NEWBERRY — A new type of class came to the City of Newberry recently thanks to ElectriCities of North Carolina as they hosted the South Carolina Safety and Training School for linemen.
According to Tim Baker, City of Newberry utility director, this course contains a classroom portion, hosted at the Firehouse Conference Center, and a hands-on field training taking place behind the old Gallman School.
“The Newberry County School District retained the field by the school and are allowing ElectriCities to utilize it for the class,” Baker said.
This is the first class being held in South Carolina, Baker said, with two other schools in North Carolina. Those participating in the class are what Baker called apprentice linemen.
“They have to go through eight weeks of training, week one (being held in Newberry) is climbing school. There is another climbing school scheduled for the first part of April in Newberry,” he said. “The City of Newberry has two employees in the program right now, Eli Godwin and Garrett Jenkins, they are probably taking their week two courses in August.”
At this course, there are five trainers and 23 apprentices; to finish the first year of the program, the apprentices have to complete week one and two of the school and have 2,000 hours of on-the-job training. This apprenticeship program, according to Baker, was recently recognized for South Carolina through the U.S. Department of Labor.
Previously, municipal linemen in S.C. were trained through the South Carolina Electric and Gas Municipal Lineman Training Program, however, that program is no longer offered.
“Municipalities in South Carolina were forced to look for alternatives and ElectriCities of North Carolina offered to perform this program. At that time, they had two sites in North Carolina,” Baker said. “They were trying to find a host city close to the center part of the state.”
To date, Baker said they have eight of these classes planned for this year, including the second climbing class in April.
“They are going to continue to add schools because the demand is very high. This course is opened to South Carolina first, then opened to other places. The furthest participants here are from Elizabeth City, North Carolina,” Baker said.
When it comes to the impact this training school will have on Newberry, Baker brought up two points, the first being an economic impact.
“These guys are having lunches catered every day, as part of their tuition. These guys are in town for dinner in the evenings and as a part of the packages we submitted, we gave a list of local restaurants, everything from fine dining downtown to fast food. We wanted them to have all the options available to them,” Baker said. “We also have several hotels in town being used.”
The second impact Baker mentioned was the fact that it makes it easier to train City of Newberry linemen, they no longer have to travel for training and the networking aspect.
“Let people who do come train here, down the road, they may consider they want to come back to Newberry, may have had an impact on them,” Baker said. “Our hope, down the road, is to allow students from the career center to come and tour and observer training. People who may not look at the job as a career option may expose them to a field that they may be interested in that they otherwise not have known.”
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