The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s (OSPI) Career and Technical Education (CTE) Task Force is seeking feedback from employers across all industries to better understand the barriers involved in hiring minor workers. This outreach follows the passage of House Bill 1414 in the 2025 legislative session, which AGC supported. AGC encourages employers to take a few minutes to complete the brief survey and ensure the construction industry’s voice is represented: https://forms.gle/k7YpVVKH8zrdJ5WH7.
HB 1414 directs the CTE Task Force to recommend changes to laws and policies that would expand students’ access to sustained, meaningful engagement with industry and community professionals. The goal is to improve opportunities for students to gain firsthand experience with real workplace tasks while ensuring appropriate protections for minor workers. To meet this directive, the task force is examining several agency-imposed restrictions affecting minors who are participating in, training for, or have completed a CTE program, certification, or licensure. Required areas of review include:
- Identifying barriers that limit the training, certification, or employment of minors connected to CTE programs.
- Assessing job categories where the Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) prohibits minors from working, even when those minors hold a license or certification issued by a state agency or regulatory authority.
- Evaluating restrictions on working hours or schedules for minors participating in or completing a CTE program.
- Reviewing CTE program approval requirements for school districts, including whether those requirements are tied to agency-imposed age restrictions.
Employer input is essential to ensure these recommendations reflect real-world challenges. This survey will help the task force better understand the barriers employers face.
An example of a barrier is the legislation passed in 2025 (SB 1644), which added responsible bidder criteria at the time of bid submittal for public works projects. The contractor must not have a revoked minor work permit, and they must confirm this in a signed statement before the award is made. This requirement has had significant impacts on construction CTE programs statewide; notably, the Inland Northwest AGC was forced to shut down its Lemonhead program as a result.