- Trade School Secrets
- Posts
- California will pay your school by the hour.
California will pay your school by the hour.
The payroll tax fund most trade schools have never heard of
In partnership with
Your follow-ups are only as good as your meeting notes
When the notes get a client's name wrong or a number off by a zero, the follow-up goes out wrong too. Or someone hand-fixes it first. Mostly right is still wrong.
Wispr Flow Notetaker uses your dictionary and calendar, so names, numbers, product names, and acronyms come out spelled right. It pops up when your meeting starts and captures Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, and Slack huddles with one click, no bot joining the call.
Weeks later, ask one question across every meeting you've had and get the answer with citations. Try Notetaker free on Windows and Mac.
Every employer in California pays a small tax that goes into a training fund. About $7 per worker, per year.
That money doesn’t sit in a vault. It pays for training.
And trade schools can get it directly.
The fund is the Employment Training Panel. ETP for short. It’s been around since 1983, and most school owners I talk to have never heard of it.
How ETP works
ETP doesn’t hand out grants up front. It pays for performance.
You train an employer’s workers.
Each worker has to finish at least 8 hours of training.
Then they stay employed full time (35+ hours a week) for 90 days.
They have to earn at least ETP’s minimum wage when the 90 days are up.
Hit all of that, and you get paid for every training hour. Up to 200 hours per worker.
The hourly rate depends on the contract. For napkin math, this year’s apprenticeship rate is $22 an hour.
20 workers × 40 hours × $22 = $17,600. For one cohort.
Here’s the part nobody tells you and you should know.
You don’t need to be the employer to hold the contract.
ETP has a contract type called a Multiple Employer Contract (MEC). Training agencies, public or private, can hold one and train workers from many companies at once.
The cap is higher, too. Single employers top out at $600,000 a year. MEC holders can go to $850,000.
Almost nobody uses it. On one recent panel count, 126 contracts went to single employers. Only 32 went to multiple-employer contractors like the one your school could become.
That’s an open lane.
Your first 5 steps
Check the basics. You train in California, and your trainees are California residents working for California employers.
Line up 3 to 5 employers. You need a list of companies that will send their workers to you. ETP calls this employer demand, and you can’t apply without it.
Pick a program that leads to a raise. Workers have to hit a wage target after retention. Choose training that moves people up.
Contact ETP’s regional office. Ask about becoming a multiple employer contractor and get your application started.
Set up tracking on day one. Attendance by the hour, employer, wage, and retention date for every single trainee.
Fair warning
This is where most schools stall.
Training can’t be reimbursed retroactively. Anything you train before the contract is approved is on you.
You get paid after the 90-day retention, not before. You float the cost.
ETP checks wage and employment records for every trainee. If your roster is messy, you don’t get paid.
Your curriculum has to be written in hours and approved by a panel that votes in public meetings.
None of this is impossible. It’s just a lot of moving parts.
Not in California? Use this script
Many states run a version of this. It’s usually a training fund paid for by employer unemployment taxes.
Call your state workforce agency or economic development office and say:
“Hi, my name is ___. I run ___, a trade school in ___. I’m looking for state funding that reimburses training for employers’ current workers.
Does our state have a training fund paid for by employer payroll or unemployment taxes?
Can a training provider hold a contract that covers workers from several employers?
Is it paid up front, or after the worker is retained?
What’s the per-hour or per-worker rate?
Who handles applications for training providers?”
Let me know how it goes. I’d love to write about your experience.
Find me at @Trade Schools Secrets-WIOA Whisperer
