Explore The Trades Brings the Plan to Revitalize the HVAC Workforce to "All Access hosted by Andy Garcia"

Shop Classes Faded, Then the Workforce Thinned.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A new Public Television feature examines how a national nonprofit is reintroducing plumbing, HVAC, and electrical careers to American classrooms, and why the coming decade of workforce demand makes that conversation urgent for students, parents, and educators alike.

Explore The Trades will be featured in an upcoming segment of "All Access hosted by Andy Garcia", set to film on October 2, 2026 at the "All Access" Boca Raton, Florida, studio location and slated for distribution to Public Television stations nationwide. The Minnesota-based nonprofit was started in 2005 by residential home service contractors who had already read the labor forecasts and did not like what they saw. Their answer was to work upstream, at the classroom level, long before a student picks a path.

The feature covers how that work happens now. Poster kits, produced in English and Spanish with a separate series for grades K through 5, have reached more than 1.3million students since 2021 and now sit in over 3,400 school districts, roughly a quarter of the country. The Skills Lab Program, Supported by industry partners like plumbing and HVAC distributor Ferguson and the Comfort Systems USA Foundation, has placed equipment grants in 53 schools across 21 states since 2022. Contractors get recruiting toolkits of their own. Counselors, career and technical education instructors, and administrators are as much the audience as the students themselves, because they are the ones fielding the questions.

"When a student hears the word 'trades,' we want them to picture diagnostics, innovation, and a spirit of entrepreneurship, because that's what these careers look like now. Tradespeople built this nation, and as technology keeps advancing, plumbing, heating, cooling, and electrical professionals will keep building it for generations to come. The skilled workforce of tomorrow is sitting in classrooms today. These aren't just jobs. They're career continuums that can grow from apprentice to technician to business owner, and our communities simply can't operate without them," Kate Cinnamo, Executive Director, Explore The Trades.

The context matters. Construction and trades coursework disappeared from thousands of schools in the early 2000s, pushed aside by a college-for-all consensus that treated a four-year degree as the only respectable outcome. Districts are now reversing course, helped along by rising federal investment in career and technical education. Meanwhile the shortage that contractors predicted two decades ago has arrived and is expected to persist for at least another ten years. Somebody has to install the systems that heat hospitals, move water through schools, and carry power to everything else. The question of who promotes those careers remains genuinely unsettled between industry and education.

Perception is the other obstacle, and it is stubborn. Plumbing, HVAC, and electrical work now involve diagnostics, connected equipment, energy modeling, and an expanding role for artificial intelligence in product design and service delivery. Technicians read data. Many go on to own businesses. Sustainable infrastructure and smart building systems depend on people who understand both the physics and the software. Yet the word trades still conjures grime for plenty of parents. Explore The Trades argues that industry and education partnerships pay both sides back, giving schools expertise and equipment while giving local employers a durable pipeline of talent.

About "All Access hosted by Andy Garcia": "All Access hosted by Andy Garcia" is a short-form educational documentary series distributed to Public Television stations across the country. Each feature profiles organizations, institutions, and companies whose work is reshaping their fields, presenting the subject matter in plain terms for a general audience. The series favors substance over promotion, giving viewers a working understanding of industries and issues they encounter but rarely see explained. More information about the program is available at allaccessptv.com.

About Explore The Trades: Explore The Trades is a national nonprofit working to close the technical talent gap in the plumbing, HVAC, and electrical industries. Founded in 2005 by home service contractors, the organization connects education and industry through classroom career resources, equipment grants for middle and high school programs, and workforce development toolkits for employers. Its programs serve students in grades K through 12 along with the counselors, instructors, and administrators who guide them. Details on the Poster Kit Program, the Skills Lab Program, and how to request materials for a local school are available at www.explorethetrades.org.

SOURCE All Access