RURAL REVAMP.

• Author: Newsome, Melba

State agencies and leaders want North Carolina's least-populous regions to share in the state's growth. A Wilson school offers a hopeful sign.

For years, the economic picture in and around Wilson has been an odd contradiction. Located about 45 miles east of Raleigh, the county has BB&T Corp., Bridgestone Corp. and other employers that have offered some of the state's best wages. At the same time, Wilson's poverty rate has also ranked near the top of the list. While area developers and elected officials have lured a variety of advanced manufacturing and life-sciences employers, many local residents lack the necessary skills and training to fill those jobs.

That conundrum sent local school-system officials and economic developers in search of an answer from the county's industrial employers: Precisely what do they need and expect from new employees? Their responses led to the formation of a school to train maintenance technicians, one of the most difficult manufacturing jobs to fill. The Wilson Academy of Applied Technology, an early-college high school focused on training students to maintain increasingly sophisticated manufacturing equipment, opened fall 2016 with 56 ninth-graders.

In 2021, they will graduate with both a high-school diploma and an associate degree in applied engineering technology. (The school requires five years of training.) A manufacturing advisory board made up of representatives from 16 local businesses developed a curriculum that was relevant and current.

Civic and business leaders believe the school will play a major role in business recruitment, give graduates a reason to stay in the area and serve as a model for much-needed development.

"This represents one of the first and most noticeable successes that rural counties are having with early college and dual enrollment between high schools and community colleges," says Patrick Woodie, president of the N.C. Rural Center. "It's making a huge difference in our effort to upgrade and give our rural citizens more than a high-school education, which is an imperative in today's economy."

While North Carolina's urban centers are experiencing gains in population and economic fortune, the story is different for many less densely populated areas. The state has the country's second-largest rural population after Texas and more small towns of fewer than 7,500 people than any state except Pennsylvania, Woodie says. About 4.2 million of the state's 10 million people live in 80...