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 dental assistants to join the workforce right after receiving their certificates. Much of the hands-on training included in the program is shouldered by Dientes, which has four clinics throughout the county serving 16,000 patients primarily from underserved or disadvantaged communities.
The apprenticeship starts with a five-week intensive classroom instruction period followed by paid on-the-job training that includes 32-hours of work per week in dental offices. The new program was made possible by a $1.02 million grant from the California Apprenticeship Initiative as well as funding provided by the Santa Cruz Workforce Development Board and Sutter Health.
“We are thrilled to participate in this State-funded project to grow our local dental assisting workforce partnership with the COE, which is made possible with support from both Santa Cruz Workforce Development Board and Sutter Health,” said Dientes CEO Laura Marcus in the release. “This innovative program is important for two reasons: It increases the number of dental assistants graduating each year, providing an important pipeline for more front-line workers for us and other dental providers. And, it creates an opportunity for underserved young people to learn professional skills and pursue an exciting healthcare career — one that has many available living wage job openings in our community.
” According to the release, apprentices will earn $18.45 per hour for the on-job training with period increased tied to training progress. After completing the program and associated competencies, trainees will have an opportunity to be hired at a journey-level wage of at least $22 per hour with their training organization.
This latest training opportunity also serves as one component of Dientes’ Workforce Development Program, which also includes another yearlong dental residency program that was launched in 2022 with two residents. In conjunction with its training programs, Dientes has also commissioned several reports looking at the state of oral health across Santa Cruz County and who might be falling through the cracks. According to the 2022 Oral Health Needs Assessment, only 30,000 of the 80,000 residents with Medi-Cal insurance are accessing dental care with teens and the elderly left especially vulnerable.
Applications for the apprenticeship program’s 2025-26 cohort are expected to open in February. Information about that process is available online at dental.santacruzcoe.
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