AIRWAY HEIGHTS, Spokane County Forget license plates. Some inmates at the Airway Heights Corrections Center are training for jobs in the states huge aerospace industry.

About a dozen inmates are enrolled in a program that will make them certified aerospace-composite technicians. Their goal is a post-prison chance to land jobs at companies like Boeing and its suppliers.

There is a strong shortage of people to be aerospace composite technicians, said Chad Lewis, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.

The idea is that former inmates who have good-paying jobs are much less likely to return to prison, he said.

To be sure, the prison system still has job training in traditional inmate fields like upholstery and furniture making. But there was no good reason to ignore aerospace, Washingtons largest manufacturing sector, with jobs scattered across the state.

We wanted to teach offenders something relevant to the local job market, Lewis said.

Taught by instructors from a local community college, the inmates must earn 49 college credits to be certified. They are in class six hours a day, five days a week, and the program takes a year to complete at the medium-security prison in this suburb of Spokane. The classes are unique because they offer a combination of book learning and hands-on experience making composite materials. That combination makes abstract concepts easier for students to grasp and retain.

The first class of inmates will graduate in January.

It has been a positive experience for inmate Richard Syers, of Spokane, who dropped out of school in the sixth grade but has been earning As and Bs in the new program, which includes rigorous courses like trigonometry.

Syers, 42, hopes to move to Western Washington when he is released in 2 years and continue training for a job in aerospace.

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Prison inmates training for aerospace work