As the new school year is underway, New York announced funding for six public colleges to help train students in clean energy jobs. The nearly $4 million grant in partnership with the Economic Development Corporation will train CUNY students in things such as electric vehicle repairs, green energy solution courses and more. 

CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez joined Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” Thursday to discuss how school officials will work with the city on the new initiative to connect students with employers and help with economic recovery.

“We want to make sure it is a growing sector of the economy and what we want to see happen here is not to see what happened in tech. Tech began to grow. It’s been a growing sector of our economy, but it didn’t grow in an equitable way,” he said, adding that there weren't enough women and people of color within those jobs. 

“We want this green sector economy from the get go to have the face of the city represented there,” Rodríguez continued.

Rodríguez also discussed hiring 500 faculty lecturers due to a $53 million addition to state financial support, COVID-19 requirements at CUNYs, bringing more mental health professionals and spoke about the crisis in Puerto Rico.