AMT Shortage Resisted Through Early Education

Lincoln North Star High School and community members in Lincoln, Nebraska, celebrated a brand-new $5.4 million hangar-style addition to the school’s Aviation and Technical Education Focus Program, energized by local employer Duncan Aviation.

The program is aimed at "creating interest in aviation and training the next generation of pilots, technicians, engineers, dispatchers, and flight instructors," replenishing dwindling stocks of capable employees in a demanding profession. Recent outlooks bear out a mildly bleak outlook for employers in critical aviation spaces: Boeing projects a need for 134,000 technicians in North America alone over the next 20 years...and enrollments in recent years are maybe at best able to meet half that demand. Worldwide, things are even tougher, with 610,000 needed.

"More than seven years ago, the idea of a Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) program focused on aviation curriculum started," says a Duncan presser. "Duncan Aviation partnered with LPS and North Star to create an Aviation and Technical Education Focus Program to expose students to the endless opportunities in aviation. There were 150 students enrolled in aviation courses during the 2019 school year, and that number quickly jumped to 215 students in 2021. It became clear the school would need a dedicated space to accommodate the growing aviation focus program. Lead by Connie Duncan, wife of Duncan Aviation Board of Directors Chairman Todd Duncan, Duncan Aviation graciously donated $3.34 million to the program."

From there, the project grew. The department got a brand new 13,000-square-foot space near the front of the school, one of the "only public school airplane hangars in the nation". The program can now tak more than 317 students, with a bevy of hands-on lessons and real-world experience generators. Students may not come away with a full A&P certificate, but they'll have some basics and a hunger for more - and that's exactly what Duncan wanted.

Amanda Woodward, the career and technical education teacher at North Star who leads the program, said she is grateful for all Duncan Aviation has done for the program. “To work with my friends at Duncan Aviation, to get tools in the hands of students, and to teach them how high-skill, high-wage, and high-demand aviation maintenance careers can look is the honor of a lifetime."

FMI: www.aviation.lps.org/