When discussions at last week’s Kansas Economic Policy Conference turned to public education’s role in workforce development, it was only natural that the state’s community colleges took center stage.

The state’s 19 community colleges are attracting more students who are preparing to transfer to four-year institutions as well as students who are seeking training in specific fields that will lead directly to well-paying jobs. With statewide enrollments that rose about 5 percent last year and 3.3 percent this fall, community colleges are an important post-secondary option for many students.

However, the discussions at Thursday’s panel discussion at Kansas University also identified some areas that need improvement in the state’s “seamless” education system.

What community colleges do very well is respond to local and regional employment needs. Dale Reed, associate dean of educational services at Seward County Community College in Liberal, ticked off some examples. Garden City Community College partners both with Tyson and John Deere to provide employee training programs. Cloud County Community College has the state’s only wind turbine technician program.

What may look like program duplication, Reed said, often is simply an effort to meet specific demands. For instance, he said, a welding program at Butler County Community College near Wichita may focus on aircraft welding while one in southwest Kansas might focus on skills needed in the oil and gas industry.

Community colleges across the state also are training people for a variety of high-demand jobs in medical fields. And, because of their lower tuition, Reed said, community colleges are becoming a popular choice for students who want to complete one or two years of college work before moving to a more expensive state university.

However, both Reed and Jacqueline Vietti, president of Butler County Community College in El Dorado, noted that many new high school graduates require remedial — “developmental” is the new preferred term — courses to prepare them for college classes.

Responding to a question Thursday, Vietti noted that K-12 schools perhaps needed to place less emphasis on tests and more on the learning process and pointed to what she saw as “a disconnect between ACT scores and the preparedness of students” coming to Butler County.

In a later interview, she acknowledged that 65 percent of recent high school graduates coming to her school require developmental work in math, English or reading. However, she also said she is encouraged by the work her school is doing with the Wichita school district to identify and correct educational deficiencies, as well as the work of the Kansas P-20 Education Council, which is charged with creating a seamless system of education from pre-school through graduate school or jobs in the state.

School districts across the state should be concerned to learn of the high percentage of their high school graduates that apparently aren’t prepared for post-secondary classes. Community colleges are an important cog in the state’s higher education system, but they, as well as the state’s four-year universities, would be able to do an even better job with students who don’t have to play catch-up.