New trade school builds hope

“Right now it looks like a maze,” electrical instructor Al Cabael says, holding up the tangled Day-Glo yellow and blue safety harness for his afternoon students to see. “But you can see how it fits together. You’ll have to do that today.”

In moments, Cabael has strapped on the harness to demonstrate how it is worn, buckling a metal clasp to secure it across his chest and linking a safety line to one of its U-shaped rings. Next come the hard hat, the goggles and the gloves, all the fittings of a modern construction worker ready for a day’s labor. Among the tests today at the newly opened Northern Marianas Trades School is whether the handful of students watching can duplicate this routine.

“Okay, now it’s your turn,” he says. “Who’s going first?”

A pregnant pause follows with each of them quietly urging one another to go ahead of the others.

“Ladies first,” one says to 22-year-old Loretta Romolor, the class’ lone female student—here to study carpentry and construction techniques—who rolls her eyes playfully and steps forward, pursued by some nervous laughter.

Romolor makes quick work of the routine, connecting the harness’ straps and buckles as her fellow students watch to memorize how.

The lesson is a simple one, designed to equip these students with the basic essentials to work on a construction site or in any one of several vital trades. Yet Romolor and 36 others like her, including six women, are playing a critical role in one local philanthropist’s bid—with support from the community—to bolster the CNMI’s skilled labor force and revive its economy by giving these students the skills they need to have meaningful trade-based careers.

“Our only requirement to attend this school is that you have an intense passion to learn a trade,” says Anthony Pellegrino, the businessman who opened the nonprofit school nearly six weeks ago, financing its startup costs on his own dime.

The school, soon to begin a major expansion outside of the small series of classrooms it now occupies in the village of Dandan, trains students to become carpenters, plumbers and electricians. After completing coursework in their field, the students will gain a journeyman’s license that empowers them to work anywhere in the United States, Guam or the CNMI as a skilled tradesman.

Training these students, Pellegrino says, is vital to the CNMI’s economic future as the pending federal takeover of local immigration and foreign labor rules draws nigh. Business leaders throughout the CNMI, an economy now largely dependant on foreign workers, have long said that “federalization” could cost them the skilled labor they need. Pellegrino believes that his school is the first step to addressing the shortage of specialized tradesmen this shift in the workforce could create.

“Now is the time to start training these people,” Pellegrino says, adding the school can help to “fill the gigantic vacuum” of foreign workers federalization might cause.

Yet the training students receive at the school—guided by four instructors—is only one dimension of Pellegrino’s plan to help get their careers off the ground. He has already helped a handful of them find jobs where they can apply their skills during the day to “complete the cycle,” as he put it, of their trade education. And to keep them engaged in building a new career, Pellegrino has also had adopted a new role as a motivational speaker.

“Come out of your shells, please,” he said recently to one of the school’s larger classes. “You’re all winners here. If you want to make money, you can create it with your hands if you just believe in yourself.”

Pellegrino’s coaching has paid off. Talking to the students reveals most are hopeful their training will lead to a promising life.

“This is a great opportunity for folks to learn a trade,” says 20-year-old Chris Eugenio, now training to become a plumber. “It’s fun. You get to meet lots of people and you get to learn, actually learn.”

Aloysius Romolor, 26, is aiming to become a carpenter. Working with his hands, he said, is almost second nature.

“I’ve always done stuff like that, helping around the house,” he says. “I want to learn this and maybe build my own house one day.”

Others have come to find a brand of subtle beauty in the work they are learning.

“It’s like art,” Loretta Romolor says. “Carpentry and the blueprints, when I look at that, it’s art to me.”

The new trade school is structured to operate around the daily schedules of its students—who range in age from 17 to 55—with evening classes at least two nights a week for two and a half hours. Students start with classes that train them in basic safety procedures, the use of power and hand tools, and how to read blueprints.

After completing their initial training, students then move forward into more specialized classes focused on the trades they have chosen and upon graduation, the school provides them help in starting private trade businesses.

After only six weeks, the potential the school has to revitalize the CNMI’s economy with skilled labor and inspire students has prompted local lawmakers and business leaders to take notice. Businesses have offered to recruit some of the students and this week, the Saipan delegation of the CNMI House approved legislation giving $100,000 to the school, money that will aid Pellegrino’s plans to revamp an old 3,500 square foot garment warehouse in Lower Base—obtained through a government lease—into a new hands-on practice site for the school’s curriculum.

Pellegrino has offered to let students work to get the site into shape in exchange for tuition breaks. The new building is expected to open in November.