NEWS BRIEF: Atlanta Tech, Acuity Brands, and City of Atlanta team to boost technical job training

Atlanta Technical College is teaming with the city of Atlanta and Acuity Brands to create more job opportunities.

$1.8 million will go to complete Atlanta Tech’s Center for Workforce Innovation, a development center allowing Atlantans to get training in areas of infrastructure, tech, logistics, and health. The center was started in 2018 under then-mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.

Current Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said this of the new partnership, “Public-private partnerships work. They work by encouraging job growth and by offering targeted education and skills training to individuals by addressing the immediate needs of high demand professionals.”

$50,000 from the city of Atlanta will go the start of Atlanta-based lighting company Acuity Brands’ separate job training program, also in partnership with Atlanta Tech. The company hopes to provide five-week training courses to future electricians, lab technicians, and commercial truck drivers. The program, beginning in October, will see Acuity Brands working in tandem with Atlanta Tech to recruit students.

Acuity Brands CEO Neil Ashe remarked on the importance of the program, “We’re going to need to double the size of the grid in the United States over the course of the next 20 or 30 years. At the same time, the number of electricians in America is going down. So not only do we need twice as much capacity, the actual number of people in that role is going down.” ajc.com