Hays County’s Skilled Trades Program builds a demonstration farm and a path to employment

By David N. Krough, TJJD Communications —

On the outskirts of San Marcos just down the road from the high school on the southside, behind the fence, there’s a little patch of innovation coming to life in Hays County.

The garden beds, greenhouse and koi fishpond are shaping up to showcase what permaculture/regenerative agriculture principles can be put in place by the kids enrolled in the Skilled Trades Program at the Hays County Juvenile Center detention facility.

With the right tools, materials and some elbow grease, they’ve laid the foundation for the farm of the future, courtesy of a partnership between the state, county and Austin Community College.

Supervisor Lt. Robert Rodriguez oversees the program along with Facility Administrator Joel Ware Jr. and Hays County Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Lisa Day.

The detention facility is certified to take in youth from more than 90 Texas counties. It provides these adjudicated and pre-adjudicated youth with educational classes, GED testing, mental and drug treatment counseling.

As many corrections professionals know, recidivism is the great puzzle to be solved and staff are always looking out for new ways to help reduce that statistic.

“(Kids are) leaving here, some successful, some unsuccessful – but why do the kids who are leaving (become) successful once they leave?” Ware asked. He, Day and other Hays County staff believe that offering kids real-world vocational skills is one important answer.

Hays County Builds a Construction Program

The idea for a vocational program, now known as Skilled Trades Program (STP), began in 2018 out of a proposal from Austin Community College to help kids on probation stay out of trouble.

TJJD Central Regional and Community Program Administrator James Wilson says up until then there were very limited vocational training options at detention or probation facilities in the area.

“The program fills a significant need in the region,” Wilson said.

At first, staff brought in the materials for an HVAC project for youth on probation to work on at the facility. With transportation being a concern for many probation kids and their families, the department leadership decided that the vocational program could be more effective serving adjudicated youth in detention.

“We started exploring it and it made way more sense to do it with kids that we could control better and you got your hands on them for a certain amount of time, so that you can get them through” Day said.

Operating on an annual TJJD state grant of $72,000, staff were able to outfit the program for HVAC training, electrical, welding and National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) certification. The classes for each cohort run for 10-13 weeks. Ware screens potential applicants first.

“We’ll see how many kids we have here and we’re looking for probably eight to 10 kids, then I’ll get the counselors involved . . . and I’ll say, ‘Hey STP is going to start from this day to that date. Who do you feel like is appropriate to be in that program?’” Ware said.

Ware then will go over the list with supervisors to assess who seems like a good fit and Rodriguez has final approval of the youth, who range between 15 to 17 years old.

Ware says if any of the participating youth are getting in trouble, they need to identify exactly why and explain to them that staying in the program is dependent upon doing counseling, staying in school and not having any issues in the dorm. The youth learn what it’s like to be in a real-world employment situation.

“An individual that’s going to kind of show some promise – we’re trying to give an opportunity,” Ware said. “It’s not just for the kids who have been here for a while or the kids that are moving in the right direction. I’m trying to show the kids that you may be working with coworkers that you may not see eye-to-eye with . . . you need to be able to professionally work out your disagreements amongst each other.”

Learning the skills and earning certifications is a powerful motivation for the youth in STP, Ware said. But he and the staff have sweetened the perks by providing the participants with customized polo shirt uniforms they get to wear in STP.

“Once we put the kids in that (uniform), all the other kids wanted to get into the program,” Ware said. “We have pre-adjudicated kids trying to get in the program.”

Ware says even though these kids are still in detention, staff are trying to push them into a true school setting and get them to understand official job training.

“You just can’t go through this training wearing any type of clothes, shirts untucked, wearing any type of shoes,” he said. “You have to look like you want to be there and you have to dress the part as well . . . it’s going to take you to a level of professionalism that you didn’t think that you had.”

Alongside Mentors and Teachers Youth Learn They Can Do It All

The first few weeks of STP is in classroom, before anyone ever gets to even lay a hand on any tools, to go over construction concepts and OSHA 10 safety certifications with their teacher Alexander Hughes, an NCCER certified instructor.

Hughes owns his own air conditioning business with five employees and teaches construction classes in the area as well as his work with the Hays County youth. He previously helped out similar programs in Travis and Williamson counties.

One of the first projects the STP crew embarked on the past year was a greenhouse, which the students partially assembled inside and then brought out to a field behind the detention center where it sits adjacent to the garden beds and the koi fishpond, which is under construction.

“This is pretty legit,” Ware said, observing the greenhouse. “Once he (Hughes) started to build, teach the kids how to use the tools and make the design of the greenhouse, they took it outside and they put it together and I was like, ‘This is pretty nice!’”

Ware said he wanted to make sure the greenhouse would be stable enough to withstand spring winds and weather and not flip over. Hughes told him “that’s not a problem.” He and the students built a slab, lifted the greenhouse on top and bolted it into place.

“I was blown away,” Ware said.

The goal of the set-up is ultimately to be a closed food system. The waste from the fish is the fertilizer for the plants; some of the plants feed the fish; rainfall and irrigation facilitate the flow – a win-win scenario that replicates nature in the wild. It’s not big monolithic, one-crop agriculture. It’s what is known as “permaculture,” popular with sustainability experts and people seeking a more organic diet that is pesticide and chemical-free.

“I like all of the all of the classes that we’ve had, each one of them has built a section,” said Steven Harris, workforce program coordinator for ACC Continuing Education’s Correctional Education Program. “You’ve got a greenhouse right here; we have a Koi pond, and everything is our ecosystem. It’s energy efficient … the vegetables and the plants and the water, just the way they do the piping, all of the water just transfers over the gazebo over there for the therapeutic little Koi pond.”

Hughes said a lot of his inspiration relating to the kids comes from his wife who teaches high school.

“This guy at our high school that does like a small aquaponic thing,” Hughes said of their latest project. “And he’s like ‘Man I’d love to do this like full scale.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, what are you talking? How full scale?’ So, he kind of gave me the idea and I went, well … I can do that here (in Hays Co.)”

Hughes says the next feature they want to add is a solar panel to charge a battery, which could be used to run pumps, irrigation, lighting or anything else electrical they may need.

“These guys, this is the best run program there is,” Hughes said of his current crew. “These guys are on the ball and these kids are, I think, the most focused, the most dedicated. We have the best results.”

His students tend to agree. When they leave detention, they’ll move on with certified skills, able to make a living at something they have come to enjoy.

“I’ve done this type of work before, I like to,“ youth L.G. said. “My grandpa also, he does roofing. He’s a mechanic, he’s a plumber, he does detailing, he does pretty much everything. So, I would like to carry on that legacy.”

The greenhouse suffered a bit in the latest hailstorms, with pockmarks and holes punched through a lot of the panels, but Hughes says their first project of 2025 will be replacing those with much sturdier plexiglass. Because there’s always more work to do on the farm.

The STP program has also recently partnered with Texas State University’s horticulture program to come in and help germinate seeds in the spring.

“Maybe someone in their family (farmed) or there was a backyard garden and then it’s very empowering,” Ware says. “I did it, it grew and … it’s amazing how every little project can connect if you can be creative with it. Also, with the help of the TJJD fund, it is just amazing.”

“We have some good kids,” Ware said. “We have some kids that are kind of on the fence and we might even have a kid that probably shouldn’t be with STP. But let’s see how they do, what they do, how they work. It’s a real-life situation.”

Rodriguez says with the STP program, the other residents see the youth there looking different in a special uniform, pants and a polo and they want to be a part of it.

“It depends on your behavior,” Rodriguez says. “It depends on how you are out here. We can trust you because … you’re around screwdrivers, tools, you’re around different things in there and you’re outside with us and there’s a level of responsibility. Whenever they come here, and they see all that and they see them out and about doing things, they get really interested, they get really excited. Some of them even want to do STP all over again.”