking about it, Rick and I were like, there was a little bit of hesitancy, but I can tell you where there was no hesitancy and that was with Johns Manville. Now today, everybody's knocking on the door because it's so cool. But Jamie, why has Johns Manville... How important is this as a sponsor and just as an industry to get involved and to be a part of that?

Jamie Treglio: I think as a sponsor, we are here, we recognize with our contractors because we're a manufacturer, so we hear their struggles, we hear and get to see it every day. People not having enough qualified work, there's not enough industry knowledge coming into an industry that is aging like everything else. And so from our standpoint, it was a really exciting time to just be part of an industry, not have necessarily this agenda behind us, but just participate in attracting, qualified, interested, exciting and excited people into it. I think going to some of these events and participating is a highlight of my year in the fact that it's a very rare environment that you're in where everyone there is excited.

They're excited if they're seeing something new for the first time, so we had so many people come through and want to try that had never even thought about roofing before. They're just not thinking about it. They're young, they're here maybe for something else but didn't think they could do it. Suddenly they're up there, they're learning about it and this is a really cool thing. It could be a path forward for them for their whole life. And how do you not get excited about that on a personal level as well as a corporate level?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Especially when you see the parents there.

Jamie Treglio: Absolutely. The parents are excited their children are taking initiative to move forward their life. We're excited that they're considering an industry that we're all so passionate about. And I think just by the end of those few days, you just have so much optimism for this roofing industry.

Heidi J Ellsworth: You really do. It's so amazing. Lorna, thank you. She's saying, "Changes in demographic and immigration laws are significantly impacting our workforce. The exodus of non-US born workers due to these regulations has created a pressing issue for our industry's workforce and so everybody's in." Lorna, who's with Tremco. Tremco has been involved many times. And Joe did want to say that it is in Austria, the International Federation and that we're thing... And Chris is like, "It's okay, I didn't have my hand up. We're all good." Rick, I wanted to talk about the Roofing Alliance. You had the first proposal into the Roofing Alliance back in 2017, and then you and I and a bunch of other people went to the Roofing Alliance this last year to get them involved again. Why don't you share a little bit about that?

Rick Damato: Well, the issue is this, this initiative as you just mentioned, is for the entire roofing industry. And it is being driven by the National Roofing Contractors Association. John works for the NRCA and they're really the horsepower behind keeping us going forward, but it's an initiative for the entire roofing industry. And at the Roofing Alliance, we have four pillars that we work on, and I'm going to get these wrong. Education is one, technology, philanthropy and sustainability. I believe those are the four pillars that our foundation rests on. But education is such a big deal, and the Roofing Alliance has been supporting for a dozen or so years, a very important initiative with the construction schools at four-year universities and with Dr. Dhaval Gajjar of Clemson. We've developed programs, we're on the way to having roofing as a minor at the college level. I can't even get into that whole side of it, but they're starting to push together because the Alliance is now funding an effort to start a roofing center within Clemson, a four-year university that will address skilled workers in our industry, not just the construction management side.

All of these things are coming together, but the Alliance having always been, or having, as I said for a dozen or so years as one of its key components, a competition, an annual competition between construction schools where they have groups of students that are required to put together a package of estimates and present it at our International Roofing Expo or annual meeting. And it just occurred to me, it has been occurring to me that you know what the Alliance needs to address education on every front when it comes to the industry. And that includes the trade workers. Obviously, who are we if we can't put on a roof? We love our manufacturers, they do great things, but even they recognize that if they don't have good competent installers putting on those roofs that they warrant, that's a problem. And the issue of our most highly skilled and talented roofers are the ones that are aging out and we need to do a better job of replacing their professionalism.

And you don't just do that just by bringing people on a crew. It's really important in my view that we pull this lever, as I call it, to make sure we're in the construction education space. And the Roofing Alliance, in their wisdom with some encouragement, they have decided, you know what? That's a good idea. We're going to support career and technical education efforts through this SkillsUSA initiative. And for three years running, they have put forward a significant contribution to these efforts. And this is on top of what the NRCA is doing. It's on top of what all of our sponsors are doing, our wonderful sponsors like JM are doing to help us support this work.

And the reason we needed to go to them and ask for that is because we're almost 60 years behind and to what happened to Sherri and her local community where she wasn't allowed into the room, so to speak, that's because the people that were in the room had invested their time, energy and efforts with those students before that competition. And we're in competition with them for those students to come to work for us. And I'm going to throw one more thing, and when it comes to the students that are engaged with SkillsUSA, and I hope John would back me up on this, they're leaders in their schools, they're talkers. It's not just those students that we're addressing. When you bring a student into one of our courses, he's telling his friends about it. She's letting everybody know what she's up to. It has a good spreading out effect. I hope I answered your question.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, you did. It is going viral. It's so exciting to watch that. One of the things... That was perfect, and I just want to emphasize how important it is to all of these people to be involved, the contractors being in the schools, the contractors being able to reach out to sponsors, both locally on the state level to sponsors to get the materials, to get the help and with the Roofing Alliance behind it. And then all the associations out there, like we were talking about, Georgia, Arizona. We have so many associations, western states that are very involved in SkillsUSA. I'm going to actually go back to this because I think this is really important that we give some takeaways to everyone who's on this call on how they can get involved. Sherri, I'm going to start with you just on lessons learned for people what they need to be thinking about as they get involved.

Sherri Miles: Persistence is number one. You just have to stay on top of the teachers who are pulled in a million directions, but email, texting, showing up, doing what you say you're going to do, connecting the teachers in the classrooms with distribution and manufacturers and showing them a little bit more of the industry rather than just installation of thermoplastics, in this case. Sponsoring the kids. We did some really cool things where we gave them a starter kit for participating so they were ready to go to work for a roofing company, even if it wasn't mine upon successful completion of the SkillsUSA training. And you just have to stay involved. I'm a person that doesn't take no for an answer very often, so be that kind of person, be that just constantly always trying to get connecting other contractors to schools in their area on a lot of Zooms, but you just have to keep going.

A lot of the teachers in the CTE world, especially in carpentry or construction, have retired from their career and they're not apt to change what they are doing, so if you can make their life easier in any way, if you can make their job easier, they are very grateful for that if they don't have to learn a whole lot. It is a struggle but when you also pair that with getting in the ear of the admin, whether it be a principal or the person in charge of CTE for that area, they're going to put pressure on that teacher also to make sure that things happen. And also find schools, not every CTE necessarily has a SkillsUSA person that helps them, but most of them do, also find that person.

They're not typically teaching, they're typically doing the admin work, so it's really important to know who that is because they're going to be the ones that are doing the registering the kids and making sure they have their stuff and all those things for the state and then the national competition. It's relationships, again, getting in there and not taking no for an answer.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And Tim, I know when we were at SkillsUSA, you were sharing stories about travel time, practice, going spending time, four hours, sometimes five hours at a time, training and teaching. Talk a little bit about what... Because yes, the schools want you, yes, this is important for your companies, but there is, you need to be aware that to do it successfully, there's some ways that you need to do it.

Tim Stephens: And so it is different. In Florida, I dealt with a trade school and a high school. And so the trade school... I'm in Orlando, the trade school was in Tampa, so it was an hour and a half drive to get down there. And so starting at the beginning of the year, I was going to each school once a week to show up and help these kids. Now, you're dealing with two different entities when you're dealing with high schools and trade schools. Trade schools have a lot more funding. SkillsUSA is almost marketing for them, so they can show the trophies and how many winners they have that attracts people to come into the program. The high schools, it is fun, but they have zero funding, so they need help with everything. The high school, they were in Orlando, it was Lyman High School in Orlando that was easier to get to.

I had 10 kids that would show up once a week on Mondays for about an hour, 15 minutes right after school got out, so it was almost like a club. And they would come and I bought them heat guns, and we got material donated from Ivy Roof Systems. And then my local ABC donated material from Firestone and we let them just practice. And I told them we got a weld and practice. And then they eventually led to the competitors. The trade school was interesting because they wanted to compete. They saw the competition the previous year and they have a really good track record of competitions and they said, "Hey, we've got some kids that we could do this." They had already had mockups built, they just needed a contractor to show up and come work with them, so we jumped on that.

And the great thing about trade schools is these are adult kids. They're 18 and older, they graduated from high school, so they're almost immediately able to hire. And I've told the story before that we had a project where we had to run some 106 foot long metal panels out on a military base, so I needed people that I could get background check quick and then bodies out there to help carry these panels. I called the instructor for the trade school, asked him if he had anybody that'd be interested. And in two days I had 10 kids signed up, and by the next week I had 10 of them on a job site, on a military job site carrying helping me run 106 foot long panels. And since then we've hired three of them, so building that relationship, putting in that time makes it totally worth it.

And Rick said earlier that a lot of these trainings have a 65-year head start on us, but since we've jumped into this two years ago, we passed them up. When you come to the national competition, you see our display that we set up that John built so well that JM staff and sponsors is the centerpiece of that entire wing. And the kids put on the mockup, it's an attention-grabber and people are curious about it. And we have teacher after teacher coming up to us wanting to know how they can get involved, how they can get a student involved so they can be a part of it. It's a really impressive thing once you see it. It took a lot of time. There was a lot of effort.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And this picture that you're seeing right now is the actual picture from the competition in Atlanta that was in June. We also have a picture of the team works and this is the steep slope that goes with the team works. One of the things, Sherri, you had talked about, and I'd just like you to talk just a little bit more about advisory boards and how important that is to get involved to help get that in.

Sherri Miles: It's a great place to start to get to know the other players. There are going to be other industries there represented, government agencies, school board members. And a great way to connect again, hearing where the funding's coming from, seeing how we can position roofing to get some of those funds. It's super important and it's easy. They're always looking for people and especially in industries where they need some help. For Virginia Beach where I live, it was a matter of filling out a form. I sat on another board with the head of the CTE, so that did help. But we have people on other boards throughout. My brother's on the City of Chesapeake, we've got another one of our guys on a different board. And it's really important because these guys, some of our guys came through those Vo-tech schools and it's important to see that their legacy, especially the sheet metal guys, they really want to be a part of things still to bring up that next gen. Definitely if you can apply, see where there's some openings and get on your CTE advisory boards.

Heidi J Ellsworth: John, you work with everyone all over the country on this. What are some of the success stories you've heard? Obviously, Tim and Sherri, but what are some of the success stories you've heard from contractors who have gotten involved with their schools, advisory boards, getting in with the tech classes, some of those?

John Esbenshade: Well, geez, let's see. I think at least one of the ones that I like the most is on this call. I think I saw Jennifer George and Laura Schweikert who helped us get things going in Arizona. But at the very genesis of this entire effort, we're trying to convince these SkillsUSA state directors that roofing was worth the floor space. And I can tell you that that wasn't not as necessarily as easily as a sell as logic would suggest. We were told in a couple of places, Arizona and Florida being two of them, that they would never have a SkillsUSA contest there because roofing wasn't important. And I know as odd as it may seem, but certainly the work that Tim did to turn an absolutely no way, never no into, it was like, well, we're going to send competitors there in the secondary and post-secondary divisions who are both going to compete and be right up in the cut for the win.

But the team at Arca took an absolute no and then we had the largest state contest in the country happened in Arizona last year. There are stories like that happening all over the country where people are either bootstrapping it individually like Tim did or like Sherri did at the Genesis. And then there are a whole bunch of regional associations who are seeing the benefit that this potentially has to their membership and are bootstrapping. They are getting distributors on board, they're getting the material list in line and then they're getting these things going. There are 50 states in the United States and 10 of them were represented last year for the first year. And it's curious to see where it's going to go next year.

Tim Stephens: Hey, Heidi?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yes.

Tim Stephens: Can I jump in for a second?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yes.

Tim Stephens: What John just said, the growth of this is going to be massive. The teachers all see it and they want a piece of it from a national, and then even on the state level, the thing that will slow this down is contract of participation. The contractors have to get involved, they have to want to be a part of this and if they do to go get involved with those schools because that's what's going to make this thing grow. Florida is an example, I had five kids compete at the state competition, but there's only two different schools.

But next year we could probably have up to 10 different kids compete from 10 different schools as long as we have contractors that are willing to go out and put in that time. And that's what will slow this down. If the contractors get on board, if workforce really is an issue for you, this is a way to solve it. The kids are there, go get involved and you'll see this thing blow up. And we will be by far the biggest competition besides maybe Teamworks, but we could compete with them on this level and have so many kids and teachers involved. It's just a matter of contract of participation at this point.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That is great. Well, and that leads us right into, we are going to... You guys have been sharing your stories as we've gone along, but just real quick, Tim, can you just talk a little bit about your two participants and how they did?

Tim Stephens: Like I said at the beginning when I first saw this, my goal was I wanted to take kids, make them a national champion and then they're going to want to come work for me, so I got to work with two schools this year, a trade school and a high school. I had three kids from the trade school compete at the state level. Two kids from the high school compete and from each school and they competed against each other. Noemi won in the high school and Matthew won in the trade school and brought them to nationals and I was super proud of them. They put in the work. The week before the competition, they showed up to my shop. We had mockup set up, they came to practice. Noemi actually crushed it. I want to see the final scoresheet. I think there's a judge throwing the scoresheet somewhere because I think she should have won.

Heidi J Ellsworth: A little controversy there.

Tim Stephens: Matthew, he did great. Super proud of him. They worked hard for it, they wanted it, but it just goes back with that relationship with the school and letting them know that they've got a chance and working with them and coaching them up and then they come and it makes you proud to be there. Noemi's parents were there watching the whole... It was just super awesome to see them participate there. And they kicked butt. It was cool. Florida's going to win it next year. We'll win both of them next year. I'm pretty confident.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, and if you want to see, if anybody out there wants to see the videos from those students, they are on the RoofersCoffeeShop YouTube channel, and we even got a video with Noemi's mom, so that was pretty cool too. We are getting close in time, but Sherri real quick about your participant.

Sherri Miles: Well, this year we had one that went to Nationals and he was supposed to come work for us and he worked one day. Lessons learned, a mockup is not the same as a roof, so expectations, we need to do a better job letting guys know and gals know what it's going to entail when you show up to actually work and you're not on a platform on the ground.

Tim Stephens: When we did the state competition we had it was indoor. One of the kids from the trade school came up and asked if we were going to have fans there, "Well, are we going to keep it cool." I said, "No, we're going to take your ass outside in the sun like you're right there, like real roofers." He was one of the kids that came and volunteered with us out at the job site and he did a great job, so he made it the whole day in 90 degree heat out on an empty military base. But it is funny. You do have to change the expectations a little bit, let them know, "No, this is roofing. It is hard." And I bring that up when I go meet with the schools, I tell them, "Hey, this is roofing and 99% of you people that are watching this can't do it. You're not tough enough."

I'll call out the toughness right away and say, "You won't be able to handle it. You're not tough enough. You can't do this." And I think for the competitive people that will take that as a challenge, it's something that gets them a little bit more psyched up for it. And now I've got kids at the trade school that I say they're asking for jobs. I'm kind of, "We'll see. I don't know. I don't know if you're quite good enough." Before we were begging for anybody to come through the door.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I love it. I love it.

Tim Stephens: It definitely changes the script a little bit.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, I also want to point out Baker Roofing did have the winner, sorry Tim, Brandon and I talked to Ryan Clancy this morning and they are looking at him possibly coming to work for them too. And they've had other students come and work for Baker and they just thumbs up. But I wanted to put these names because as you're watching this, these are the people who you can get ahold of. You can get ahold of them through John, he'll get the introductions or through me, we'll get introductions. But if you want to talk to them about how they did it, what they did, they're all open there.

It is for everyone in the roofing industry. And we've already said this, connect with your CTE school, your manufacturers and distributors, ask them to donate. Ask them to help you do this because they will. And then we want you to share your story with us at RCS so that we can continue to get people going around and helping each other out. One quick question, if there's any introduction or representation letter that recruiters can use when approaching vocational schools? Are there, John?

John Esbenshade: There is not yet. There is currently a toolkit and I am currently parsing that toolkit out into a bunch of different groups. It's going to be something that's available on our RCS's website, hopefully by the time we get to fall meetings, certainly by the end of the year but that's something that... We have a 30-page info dump document that anyone is welcome to. They're allowed to parse through it and pick and choose what works best for them. But for an intro letter not quite yet, you're welcome to reach out to me and we'll draft one up together.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And you saw where... John, maybe you can drop your email into the chat just so if people want to grab that they can. And I don't think we have any other questions, but we are right at the top of the hour. I just want to say thank you everyone. Thank you Jamie. John, Tim, Sherri, Rick, such great information and thank you for leading this effort that we need so much, so thank you.

John Esbenshade: Can I do a quick plug, Heidi?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Please.

John Esbenshade: I have a podcast that's only about growing America's roofing workforce and it is called Growing America's Roofing Workforce. I talked to a lot of the same people that Heidi does at RCS, but all we're talking about is this. Have a look through the episode from last month was with two of the winners, right backstage from the award ceremony at SkillsUSA. Check it out. If you have questions, let me know.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And you can find that on the NRCA.net site also?

John Esbenshade: Yeah, wherever you get your podcast.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Podcast, just look it up. That is great. Well, thank you. Thank you everybody, and thank you Johns Manville for leading the way and for sponsoring this and really bringing this to everyone at the webinar. We are at the top of the hour and I'm going to say thank you. And just by the way, next week we are going to have the same RLW, but it is going to be on the Clemson classes that were mentioned earlier. If you want to find out how you can get your ongoing education and maybe a minor in roofing, you need to watch next week because we're going to have all of that and we will have the folks from Clemson and from the Roofing Alliance talking about it. We'll see you all next week. Have a great day.