At least one San Antonio councilman thinks it’s time to shift gears on the city’s highly touted workforce training program, which he believes is falling short of its goals.

The City of San Antonio’s highly-touted workforce training program got a slower start than anticipated in its first year.

Ready to Work aims to enroll more than 28,000 San Antonians into training aligned with high-quality jobs.

Instead of interviewing 9,817 people in the first year as it originally expected, the city now only expects to interview 7,086 by June 30 - a 28% drop. And it only expects to get half as many people enrolled in a certification or degree program - 2,882 instead of 5,758.

The City of San Antonio’s Ready to Work program has expanded eligibility requirements to include military community members.

Moving people from low-paying jobs into additional opportunities is the goal behind the Ready to Work SA program.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh said the federal government should be investing in programs like Ready to Work, which uses city sales tax dollars to fund job training and degree programs for low-income residents.

Ready to Work is an educational and job placement program formed to help thousands of San Antonians improve their quality of life.

By Wednesday morning, 16 days after enrollment opened, the city said 2,835 people had applied for the program, roughly twice what the executive director of Workforce Development said he had been expecting.

City leaders including Ron Nirenberg, District 8 Councilman, Manny Peláez, Ready to Work Executive Director, Mike Ramsey and others will participate in the event.

The city expects to place more than 28,000 people into either certification and degree programs through Ready to Work and subsequently get at least 15,700 of them into “high-quality,” in-demand jobs.

In a presentation to council members, city staff laid out the basic structure of the program, which is expected to place put more than 28,000 people into either certification and degree programs and result in at least 15,728 people into “high-quality” jobs in in-demand fields.

SAN ANTONIO – Tuesday night was one of celebration for San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who saw voters overwhelmingly approve a sales tax to pay for his SA: Ready to Work program. As of a mid-day tally of votes on Wednesday, Proposition B had passed with 76.9% approval from San Antonio voters. “We will also work out over the next intervening months the actual work plan -- the implementation plan -- that will be presented and finalized and approved in the spring of ’21. The workforce program is meant to take over around the time an existing workforce training program, under the city’s COVID-19 Recovery and Resiliency Plan, is finishing up. The city will collect the tax through the end of 2025 before it is diverted to transportation funding, which San Antonio voters also approved on Tuesday.