First, there was Mined Minds, a nonprofit consulting firm that set up shop in a tiny coal patch in Greene County to retrain coal miners to work as software developers.
Then came Mining Your Business, a program intended to help coal workers to start and manage their own businesses, and From Black to Blue, which offers free natural gas pipeline training. There were other initiatives, too, envisioning laid-off Appalachian miners getting jobs with lamb farms and beekeepers, managing restaurants and hotels.
Individually, these efforts — with big promises and coal-suggestive titles — have garnered media attention and filled classrooms. They have also been aided by more than $10 million in federal money since October 2016, as more than a dozen grants have poured into Pennsylvania to help Appalachian economies transition away from coal.
The grants, issued by the Appalachian Regional Commission, are the foundation of an extraordinary economic development effort — one that hinges on the bet that miners and other coal-dependent workers will make the difficult leap into other careers.
The jury is still out on that question.
One of the biggest Pennsylvania efforts — a $1.4 million grant to train workers how to code — suffered a setback when Mined Minds pulled out of the state late last year. Mined Minds is now working in West Virginia alongside a second partner on the grant, with no immediate plans to bring coding classes back to Pennsylvania.
“These kinds of investments, they have a little bit of risk to them and that’s OK,” said Wendy Wasserman, the Appalachian Regional Commission’s communications director. “These are big, new ideas. They’re not gonna flip over results really quick. This program is still learning to walk.”
A mission to find miners
The programs began to proliferate toward the end of the Obama administration, when Congress approved $100 million in grants to the Power Initiative, to help Appalachian economies transition away from coal.
The Power Initiative, managed by the Washington, D.C.-based ARC, reflected a reality check among local officials who saw the need to diversify. Appalachia had watched 33,500 coal-mining jobs disappear between 2011 and 2016 as demand from power plants waned and new pollution regulations rolled out.
The median salary for U.S. coal miners stands at nearly $60,000, with many coal veterans making near six figures. Jobs around a closed mine often don’t come close to that median salary.
Though laid-off coal miners are the focus of these new training programs, participants come from jobs that depend on business from the mines. Part of the reason, some program managers suspect, is that miners have renewed hope.
In 2017, the coal industry in Pennsylvania recorded a net gain of about 100 jobs, due to mine openings in Somerset County. Those mines, which opened to fanfare in June and with a prerecorded video message from President Donald Trump, produce metallurgical coal for the steel industry.
“It can be a challenge to find [miners],” said Patrick Findle, program manager for the Gas Technology Institute, the Illinois-based group running From Black to Blue. “Some of them have been called back or some of them are waiting to be called back.”
Though the job gain for the state is a sharp change from about a 25 percent drop in 2016, employment in the industry remains historically low at fewer than 4,000 people, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Earlier this month, the 4 West Mine in Greene County announced it would close by the end of the year, sending 370 workers into unemployment. Last week, however, an agreement was reached between environmentalists and a coal company for a new mine under Fayette and Westmoreland counties.
About a quarter of the 50 people who have signed up for From Black to Blue come directly from the coal industry, “but we anticipate that number growing with awareness of the program and recent coal mine closures,” Mr. Findle said.
Casting a wide net
Appalachian Regional Commission grants allow programs to cast a wide net beyond unemployed coal miners, Ms. Wasserman said.
The money can be used to help any displaced worker or struggling business in communities hardest hit by the long-term decline in mining. In a report last week, ARC made the case that public school teachers — whose livelihoods rely on government funding that has shrunk with lost taxes from closed coal mines and power plants — could qualify.
The availability of money for retraining even has enticed industry proponents to get involved.
In January 2017, ARC approved a $1.2 million grant to the United Mine Workers of America Career Centers in Greene County to work with community colleges and trade schools to develop courses for miners to obtain a commercial driver’s license and study advanced manufacturing, mechanical engineering and cybersecurity.
Earlier this month, shortly after the 4 West Mine announcement, the center announced it had received another $3 million in state money to renovate its facilities.
“It should've been looked at many years ago, diversifying this county,” said Blair Zimmerman, Greene County commissioner and a former coal miner.
But investing in a variety of job sectors requires ensuring the local economy can handle such a shift in the workforce, he added. “These people who are being trained have to have somewhere to go.”
Big promises, growing too fast
Consider two grants totaling $2 million that were awarded to the Washington Greene County Job Training Agency Inc.
The first grant, issued in January 2017, approved $650,000 to fund From Black to Blue, a four-week program that combines classroom training on the basics of natural gas with field trips to training facilities operated by natural gas utilities.
Earlier this month, the program graduated its first class of 10 people near Freeport, Armstrong County.
Hiring managers from Peoples Natural Gas and Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania met with workers, emphasizing the need for workers as utilities upgrade their underground pipeline networks. More classes are underway with a goal of training 100 people.
The job training agency is also experimenting with a less established and mercurial job sector — to mixed results.
In June, the group received a grant for nearly $1.5 million to fund a coding initiative. The money was split between Mined Minds and CentralApp, a Huntington, W.Va.-based group that trains people to obtain three certifications to work with SalesForce, a customer service cloud computing platform, in four West Virginia counties.
In its grant award, the Appalachian Regional Commission hailed Mined Minds as a “proven software development training organization.” Founded by husband and wife Jonathan Graham and Amanda Laucher, the program had received media attention at its inception, including from the Post-Gazette.
On the ground, Mined Minds was hitting snags at that time.
Based in Waynesburg, the group was still finding the right model and struggling to graduate students, according to Mr. Graham and interviews with former participants. One participant who dropped out of the class said that Mined Minds seemed to be growing too fast — moving into West Virginia and going to industry conferences before students had gotten a handle on coding.
In addition to the classes, Mr. Graham had been hired by the Community College of Allegheny County to teach a coding class in Greene County during the fall of 2016. The class attracted only five or six students, who received state training funds for the class, and CCAC said it decided “to move in another direction” at the end of 2016, a college spokeswoman said.
On Nov. 1, the Pennsylvania Department of Education issued a cease-and-desist warning to the group, citing a lack of proper license. Instead of seeking the license, the group moved to West Virginia.
Then, the group was hit with a lawsuit in West Virginia by former participants. They alleged, among other things, the instructors had promised them jobs that never materialized, which Mined Minds has denied.
“It’s hard work getting into coding — there’s no way getting around that,” Mr. Graham said in an interview. “No one can expect to go through any training anywhere and expect to come out the other end and there’s a job waiting for them. It’s just not realistic.”
Mr. Graham brushed off the lawsuit as an “inconvenience” and its claims as “demonstrably false.” He claimed that the complainants had failed to finish the course and that “everyone who has completed the training successfully has been offered employment in the tech field.”
Mined Minds now gives classes in Clendenin, W.Va., about 22 miles northeast of Charleston, and, for now, doesn’t plan to move back into Pennsylvania, Mr. Graham said.
The group now requires participants to sign contracts setting clearer expectations and has extended the training to 32 weeks.
“We’re continuing to see more and more interest in firms outside of the area with developers in West Virginia,” he said.
business@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1601
First Published: January 28, 2018, 4:42 a.m.
