Welcome to the Windshield Chronicles, a mental sequence of operation.
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Hey Howard, how's it going?
Doing great, how are you doing, Clifton?
Doing good, hey I've got an issue that I need a little bit of help with, and you want to go for a ride and talk about this?
Sounds great, looking forward to it.
Alright, let's go.
Alright, so we're on our way back from the National HVACR Education Conference, and my brain has got something that just needs some help with, and I think you might have some ideas here for me.
Alright, so I spent quite a bit of time as a distributor, a technical service advisor for a distributor of equipment, and we had a lot of local schools that were looking for equipment, and I did a lot of donations of equipment going to the programs.
But one of the things that was brought up at the conference by some of the manufacturers is they would like to do the same thing, but they don't know how to vet schools.
Honestly, myself didn't really have a plan for that either.
So I know you've got a lot of experience with this, and you've got a lineage of ways to get there that I would call a sequence of operation.
So let's kind of talk about the sequence of operation of vetting schools, and maybe some criteria for, you know, what kind of equipment could go what places.
So, I mean, where do we even start?
So, the old story is you as a distributor should have been involved in local program advisory committees. So if you've identified the schools in your area that have HVAC programs, and you've participated, you have a good idea right away of the facilities.
While they're there, look, I can't tell a manufacturer or wholesaler what to do, I could give them some general guidelines of what I would do.
Right. One, if I found a good facility, I would probably have a equipment acquisition request form. What is that?
We would ask some questions about the school. Is the school a public school for private?
Yeah.
What the hours of the program? Be very similar to what we ask a school on our accreditation application to get a good picture.
So I have a one year program, it's publicly funded, I'm eligible for Perkins. So that'd be the first step, have some kind of application.
Okay. All right. Makes sense. Is this the foundation?
The second thing I would do, I would take people like yourself, Clifton, and I would say that we would be happy to kind of give a guideline, and I think that's what we're doing here, of what would I want to evaluate that school on.
So the very first thing I want to know, how many hours they have, you know, if it's a full time program.
Am I a 40 hour, 100 hour, 500 hour, 1000 hour? Yeah, because they're all different, really.
And don't get me wrong, there's some great adult ed programs that can do things in a short period of time with the right instructor. But I would look, does the program consist of at least 750 hours?
Okay.
It's going to take 650 to 750 to teach the basics. I think we can all agree upon that.
Okay, so that's my foundation. First thing I got to look at.
I want to know, is this training program at a community college, a technical college, apprenticeship program?
I basically want to know, are you recognized by the State Department of Education or Bureau of Apprenticeship?
The reason I bring that up is so you found a school, I want to make certain you didn't find Howard School, I just created a school so I can get discounts from a manufacturer.
Yeah, okay.
Is this a legitimate organization that's approved by your State Department of Education or Bureau of Apprenticeship for 750 hours?
Okay.
Beyond that, I think the second thing I would look at, are they nationally accredited? And I don't mean their school, I mean the program.
Just the program itself.
Sure.
Programmatic accreditation is a third party, non-government peer review to make certain that program met minimal standards.
Okay.
So if a school is not meeting the minimal standards, that's probably a key indicator that you may want to help them, but you may not be able to give them the big discounts or donations you want.
Yeah. Am I given a combustion analyzer to a school who doesn't even teach gas furnaces? I mean, yeah.
Well, that's a little further on my list too, is the curriculum reflects going down.
So I would make certain that your program curriculum reflects not only the equipment that they're looking for, but you should be taking a look, a holistic view to see is this program really covering everything.
Look at the curriculum. Look at the, so Clifton, you could have looked in there and said, there's 1200 hours, I see the courses, I see their books, I see their tools, I see their equipment.
This place looks pretty good from that perspective, or you might walk in and say, this place is lacking a lot of things.
So you, you should have a quick eye for that.
But if I'm specifically asking for assistance, as you mentioned on combustion analyzers, well, do I have curriculum on combustion to teach combustion efficiency?
Yeah.
Do I have, do I have testing? Do I, you know, it's putting the pieces together.
Why would someone donate a mini split or sell it at a huge discount to a school if they don't even teach mini splits as part of the curriculum?
Absolutely. Or have instructors that are qualified to teach on that.
Well, that, that's one of those things that if I was a manufacturer or a wholesaler, if the instructors themselves don't have the training on the specific technology, you have two options.
You could tell them, I'm sorry, you don't qualify. Or here's some of the training we offer and help get them in.
But giving equipment that someone, you can't teach what you don't know. So let's help them learn what they need to.
But it might also be a great opportunity for someone like yourself to have been a guest presenter and go in and help them reinforce those concepts.
Okay. All right. So we make sure it's a qualified program. Timing wise, we make sure that it is a third party accredited.
Right.
We just want to take a look at curriculum. We want to take a look at its support network, you know, like advisory board, guest speakers.
What about, you know, I see some schools that have a lot of money wrapped up in equipment and I see some that don't have much wrapped.
Is that even something that we can compare?
You know, the old story is schools are funded locally.
So if we start talking about rural HVAC programs, they're obviously not going to have the resources, some of the big city programs.
So there are options. So let's talk here a second. If I'm teaching in a small school in a small town, I still have federal Perkins funds.
There are different opportunities. You have to go to your school administrator, your dean, whoever you report to.
First thing I look at, do we have access to funds under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act?
That's an opportunity to use federal funds to acquire equipment, to acquire professional development.
So before I'm even asking for help from my manufacturer partners, my wholesaler partners, that'd be the first thing.
Now we're looking at the size, we're looking at the funding of it. What else are we going to look for after that?
Well, you hit on something here. I would want to know that they have good partners. I want to go to a program advisory committee.
I want to see that there's a lot of participation there, diverse participation.
I want to see some of the people who've hired graduates of that school and get an idea. Do they think the school is doing a good job and what's lacking?
Yeah, that's an important part. I mean, if I'm going to be donating a bunch of equipment, how do I even know that it is a successful program? What can we look at there?
Well, there's several things we could look at. Number one, if they're getting Perkins funds, they're supposed to be given these industry recognized third party credentials.
So entry level tests like the employment ready certification. I'd ask to see how are your students doing on these different tests.
I would try and talk to some of the employers who have hired students and say, what did you think of the graduates?
You get a good feel right away by finding still story. Ask your neighbors. What refer should I use in my neighborhood?
Well, they're all going to tell you the good and the bad stories. Well, people who have hired from those schools, they know if they if this is a great facility.
Or if there's a better one down the street. So what are we looking at? We look at a school and go, OK, so we see that you have decent program.
You have all these other things lined up. What kind of graduation rates should we be looking at?
Can we compare the graduation rate of a school to see how well they're doing?
There's two things I look at. I look at attrition and graduation. They're separate things. OK, when we talk about attrition, let's just say you started with 10 students.
How many actually are completers of that program? Oh, OK, start to finish. So if at the beginning of year we started off at 10 and we wind up with eight, you know, our attrition is 20 percent.
Now, out of those eight, how many of those got placed into the field in order for a program to be successful and continue to get state funding?
You want to make certain that the attrition rate is 30 percent or less.
But I would do that over a couple of year period, like a three year period. Right. Take a look at COVID, different things that happen. Yeah, things can happen. Right.
Everyone has an up year and a down year. So what you're really looking at, you ask them, what is your attrition rate?
If they tell you that their attrition rate is 50 percent, you know, there's a red flag, a big problem there. OK.
Now, I'd like to throw something that's not part of this step process real quickly.
Part of the problem is sometimes employers, contractors, they say, why don't you drop out of school? I'll continue your training.
I don't think they realize when they do that, that they're affecting the attrition and placement rates, which which can lead to the program being considered a failed program and defunded by their doing that.
So while they're trying to meet their short term goals for employment, they just hurt the school's ability to offer that program the viability of a long term.
Past that, what should we be looking at, like maybe towards the instructors?
Are there specifics that we can look at?
The funny part is that we've talked about the school.
You know, you want to make certain you have the program that has enough hours to teach the content, has the right equipment, is nationally aligned to standards.
But buildings don't teach. People do.
So I think the two most important things people look at are the instructor qualifications and they're continuing at.
I'll break those down into things. So the first order of sequence I want to know.
Does this instructor have a minimum, bare minimum of five years of experience in these subject areas being taught?
So if I'm bringing an instructor, I, you know, just because you work at a supply house, driving a truck, delivering parts.
Right. Doesn't mean you have years of experience in the field.
Right. Right. So we want to make certain that they have years of experience doing exactly what we're teaching. Five years minimum.
You want someone who's also been formally trained in the physics, the theories,
which you're looking for someone who's a graduate of that program or another program in the past,
or they're currently working towards their HVAC degree or someone who might hold the title of certified master HVAC educator.
What we're really looking for is Clifton, you're in Indiana. If I'm teaching at Ivy Tech,
what better place to look than a graduate of the Ivy Tech system for your next instructor, someone who went through it and had that training before.
But I think the last thing I would really look at, and this is probably the most important,
you can have a great school and a great instructor and that instructor may have graduated top in their class 20 years ago.
But if your professional development is lacking. So you and I have seen we have instructors, they take classes on first aid, a variety of things.
But none of their professional development seems to be related to what they're teaching.
So if an instructor is not getting at least 10 hours of continuing education a year,
I probably want to have them on my list for donating equipment or selling them at some reduced cost.
Equally important, I'd say out of those 10 hours, at least half of them should have to be on equipment to stay apprised of new technology.
So if you work at a Ford dealership as a mechanic, each year you're required to go to training to learn about the new models.
Yeah, what's changed?
Do we do that in HVAC industry?
Probably not very well.
No. So the point is that instructors really need the opportunity to go learn about the new models, new equipment, new technologies, new regulations, new codes.
And I think that at least half of their continuing education should be manufacturer specific type of training, learning about the new technologies each year.
Yeah, sounds realistic to me. I mean, that's really sequence of operation. I have 10 different things that I should be looking at.
Is it a full time program? Is it an accredited program? Does it have a current curriculum? Does it have a support network?
Does it have administrative funding support? Does it have an attrition rate 30 percent or less? Does it have a graduation rate 80 percent or higher?
Does it have program instructors that are qualified for the programs they're teaching,
particularly having subject matter expert certifications on those subjects that are teaching or a master educator for all of the subjects that are being taught?
Does it have an active student waiting list? Do we have people wanting to get into the program? And are we doing continuing education hours?
Seems like a pretty successful plan to me.
In here, Clifton, the thing is we're all the benefactors are victims of the training we get.
So really this conversation, we started talking about sequence of operation of how do I identify a quality program to partner with,
whether that partner means I'm trying to donate equipment, sell it at a discount, help educate their instructors.
When we're building partnerships to build our brands as manufacturers or wholesalers, what we're really looking for is a partner that's capable of executing our vision.
So I know that you had gone through some specific dealer training. You are a Dyken Field Service rep.
You should have the ability of going out and taking a look at a school and determining based on the things we've discussed.
Is this a place I really want to partner with? If so, what does that partnership mean? Am I a presenter?
Can I sell them at some kind of substantial discount because it's going to help me build my brand? Can I donate in certain cases?
That's going to be up to each and every manufacturer. But I think the problem is the question came up.
How do I identify the quality schools from the bad ones? Because just looking at the names of the schools isn't enough. You have to physically go visit.
Exactly. What is the difference between A and Z and everyone in between?
So these are a sequence of 10 different items that should be looked at when deciding if a program is qualified for a certain type of equipment or even sponsorship.
Right.
OK. All right. Thank you, Howard. We appreciate your time. And yeah, that's a good conversation. Cool. We'll see you later.
Yeah.