Shannon Eslick decided to enroll in dental-assistant courses at Spokane Community College through its state-funded Worker Retraining program after she was laid off for a second time last year by Insight Enterprises Inc.'s Liberty Lake outlet.

The Spokane Valley resident is just one of hundreds of laid-off workers in the Inland Northwest benefiting from state and federal retraining subsidies aimed at providing them new skills to re-enter the work force.

Eslick, a former Insight account manager, says she decided to seek a new career when a Washington state Employment Security Department's WorkSource job-hunt assisting arm had difficulty helping her find another job in a labor market that was only getting tighter.

"I did a lot of research with WorkSource, and this opens options that best fit me, my family life, and my schedule," she says of the dental-assistant program.

Eslick, a single mother of three, is one of 42 students in the three-quarter training course. Typically, half are subsidized through the Worker Retraining program, which the school formed in partnership with Employment Security.

She says she's encouraged that the program includes internships that will give her exposure to and experience with at least three dental offices before she completes the program.

Nearly 100 percent of the dental-assistant students are hired when they complete the course work, says Rachel Philo, worker-retraining coordinator at SCC.

The Worker Retraining program also covers more than 20 other fields, including culinary arts, computer-controlled machining, and medical office clerking.

Philo says the number of people in the Worker Retraining program at SCC has tripled to a total of more than 300 this fall, compared with 100 to 120 in the fall quarter of last year.

SCC also has a waiting list of more than 40 people who are seeking entry into retraining courses subsidized by the state program. That demand is forcing Worker Retraining to go through its funding more quickly than it had anticipated, says Christy Doyle, SCC's director of Workforce Training and Development.

"When funding comes, we try to stretch it through the entire year," Doyle says. "That's not feasible for us given the higher need out there."

Doyle says she expects that the Washington state Board for Community and Technical Colleges will seek additional training funds from the Legislature in January.

"We need $55,000 more for the winter quarter, and we're not even looking at spring, yet," Doyle says.

Meantime, the Spokane Area Workforce Development Council this year set aside $1 million to increase capacity for certain types of training through the Community Colleges of Spokane (CCS) district for those who have lost their jobs, says Mark Mattke, the council's executive director. The district includes SCC, Spokane Falls Community College, and the Institute for Extended learning.

The council funds are intended to expand cohort programs, which train groups of people for in-demand jobs, including nursing and entry-level health-care positions, aerospace-related manufacturing jobs, and work in fields related to energy efficiency.

"We're trying to use downtime as training time to get displaced workers ready to rejoin the labor pool," Mattke says.

The Spokane Area Workforce Development Council serves Spokane County and is one of 12 councils in Washington state that promote coordination between education, training, and employment efforts through the federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA).

WIA funds will subsidize training for more than 450 people at CCS facilities through next summer, CCS says.

While most of the training is done at SCC, some courses are based at the Institute for Extended Learning (IEL) Colville Center, which serves Pend Oreille, Stevens, and Ferry counties.

Dixie Simmons, IEL vice president, says the Colville center is providing WIA-funded training to the equivalent of 125 full-time employees, an increase of 25 percent from a year ago.

"About a third of the enrollment in Colville is dislocated workers," Simmons says. "These rural counties are suffering more from unemployment, as mining and wood-products employment stalwarts in Colville, Republic, and Newport have closed or cut back."

She says some laid-off workers are taking accounting and business courses and plan to obtain associate's degrees. Others are enrolled in welding, commercial truck driving, and allied-health training programs.

"We want them to be ready to fill jobs when the economy recovers," Simmons says. "The challenge is not to flood the labor market with people who are doing the same thing."

Just across the state line from here, the North Idaho College Workforce Training Center placed 49 people in its qualified-worker retraining program thanks to WIA funds, says Marie Price, director of work force development at the center.

Most of the people in the program are in apprenticeship training for skilled work, such as the electrician and plumber trades. Of 12 people who have completed the program there since July, 11 have been hired, she says.

This year, NIC received a $108,000 allocation of WIA funds and an additional $74,000 through the federal stimulus package.

Price says the funding rises and falls with the unemployment rate.

Anne Tucker, a CCS spokeswoman, recommends that someone who has lost a job and wants to enroll in one of the colleges to train for a new career should apply to the school and contact WorkSource at the same time.

"Although the school has open enrollment, you can't wait until the last minute to enroll anymore, because the demand is so high," she says.

CCS is seeing an increase of more than 35 percent in financial-aid applications this year, Tucker says.

"Just getting them processed has been a bear," she says. "Financial aid is backlogged."

SCC's Doyle adds that because state Worker Retraining funds are more limited, "We would love to package it with financial aid and WIA funding, if we can."