SAN ANTONIO – In a little over two weeks, the city’s new, highly-publicized jobs program has attracted a surge of applicants.
Enrollment opened on May 16 for the Ready To Work program, which helps bankroll low-income San Antonio residents’ tuition for job training and degree programs. City officials say they want to enroll more than 28,000 people over the next five years and ultimately get more than 15,600 of them placed in well-paying jobs in in-demand fields once they’re done.
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By Wednesday morning, 16 days after enrollment opened, the city said 2,835 people had applied for the program, roughly twice what Mike Ramsey, executive director of Workforce Development, said he had been expecting.
“The response that we’re getting from the community in just a couple of weeks since the program was launched has been phenomenal. But it just points to the need that people have here and the desire to improve their skill set,” Ramsey said.
Voters agreed to use sales tax dollars to fund the program through the end of 2025 during the November 2020 election.
The first participants are expected to begin training programs as early as July.