Adriana Infante had a seasonal job with the U.S. Postal Service, so she perhaps shouldn’t have been surprised when she was laid off.
But she had previously been out of work for a year, caring for her mother after a cancer diagnosis, so the layoff stung. She filed for unemployment, and a case worker connected her to Workforce Solutions Alamo after hearing she was interested in school or training.
She eventually enrolled in Ready to Work, San Antonio’s $200 million job training program, where she was matched with what’s known as a pre-apprenticeship program through Cavalry, a local nonprofit that offers apprenticeships in project management.
Infante, 34, is learning the fundamentals of project management in construction. Ready to Work pays part of her tuition, and Cavalry makes up the rest. If she successfully completes the pre-apprenticeship classes, she’ll move into a more traditional apprenticeship program.
Right now, she takes online classes at night and works during the day for a construction supplier.
“I said I was enrolling in construction project management and they said, ‘Great, you’re hired,'” Infante said. “I am so grateful Workforce Solutions had this as an option, because it really has been a great blessing for me. It’s already made me feel so confident going to work.”
Cavalry’s program is a modern version of the apprenticeships of yore, when master craftsmen employed young people as inexpensive labor in exchange for learning a skill. It is exactly the kind of program Ready to Work is trying to expand, thanks to a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.
‘Tried and true model’
The grant was awarded a year ago, and since then, San Antonio’s Workforce Development Office, which oversees Ready to Work, has been hiring, researching and planning to get the money spent by 2026.
The grant is meant to help with the technical requirements necessary to create and expand registered apprenticeships under the Department of Labor’s Apprenticeship Building America program.
Mike Ramsey, executive director of the city’s Workforce Development Office, said apprenticeships are a valuable option for those who cannot forgo a paycheck but still need career advancement.
Apprenticeships offer benefits to employers as well, he said: They have control over how apprentices are trained, labor costs for that training are fixed, many programs are eligible for tax credits, and retention rates for apprentices is above 90%.
But many employers are hesitant to use apprenticeship programs, worried that they are too complicated or expensive. Texas as a whole is behind the curve on apprenticeship programs, Ramsey said. He hopes the grant program can help demystify the process and encourage more employers to give them a try.
“Employers are going to have to invest in upskilling and training people to meet their needs,” Ramsey said, “and apprenticeships are a tried and true model to do that.”
The federal grant funded the hiring of Joshua Scott to administer the apprenticeship program. He previously managed apprenticeship programs at the Southwest Campus of St. Philip’s College.
The grant has funded four additional employees, including one focused on outreach and marketing. The goal is to reach both employers who may not have considered the benefits of apprenticeships and populations the federal government would like to see enroll in greater numbers, such as women, people of color and those with disabilities.
Scott said he found about 40 existing registered apprenticeship programs in San Antonio. “Registered” is the key word; for programs to be eligible for help from the grant, they must be registered with the Department of Labor. That means they must include a certain number of hours of documented on-the-job training, related classroom instruction, a mentor and wage progression with increased skills, all of which culminates in a nationally recognized industry credential.
Avoiding a lengthy process
Scott and his team are facilitating the creation of apprenticeships in industries that have not traditionally used apprenticeship programs, such as tech and health care.
In those fields, the team worked with Safal Partners to create a registered apprenticeship program for three occupations: IT generalist, software developer and cyber security specialists. It’s also working with Health Career Advancement Program to create apprenticeships in health care.
These structured programs take the burden off the employers to come up with their own curriculum. In that way, they’re similar to existing apprenticeship programs like Texas Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education, or TX FAME, an umbrella organization of advanced manufacturers that allow companies to use its registered apprenticeship program rather than having to stand up their own.
“It would be quite a lengthy, cumbersome process for each company to have to go through that process individually,” said Leslie Cantu, president of the TX FAME board.
Cantu, whose day job is assistant vice president of administration for Toyota supplier Toyotetsu Texas Inc., is deeply involved in workforce development in San Antonio. In addition to her work with TX FAME, she chairs the Workforce Solutions Alamo board, giving her a front row to the challenges faced by employers seeking to hire experienced talent.
She said the TX FAME model has proven very successful. The chapter began with five member companies and now boasts 18. It partners with St. Philip’s Southwest Campus for its classroom component.
The chapter also offers a 10-week, bootcamp style program, TX FAST, that offers successful participants six weeks of on-the-job training in entry-level technician positions. Both the apprenticeship program and bootcamp are part of Ready to Work; Scott worked with the board’s leadership to get the bootcamp approved as a “pre-apprenticeship” program, since it is a funnel to TX FAME.
The City of San Antonio is also stepping up, Ramsey said, creating registered apprenticeship programs around some of its critical need areas, including IT, Animal Care Services and Solid Waste Management.
Pre-apprenticeships
Pre-apprenticeship programs are often aimed at younger people, as well as those who may not yet have the skills to directly enter a true apprenticeship. Because pre-apprenticeships don’t come with a paycheck, the federal grant offers a stipend of $500 to help participants defray costs.
Cavalry, too, is expanding its pre-apprenticeship pipeline thanks to the grant program. Like TX FAME, Cavalry offers registered apprenticeship programs that employers can tap into, in three pathways: construction, IT and finance. To get to the apprenticeship, participants complete pre-apprenticeship classes that cover everything from terminology to ethics.
“Project management is needed in every field,” said Tracie Edmond, a professor in the accounting department at the University of the Incarnate Word who founded Cavalry in 2003. “It’s a transferable skill.” She noted that even those who complete only the pre-apprenticeship program will earn a Project Management Ready certification, which is enough for well-paid entry-level positions.
By the end of 2026, the grant program is expected to have created four new registered apprenticeship programs and expanded another eight, and created eight new pre-apprenticeship programs and expanded 16 more, Ramsey said.
The Workforce Development Office aims to have at least 340 people successfully complete an apprenticeship, earning credentials that lead to better-paying jobs, and another 500 complete pre-apprenticeships by the end of the grant program’s four years.
Whether the city’s workforce development team can achieve the numerical goals attached to the grant is an open question given the perception some employers have around the costs and red tape necessary to create registered programs, convincing employers in fields that haven’t traditionally considered apprenticeships to give them a go and then making sure Ready to Work caseworkers are encouraging participants to enroll.
Ramsey said focusing on numbers is only part of the equation. He’s also keenly focused on building a lasting workforce development structure among employers, trainers, the local workforce board and higher education that outlasts Ready to Work.
Infante’s satisfaction with the program she’s enrolled in is helping with another key aspect of both Ready to Work and expanding apprenticeship opportunities: getting the word out.
“I tell a lot of people like me, who feel like they’re stuck in the same place, ‘I’ve been there,'” she said. “I tell them, ‘You probably qualify for Ready to Work. Workforce Solutions [Alamo] will help you. Go talk to someone there.'”
