The Hechinger Report weekly education newsletter

View in browser Weekly Update A newsletter from The Hechinger Report Sponsored by: In this week's edition: Corporations are partnering with local higher education institutions to mint data center technicians and skilled trades workers. As public school closures accelerate, research suggests they don’t save districts money and can also anger parents. Plus, how researchers count education dollars changes the answers to who gets less. A technician works at an Amazon Web Services AI data center in New Carlisle, Indiana. Credit: Noah Berger/Getty Images via Amazon Web Services Tech companies enlist colleges to help them train data center workers The artificial intelligence race has been a boon for construction workers, employing many thousands nationwide as sprawling data centers rise from the dirt. Eventually, the construction sounds will give way to a steady whir or whine emitted from giant, nondescript buildings filled with racks, servers, cables and cooling systems. Then what? That’s the question vexing economists and county planners alike. The outlook for whether data centers will boost regional economies after construction subsides remains fuzzy. A site that generated thousands of construction jobs for several months or a few years may only employ several hundred or fewer employees long term. But at least some workers will be needed to keep the buildings humming. Increasingly, the very corporations building data centers are playing a key role in training the operational workforce. Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle are among the companies partnering with local higher education institutions to mint data center technicians and skilled trades workers, with the promise of in-demand jobs. “It’s those mid-level jobs — the server technicians, the hardware technicians, those that have to maintain the infrastructure,” said Scott Adams, a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “There are hundreds of those jobs that are necessary, and those jobs need training because, in a sense, nobody has kind of done this explicit job before.” The training programs exist in practically all corners of the United States. Just to name a few: Columbus State Community College in Ohio offers a data center technician program in partnership with Amazon Web Services. New Mexico State University and the University of New Mexico work with Oracle Academy. Gateway Technical College in Wisconsin houses a Microsoft Datacenter Academy. This week's newsletter is sponsored by: Discover new ideas, practical strategies, and meaningful connections at the Council for Exceptional Children's (CEC) 2027 Convention, March 10–13 in Columbus, Ohio. Join educators, researchers, and leaders from across the field to explore innovative approaches, strengthen your practice, and gain insights to better support students with disabilities. Learn more. More communities are closing schools. The cuts may not be enough Minutes before first bell, Penny Núñez-Brandão scanned the crowd outside Glen Cove Elementary School, looking for familiar faces. “I don’t see any,” the fifth grader told her mom one morning this August. “None of my friends are coming.” The start of a new school year can be nerve-racking under any circumstances. But for Penny and thousands of students across the U.S., this academic year brought the added difficulty of adjusting to an entirely new school after their previous one shuttered. As U.S. birth rates continue a multi-decade slide and state and federal education funding dries up, an increasing number of cash-strapped school districts around the country have resorted to closing campuses to save money. A total of 1,156 schools closed during the last academic year — the highest number since the pandemic, according to an analysis of federal data by Big Local News at Stanford University. At the same time, new research shows student enrollment has fallen much faster than schools are closing — suggesting more painful financial