How a Texas High School Helped a Water Utility Find New Workers

Eric Rauschuber, director of public works and utilities for Cedar Park, Texas, had a problem: His water workforce was aging and there wasn’t a pipeline of workers to take over their jobs. He already had unfilled positions because of service demands from his rapidly growing community, an Austin suburb.

This situation is common among local governments, responsible for the vast majority of drinking and wastewater systems. One in three water utility workers will be eligible to retire over the next decade, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Taking expansion into account, utilities are expected to need new workers for the majority of their 300,000 jobs over this period.

The outlook for Cedar Park began to change two years ago when Carrie Coble joined the city’s Human Resources Department, bringing decades of tech sector HR experience to her new job. As she began to assess the city’s needs, her attention was drawn to double-digit openings across its Public Works Department. Filling licensed operator positions was a particular challenge. Her first question was where the city went to recruit for these jobs.

“They had agencies that they worked with, and I thought, ‘Why aren’t we looking at high schools?’,” Coble says.

There would be some students who didn’t plan to go to college. If they could earn a provisional license before they graduated, they’d be on the path to a career with the city.

Building such a pipeline depended on a partnership with a local school, and Coble found a local educator whose enthusiasm for the project matched her own.

Building a Program

The city had reached out to the school district years ago for help getting young people interested in opportunities at water utilities, Rauschuber says, but the idea never gained traction.

It was a different story in 2023 when Coble connected with Sarah Spradling, a work-based learning specialist at the Leander Independent School District. Schools in Leander, about 10 miles from Cedar Park, serve young people from several Greater Austin communities, Cedar Park among them.

Spradling had recently come to the district as associate director of career and technical education. In her first week on the job, a meeting with city officials opened her eyes to the potential to build curriculum around water utility jobs. She took this up with Coble, who had reached out to her.

“We had students who were going to be seniors, who were looking for work opportunities to extend their learning and get high school credit for it at the same time,” says Spradling. “That's where this was a really perfect marriage.”

From the beginning, the intention was to offer students a paid apprenticeship, following a model used by both industry and federally funded programs. The end product would be both work experience and a provisional certification in water plant operations that would qualify apprentices for a job offer from the water utility.

Bose and Spradling developed curriculum that was accredited by the Leander Independent School District and and the Texas Education Agency. The water utility agreed to provide funding for an initial group of three apprentices. Applicants would be selected through the same application and interview process used to hire full-time employees.

Coble and Spradling got to work developing marketing and branding materials that would attract applicants.

Kids Absorb Everything

There were some basic requirements. Students needed to be entering their senior year, commit to a minimum of 30 hours a week to their apprenticeship and be 18 by the time they completed it. Interviews took place in May and June 2024, each preceded by a tour of the utility. The three students who were selected began their apprenticeships in August.

The utility field crews were excited to have young people around them that they could teach and train, Rauschuber says. “The kids just absorb everything,” he says. “Even if they want to learn a piece of equipment that may not be in their normal job duties, we will train them.”

Public Works staff supervised on-the-job training as well as students’ study periods devoted to certification curriculum. The program ran through May of this year. All three apprentices were offered jobs at the utility, and all accepted.
The students who participated told Spradling that the experience helped them better understand the role of city government, and public works in particular. “They felt there was so much value in giving back to their community, that without that department the city could not function,” she says.

Next year, the program will be expanded to six apprentices, and Coble is already seeing “double digit” preregistration for interviews due to word of mouth.

Not Going Anywhere

City jobs were not on her radar before this partnership, Spradling says. As Coble walked her through all the types of professionals that the city employs, it became clear that the district could partner with the city for virtually all its career and technical education programs. “It was hugely eye-opening,” she says.

A recently enacted Texas bill allows high school students to spend two days of their junior and senior years doing job shadowing. Spradling launched a program to send them to shadow Cedar Park workers. Leander city leaders took notice and asked to be included in this.

Cedar Park has also offered a summer externship to Leander educators to help them gain a better understanding of job opportunities at the city and the skills its HR department is looking for in applicants. This training encompasses the city’s onboarding and interview process, so teachers can help students be better prepared to apply.

There have been some hiccups, Spradling says, but the close collaboration with the city and Coble’s perseverance overcame them. It took time to work out the right way to market the program to students. This starts with getting district educators on board, they found, including tours of the Public Works Department so they had firsthand exposure to its operations and the work students would do.

Spradling remains struck by the satisfaction the first apprentices expressed in having jobs with purpose, something that is important to Gen Z. “That makes me feel good about directing students to this type of work,” she says.

Rauschuber notes that the jobs he and his colleagues are working to fill offer something else that is valuable at this time: stability.

Some of the apprentices asked for a month off before they began their jobs.

“We said, ‘That’s fine.’ We’ve been here since 1973,” he says. “We’re not leaving.”