Coppell Chronicle Vol. 6, No. 20
School Offers Boot Camps for Trades Training • Families Queue in Advance of Squishy Drop • Council Refines Rules for Naming Facilities • Ground Broken for Homes at Coppell’s Border
School Offers Boot Camps for Trades Training
Skilled tradespeople are in demand from coast to coast, and a school right outside Coppell’s city limits is putting more of them into the workforce.
ForgeNow was founded in 2020; the school’s name is a reference to its founders’ belief that “anyone, at any point in life, can forge a new path forward with the right guidance and opportunity.” Last year, the school moved from Dallas to a former call center near the north end of Denton Tap Road in Lewisville.
The school offers six-week boot camps that train students in one of four fields: electrical wiring, facilities maintenance, HVAC maintenance, and plumbing. Nick Waterman, ForgeNow’s business development manager, said students refine their resumes in the second week, so those documents can start being distributed in the third week.
“Our goal is to have as many students as possible walk across the graduation stage with a job offer in hand,” Waterman said.
Waterman said ForgeNow has placed graduates with more than 250 employers in 39 states so far. A wall near the school’s lobby is decorated with dozens of baseball caps bearing those companies’ logos plus a map pinpointing their locations.
“No matter where you want to go, we’re gonna help you find a job in that market,” ForgeNow co-founder Marvin Key said.
Ali Degraffenreed is the director of training and workforce development at Red’s Electric, a firm headquartered in Whitesboro, Texas, that has hired more than a dozen ForgeNow graduates. She said an onboarding specialist recently asked her what to prioritize: a recommendation from a current employee or a certificate from ForgeNow.
“My answer was immediate: ForgeNow,” she said.
Because ForgeNow expects its students to show up at 7 a.m. every day in the school’s uniform, Degraffenreed said the experience is like a six-week jobsite. Students who miss more than 10 percent of their classes can’t finish the program, and that’s an aspect Degraffenreed appreciates.
“That’s a vetting process that I now don’t have to deal with on my jobsite,” Degraffenreed said.
The cost of ForgeNow’s program is $12,000, and that fee helps cover several benefits. The aforementioned uniforms are supplied to each student, as are catered hot lunches on a daily basis. Each student is also given a set of Milwaukee tools tailored to their chosen field that they get to keep after graduation. Additionally, lodging scholarships are available, because many students are veterans with no ties to the Dallas area.
The flags of the six branches of the U.S. military are displayed in the ForgeNow lobby; the school is affiliated with the Department of War’s SkillBridge program, and students with GI Bill benefits can use them to pay their tuition. Coppell resident Mark Smits joined ForgeNow’s advisory board after meeting co-founder Rob Holmes via the Military Order of the World Wars.
Smits is not the only way ForgeNow is making inroads in Coppell. The school has joined the Coppell Chamber of Commerce, and its employees have begun a dialogue with Coppell High School’s counselors. An overwhelming majority of CHS graduates enroll at four-year colleges and universities, but ForgeNow could be an attractive alternative for students not interested in that path.
The demand for ForgeNow’s training is expected to keep growing. For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that employment of electricians will increase by 9 percent between 2024 and 2034, “much faster than the average for all occupations.” About 81,000 openings for electricians are projected each year, on average, over that decade.
“To facilitate the type of growth that they want to see, the graduating high school student is key,” Smits said.
A Brief Promotional Interruption
I’m hoping this newsletter gained new subscribers via the print editions that were distributed during the Parade Down Parkway and the Party in the Park on Saturday. The following businesses and organizations made those print editions possible. They’re all owned or led by Coppell residents, and those folks have my gratitude.
I also want to shout out Karthika Dayanand, the Coppell High School senior who designed the print edition, and Adrian Holguin, who supplied the photos for the cover story about the Plunger Boy tradition at CHS.
If you’re new here, you may be wondering who I am and why I launched the Chronicle in 2021. Luckily, I have a short video to explain all that. Just a few weeks ago, I returned to Allegheny College in Pennsylvania for my 30-year reunion, which coincided with a celebration of the 150th anniversary of The Campus, the student newspaper that launched my career. I was among six alumni who spoke about how our Campus experiences influenced our adult lives. My speech was called “Journalism as a Terminal Diagnosis.”
Regarding my status as a “minor celebrity,” as mentioned in the video: When I showed up to report on the event detailed in the next article, one of the women waiting in line said, “Oh my gosh, the Coppell Chronicle is here.”
Families Queue in Advance of Squishy Drop
One thing I love about being a journalist is the periodic opportunities to learn new things. For example, until last Thursday, I’d never heard of NeeDoh, the latest obsession for young families nationwide.
NeeDoh is a brand of squishy toys that are akin to stress balls. The promotional copy on its parent company’s website describes the “groovy glob” as being “all about stretching, smushing, squeezing, and soothing your way to the best mellow and chill.”
That phrasing is ironic, considering the unchill behavior that NeeDoh products have inspired in consumers. The brand got on my radar courtesy of Chronicle subscriber Tracey Dillard, who was among dozens of people lined up outside the Jabo’s Ace Hardware in Coppell on Thursday morning, waiting for the doors to open at 8 so they could get their hands on new squishies.
The first two adults in line told me they got there at 6 o’clock; they were friends who’d driven from Decatur and Prosper after seeing a teaser on Jabo’s social media accounts. The first Coppell residents in line were Courtney Shaver and her daughter Caroline, 13, who arrived at 6:50.
“Parents have these ‘never say never’ moments,” Shaver said. “I always said, ‘I’ll never wake up at 6:30 a.m. to get a squishy for my kid,’ but look at me.”
Shortly before 8, Jabo’s general manager Doug Finley came outside to make an announcement: That day’s drop included NeeDoh squishies shaped like jellyfish and cats, and each customer would be allowed to buy only one. But squishies shaped like dumplings, which are manufactured by other companies, were also available, and each customer could buy two of those.
Finley told me the squishy craze has been raging for months. He said new releases are coordinated at all five Jabo’s locations. Finley had seen at least 20 people lined up outside his employer’s Keller store by 6 o’clock that morning.
Jenny Guo, an assistant professor of marketing at Binghamton University in New York, told NBC News that the frenzy for these toys was the result of a perfect storm.
“People kept posting videos of them online, demand built slowly, and then scarcity kicked in,” Guo said. “Once things got hard to find, everyone wanted them. That’s a pattern we see again and again in consumer behavior.”
This pattern should sound familiar to people old enough to remember the mania surrounding Beanie Babies in the ’90s and Cabbage Patch Kids in the ’80s. And both of those crazes happened before the Internet was widely available. Speaking of the Internet, when I visited the website for Schylling, the manufacturer of NeeDoh toys, I was greeted by this pop-up message: “Thanks for your patience. Demand for NeeDoh and our other products is exceptionally high right now, so we’re taking a short pause on new orders.”
Shaver and her daughter walked out of Ace Hardware on Thursday morning with a pair of jellyfish, which they said was the more-coveted variety. A few minutes later, Coppell resident Jill Hill exited the store with son Alex, 10, and daughter Norah, 8. They each had a cat and a dumpling. When I asked if they’d missed out on the jellyfish, Hill told me to not worry.
“We already have those,” she said. “We’re the connoisseurs who got those early in the game.”
Hill said she enjoys bonding with her kids over a screen-free activity that’s relatively cheap. Jabo’s sold the jellyfish squishies for $8.99 apiece, and the cat squishies went for $7.99; each of those prices are just a bit higher than what’s listed on the NeeDoh website. By contrast, Hill said a hobby store in Lewisville recently asked for $25 per squishy, which she said angered members of the NeeDoh hunting community.
“I’m sad for myself that I know all this,” Hill said with a laugh.
Council Refines Rules for Naming Facilities
If you aspire to have your name slapped on a City of Coppell facility and you haven’t been a resident for at least a decade, don’t get your hopes up until you’ve lived here a few more years.
The City Council is close to approving policies regarding the naming of non-park facilities. During their June 9 work session, the council members spent several minutes debating a draft policy presented by Deputy City Manager Traci Leach. The council asked for changes in three categories: eligibility, funding, and exclusivity.