Henrico CTE’s ‘Signing Day’ celebrates graduating seniors’ first step into the workforce and adulthood

Last Wednesday, 56 high school seniors gathered for Henrico Schools’ Career and Technical Education “Signing Day” to celebrate joining the workforce immediately after graduation.

Of the 600 seniors enrolled in the school division’s Advanced Career Education Centers, this cohort is the 10% that already have full-time jobs secured in their chosen profession. Their employers, from 40 different businesses ranging from construction companies to architecture firms, also were present at Libbie Mill Library to witness the students sign their letters of intent.

This year is the sixth year HCPS has held the career signing day, which is now a full-fledged tradition for the division. Not only did the idea start in Henrico with CTE director Mac Beaton but it has been picked up and replicated by other Virginia school divisions and divisions in 48 other states.

The signing day is a visible example of how Henrico Schools has taken career education seriously, state Del. Rodney Willett (D-Henrico) said at the event, which he hopes will prompt more school divisions to do the same.

“Henrico has taken this to a completely different level,” he said. “You are part of not just a state model, but a national model. This program is nationally recognized, nationally envied, nationally replicated. Mac has given this presentation all over multiple states to share what we’ve done here in Henrico.”

The group of 56 seniors have secured jobs in several different career clusters or industries; 13 will be working in transportation and distribution/logistics, 12 in human services, 12 in energy, 10 in architecture and construction, three in hospitality and tourism, two in education, two in landscaping, and two in manufacturing.

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Iker Ceballos, an electricity student at the Highland Springs High ACE Center, came to the signing day along with his parents to celebrate his employment as an apprentice electrician at US Electric. His signing day, and his high school graduation coming up in only a month, represent two big milestones for his entry into the adult world, he said.

“It’s scary because I know I’ll become a whole adult, and if I do something wrong, I won’t get suspended for it, I won’t get put in detention for it, I’ll have actual consequences for it,” Ceballos said. “I won’t be around a bunch of kids my age, I’ll have to be in a real, adult world. But I’m excited for it. I feel like it’s a part of life everyone has to go through. I feel like I’m ready and if I’m not, I feel like I will be ready.”

Ceballos, like most of the other seniors at the event, actually has been working on the job site since February, going in from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every other day. Many students will have worked on a job site the summer before their senior year as well, according to Highland Springs High ACE Center electricity instructor Willie Cline, so that all students have on-the-job training that will make them good job candidates.

“It’s not just a last minute kind of thing, we’re working all year towards this,” Cline said. “We let the student know, like, you are working towards this career. And if you work hard for us, we’re going to help you out in that process and help partner you up along the way.”

Cline plays a large role in making connections with business partners, letting recruiters know which students could be a good match for their company, and helping students secure interviews, but the most rewarding part is seeing all of the students’ hard work pay off in the end, he said.

“It’s like being a proud papa. You get to see your kids that you nurtured, you know, from someone who had little to no skills to where they’re at now,” Cline said. “Taking what you’ve been able to teach them in a short amount of time and put them into a career where they can support themselves and their family the rest of their life.”

When each student signed their letter of intent, company representatives also highlighted the benefits the student would be receiving as a full time worker, such as set salaries, stock options, health and dental insurances, tuition reimbursement, retirement plans, and bonuses.

“Think back to when we were 18 – how many people thought about retirement plans?” CTE director Mac Beaton said. “These kids are making those decisions now.”

Ceballos said he and his family had initially considered college as the best pathway, but reconsidered when they learned about the benefits of going into trade careers, such as paid apprenticeships and tuition reimbursement for trade school.

“I mean growing up, I never really saw myself as an electrician, My parents, you know, they wanted me to go to college and everything,” he said. “Nowadays, I feel like the trade school is where it’s at. My dad, he even told me about it, he was like, ‘They make a lot of money, being an electrician doesn’t sound bad to me.’”

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Henrico’s career education program got a big boost in attention just days after their very first signing day in 2018, when Beaton uploaded a video of the event to Facebook. Television host Mike Rowe from the “Dirty Jobs” TV series reposted the video, which led to national news coverage of the local signing day event.

“Next thing you know, it went viral,” said Henrico CTE coordinator Beverly Cocke. “It was posted on a Friday night, and by Monday morning, Mac and two of the students were being interviewed on Fox News, on the national channel. Then they did CNN Headline News, the Today Show, and other publications.”

With only 23 students at the signing day that first year, the number jumped to 123 students a year later, although the number of students has gone down since the COVID pandemic. Cline only had one of his electricity students at the signing day in 2018, but now has three-fourths of his class signing letters of intent this year.

Henrico’s CTE program has also recently expanded its program to accommodate 800 more students, opening new ACE Center buildings this past school year at Highland Springs High and Hermitage High, with a new ACE Center building under construction at the Academy at Virginia Randolph.

The expansion will also bring new program offerings; this year, the ACE Centers began offering a motorsports program and baking and pastry specialization, and will offer environmental science and physical therapy programs next year.

The “culmination” of the ACE Center program is the career signing day, Cocke said, as well as the ACE Center completion ceremonies before graduation, where all seniors receive certificates. Students will often start their career exploration at Henrico CTE’s “Life Ready Career Expo” held every September, which brings 3,000-4,000 students and families to learn about different career pathways, and job offers, from businesses.

“That’s thousands of kids and their families and 150 businesses,” Cocke said. “Even some parents have been hired from that.”

ACE Center seniors also attend the CTE “Career Rodeo” every January to showcase their skills in front of business recruiters. This year, 10 students ended up with job offers on the spot, and many students at the signing day were first noticed by their recruiters at the rodeo.

While some ACE Center seniors will go on to college or other opportunities, celebrating those entering the workforce remains an important way to encourage more students to think about the different pathways they have open to them after high school, said state Sen. Schulyer VanValkenburg (D-Henrico), a history teacher at Glen Allen High School.

“You kind of have three pathways – you can enroll, you can enlist, or you can get employed, and as a county and as a state, we should want to uplift all three of those pathways and the potential they have,” he said. “And then we should want to celebrate them, and that’s what we’re doing here. I tell everybody across the state that they should be doing what we’re doing in Henrico.”

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Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.

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