A school for young people 18 to 22 with special needs now contains a section that looks like a Target store and will be used for vocational training.
Target Corporation is contributing $40,000 in a grant and furnishings toward the first-of-its-kind job-training lab at Niles Township High School District 219’s Bridges Adult Transition Center in Lincolnwood.
Target, district and Bridges officials dedicated the lab on Nov. 7. It’s designed to train the young adults in their transition to adulthood and the workforce.
The lab in the new Bridges facility, which fully opened in Aug. 2021, contains Target retail displays that could prepare students for $15-an-hour starting jobs at the big-box chain, along with possible employment elsewhere.
The first corporate partnership operating at Bridges could foreshadow an effort to obtain other businesses to support job training programs in District 219, said Superintendent Tom Moore.
Moore, who started in July, said he was pleased to hear how Caroline Astrella, director of Target’s Skokie Store near the Yellow Line terminal on Dempster Street, quickly put the deal together with Bridges via an initial contact with the Skokie Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s pretty incredible,” said Astrella. “It’s one of the things where I knew immediately upon hearing it that the Target team was capable of (supporting the lab).
“I was looking for volunteer opportunities within the community. Target drives home community involvement within each store’s particular community. Because we’re so close, I wanted to have an impact in this community. I reached out to the Chamber of Commerce(in February) and was connected to District 219.”
Timing was everything. Lincolnwood Mayor Jesal Patel said District 219 first came to his village in February 2019 to re-locate Bridges into a permanent building. Previously, Bridges operated out of quarters at Niles North High School.
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Although Bridges selected a building at 4700 W. Chase, the program could not fully move in until August 2021 due to remote learning in response to COVID. Other rooms for students were up and running well in time for Astrella’s first visit.
“I was completely blown away,” she said. “It was incredible about the work they’re doing here and it was just amazing to all the simulation rooms and the labs they had. They shared the superstore room with me, and it was empty.”
Astrella informed her superiors, and Target tapped into $25,000 in a grant program and another $15,000 in furnishings to outfit a simulated store to train students for various jobs, including cashiers, general merchandise and cart attendants.
Sweat equity was provided by 30 volunteers from area Target stores to set up “a little bit of everything,” said Astrella, in simulating store operations.
Astrella said she already has hired a Bridges alum, and Patel projected jobs just a block away.
“Businesses along Touhy need students coming out of the program,” he said. “Post-pandemic, there is a need for skilled, trained labor.”
Bridges alums were praised for their dedication and loyalty.
“People with disabilities are some of the hardest workers,” said Kate Stewart, Bridges’ director of transition services. “They’re less likely to take a day off to job-hop.”
One aspect that caught Astrella’s attention was Bridges’ ability to train students for a myriad of careers. In attendance with her father, Morton Grove Mayor Dan DiMaria, was Bridges student Danielle DiMaria. The younger DiMaria, who is not attending a conventional college, is preparing to become a pre-school teacher. She’s in her fourth and final year at Bridges.
“They teach you communication skills and money skills,” she said.
Meanwhile, Moore called the Target-Bridges deal “a signature investment.” But it potentially opens the door for more job-training programs sponsored by businesses, given, he indicated, that not all high school students should be college-bound, given their aptitude and needs for skilled workers.
“I’m the youngest of seven in my family, and the only one who went to college,” Moore said. “My father was in Local 12 plumbers and pipefitters in Boston. My brothers were construction workers in Boston. When I say that, people act like I’ve overcome (a blue-collar background). I respond, no, no, they love their work and I just chose a different path.
“The dignity of work is something that’s special. There’s no such thing as unskilled labor. There’s a kind of fetishization of the Ivy League and ‘my kid’s going to Northwestern.’ I do know that (with) every superintendent I talk to, that there is a focus of a life pipeline, ‘what are we preparing you for in life?'”
Moore indicated his openness to the concept of several superintendents in adjoining districts pooling their efforts to link up with job-training institutions.
“We should be meeting with our trade unions and getting investment from our skilled labor unions with apprenticeships coming straight through from schools to the unions,” he said. “We should be meeting with companies and corporations. Manufacturing is coming back in America. But we don’t (yet) have the workforce for it. That’s a role we can play.”
