SANTA CRUZ — A Santa Cruz County nonprofit and education agency have teamed up to launch a new dental care worker training program in hopes of closing a local gap in available dental care professionals. The Santa Cruz County Office of Education partnered with Dientes Community Dental Care to launch the Dental Assisting Apprenticeship Program, which welcomed its first cohort of eight students this week. The yearlong program offers a seamless pathway into the dental industry by providing education, training and employment within one setting that will help get these early-career dental professionals off to a running start.
“The launch of the Dental Assisting Apprenticeship Program marks an important milestone for career-technical education in our community,” Faris Sabbah, Santa Cruz County superintendent of schools, said in a release. “We see significant promise in the apprenticeship model to eliminate barriers between education, training, and employment. This apprenticeship not only addresses a critical workforce gap, it paves the way to rewarding careers in the dental industry— and we are so grateful to Dientes for partnering with the COE to make this kind of program possible.
” Santa Cruz and neighboring counties experience more than 600 dental assistant job openings annually, making it one of the more high-demand career paths in the area, according to the education office’s release. The public-private partnership is designed to create an accessible pipeline for .