Crown taps four Youth Apprentices as partnership with LCPS is revived

It’s not like Austin Rivenbark didn’t have a plan. A rising senior at South Lenoir High School, he’s on track to earn a college degree in industrial maintenance by the time he’s awarded his diploma. It’s just that now – after being accepted into the Youth Apprenticeship program at Crown Equipment’s Kinston plant – Austin’s plan looks a lot like a potential career.

Austin, South Lenoir classmate Elijah Stroud, 2021 South Lenoir graduate Gavin Pittman and Connor McIntosh, a rising senior at North Lenoir High School, comprise the second cohort of LCPS students to qualify for an apprenticeship program nearly unique in the state – an opportunity to work part-time and gain real-world experience while finishing school, to be reimbursed for college tuition costs and to go to work for Crown in Kinston full-time.

“I plan to work 40-hour weeks and hopefully end up being a supervisor,” Austin said last week, after a short ceremony in which Todd Frideger, Kinston plant manager, introduced the four new apprentices.

“We’re excited about getting you guys started,” Frideger told the students.

Crown first partnered with Lenoir County Public Schools on the apprenticeship program in 2019, when the manufacturer brought three students into the plant, where it makes electric lift trucks. All three students graduated in 2020 and are now employed by Crown; however, the apprenticeship program went dormant because of the coronavirus pandemic. The program was revived this year on the strength of Crown’s commitment and the LCPS’s enthusiasm for the program as an essential – and, heretofore, missing – piece of its Career and Technical Education (CTE) curriculum.

“Every good idea is on time, but some are really on time,” LCPS Superintendent Brent Williams said. “For this community, this school system and these students, this is exactly what we need at this time. It is cutting-edge. We’re one of two school systems in the state that have a partnership like this with a manufacturer that represents a pathway to an actual job – not a good preparation for the possibility of a job, but the actual guarantee of a job.”

Crown has extended its partnership with LCPS by bringing on seven 2021 graduates as summer help in a program separate from the Youth Apprenticeships. “This is more of an opportunity for those high school graduates who are going to continue their education in the fall to have a really wonderful summer job and get introduced into the trades,” Rose Mary Jones, human resources manager at the Kinston Crown facility, said.

Whether short-term summer help or long-term apprentices, Crown’s youngest workers get an immersive look at modern-day manufacturing and learn something about the responsibilities that come with holding down a job, according to Amy Jones, the school district’s director of high school education and CTE. 

“We are so appreciative of Crown and their commitment to our students and to our community. Building the next generation of the workforce is the primary goal of the Career and Technical Education program,” Amy Jones said. “Partnerships such as this allow us to do just that in the most meaningful way. The Youth Apprenticeship program is getting our students into the workforce and putting them ahead of the game in their career pathway.”

As Youth Apprentices, the four students will work about 20 hours a week in areas they’re interested in pursuing – Connor and Elijah in welding, Austin in industrial maintenance and Gavin in machining – beginning this summer and, once school starts, on a schedule that meshes with their class time. The three rising seniors will be finishing up high school course work and Gavin, the graduate, will be enrolled at Lenoir Community College.

Their selection for the Youth Apprenticeship program, after applications and interviews, represents to them the first step toward a meaningful job after graduation.

“My guidance counselor at South Lenoir told me about it when I went to register for my classes and I felt it was a good fit for me so I took advantage of the opportunity and ended up with a job,” Austin said.

“I knew this is what I wanted to do,” Connor McIntosh said. “I heard rumors about it my freshman year and have been interested it in ever since.”

Crown expects to bring on its next batch of Youth Apprentices in January, with the start of the 2021-2022 school year’s second semester. “Those who are working here now will have the opportunity to work an extra semester,” Rose Mary Jones said.

Once the students graduate from high school under the apprenticeship program, they are guaranteed a job with Crown. Those who want to continue their education under the Youth Apprenticeship Program have 120 days to apply to a community college with an accredited apprenticeship program, such as LCC. Enrolled, they continue working – a requirement of the apprenticeship program. Students choosing not to apply will be eligible to participate in Crown’s Tuition Reimbursement Program after six months of full-time employment.

“Either way,” Jones said, “students have an opportunity to work full time with a company that provides an educational pathway to the future.”