Comprehensive Youth Apprenticeship Program

Subdivision 1. Academic instruction and work-related learning. Comprehensive youth apprenticeship programs and other work-based learning programs under the education and employment transitions system must integrate academic instruction and work-related learning in the classroom and at the workplace. Schools, in collaboration with learners' employers, must use competency-based measures to evaluate learners' progress in the program. Learners who successfully complete the program must receive academic and occupational credentials from the participating school. Subd. 2. Youth apprenticeship programs. (a) A comprehensive youth apprenticeship program must require representatives of secondary and postsecondary school systems, affected local businesses, industries, occupations and labor, as well as the local community, to be actively and collaboratively involved in advising and managing the program and ensuring, in consultation with local private industry councils, that the youth apprenticeship program meets local labor market demands, provides student apprentices with the high skill training necessary for career advancement, meets applicable state graduation requirements and labor standards, pays apprentices for their work and provides support services to program participants. (b) Local employers, collaborating with labor organizations where appropriate, must assist the program by analyzing workplace needs, creating work-related curriculum, employing and adequately paying youth apprentices engaged in work-related learning in the workplace, training youth apprentices to become skilled in an occupation, providing student apprentices with a workplace mentor, periodically informing the school of an apprentice's progress, and making a reasonable effort to employ youth apprentices who successfully complete the program. (c) A student participating in a comprehensive youth apprenticeship program must sign a youth apprenticeship agreement with participating entities that obligates youth apprentices, their parents or guardians, employers, and schools to meet program requirements; indicates how academic instruction, work-based learning, and worksite learning and experience will be integrated; ensures that successful youth apprentices will receive a recognized credential of academic and occupational proficiency; and establishes the wage rate and other benefits for which youth apprentices are eligible while employed during the program. (d) Secondary school principals, counselors, or business mentors familiar with the education to employment transitions system must inform entering secondary school students about available occupational and career opportunities and the option of entering a youth apprenticeship or other work-based learning program to obtain postsecondary academic and occupational credentials.