Monroe, La. — Data travels as pulses of light through glass fibers, each strand barely thicker than a human hair.
“Be careful with it,” Fletch Batchelor tells his class at Louisiana Delta Community College in Monroe. “Don’t stab yourself in the middle of the hand.”
Batchelor is walking a dozen students through the basics of fiber installation: “Strip, clean and cleave.”
First, he strips about an inch of protective outer layer from the end of a strand, exposing the core. “A squeaky fiber is a happy fiber,” he says as he wipes off the remaining coating.
Two steps down, he pauses and hands out safety goggles and strippers to let students try for the first time. Some are in their 20s, while others are middle-aged.
Batchelor makes it look easy, but under an untrained — or just-trained hand — fiber breaks easily.
Marcus Jackson, 20, snaps off a piece of his strand.
“I guess I’m putting too much pressure,” he says, a little sheepish. “It's cutting through it rather than sliding.”
“It’s hard your first time,” Batchelor reassures him.
The strippers are set to the right depth, he explains, so you don’t have to squeeze.
“Give it a straight pull,” he says.
Jackson tries again, succeeds and smiles.
Since November, 40 people have graduated from Delta's new four-week data center technician program.
There’s even a mock data center on campus, where students can practice laying fiber and setting up servers.
The course is one of two that the school has created since late 2024, when Meta broke ground in Richland Parish — about 30 minutes from the school — on what is now its largest project, and one of the biggest in the world.
A Gallup poll from earlier this year found 7 in 10 Americans don’t want data centers built near their homes. People worry about the possible negative impact of these projects, mostly on the environment and their quality of life — including higher utility bills.
But jobs can be a selling point for data centers.
Those in favor of them — about a third of Republicans and a quarter of Democrats — largely cite economic benefits, specifically increased job opportunities.
Meta comes to town
About a year ago, Dan McCarty, Delta’s director of trade programs, got to work creating the new courses after Meta approached the school for help training construction workers: carpenters, pipefitters, electricians and something more niche — fiber technicians.
“When a business comes to us and says, ‘We need people to work here,’ we will turn around and say, ‘Well, what skills do they need?’ McCarty said. “We had instructors that knew fiber, but maybe not the specific type of fiber that was needed for a data center.”
Meta and some of its contractors provided training and helped the school purchase equipment and supplies.
The tech giant has pledged $5 million in scholarships for anyone who graduates from a Richland Parish high school to take data center-related courses at Delta.
Meta also launched its own training academy this year, with plans for a site in Baton Rouge. It’s free — provides housing, transportation and a daily stipend for participants — and promises a job for all graduates.
Delta's programs
Delta is offering two new four-week programs to prepare students for entry-level jobs at the Meta site. They are:
- Data center technician: Focused on installing and maintaining fiber specifically in data centers. Students can earn five industry credentials.
- Construction craft laborer: Includes worksite safety, basic math, reading blueprints, handling materials and operating tools and equipment. Students can also earn five credentials.
Both programs cost $3,698 each, though many students don’t pay full price, McCarty said. Scholarships are available from the college and the state, and companies sometimes sponsor students they hope to hire afterward.
More than a hundred students have graduated from the programs since January, he said, and all of them are working. For fiber, an entry-level technician can make between $18 and $24 an hour.
“Since the data center has come on, it has really changed the entire landscape of the jobs that we have here,” McCarty said.
While many are working at the Meta site, it's also created other construction openings, since people left other projects to work on the center.
“We have a need locally to backfill those positions,” he said.
Meta says its Richland Parish facility could create 1,000 permanent jobs — including hundreds of data technicians — when it’s fully online by 2036
At more than 3,600 acres, the facility's size is hard to grasp. The site covers thousands of football fields worth of land, and for now resembles a large airport, with roads, gates, a few buildings, but no planes.
Holly Ridge, the nearest community, has less than 2,000 residents. Before, the area consisted of farmland, homes, a school and a few churches and small businesses.
Meta estimates about 7,500 workers will be needed at the height of construction, though local officials have said they think that number has already been exceeded.
Thousands of people live in new RV parks and temporary housing nearby; they eat at food trucks set up in people’s yards, drop off their laundry at roadside sheds, and frequent other pop-up businesses, boosting local sales tax revenue.
Opportunities at home
Shanae Williams, a 35-year-old mom of four, is trying to change careers.
She’s a certified nursing assistant, works the night shift and gets to Delta’s 8 a.m. data center technician class in her scrubs.
“I’m taking a risk right now,” she said. “I’m just getting to the point where I want to try something else.”
After more than a decade, she makes $16.25 an hour at a nursing home. Installing fiber, she hopes to start at $20 an hour or more.
About a week into the course, she was optimistic.
“This is something I can see [myself] doing because it’s hands-on,” she said after learning to strip fiber earlier that day.
Jackson, her younger classmate, was also feeling good. The first in his family to go to college, he’s about to graduate from Delta with an associate’s degree in information technology.
Before, he thought he might have to leave home to find work. He still wants to travel, and maybe live somewhere else someday.
But because of the data center, “It makes me kind of wanna stay at home, knowing that I’m going to be set,” he said.
McCarty, Delta’s head of trade programs, said that’s a huge change. For decades, Louisiana has dealt with out-migration and brain drain to nearby states, like Texas.
“It was typical for me to see friends of mine that would have to leave the state in order to find any kind of meaningful economic means,” he said. “Now it’s 30 minutes away.”
Batchelor, the fiber teacher, was a boat captain on the Mississippi River before getting into the industry. Even then, he still had to travel out of state.
“I’m speaking from experience when I say this is a real blessing for our community to have right now,” he said.
He hopes more projects that need fiber will follow, like smaller data centers and green energy.
“Our area’s never gonna be the same, y’all. It’s not,” Batchelor told his students. “Our community is about to change forever. We’re gonna have a lot of people moving back. I’m glad to see all these Louisiana guys in here, all of you, getting these jobs. This means a lot. It’s a big deal for us.”
While some people worry about possible negative impacts, McCarty, Delta's director of trade programs, is also focused on the positive.
“We’re not gonna go tear it down,” McCarty said, laughing. “So, as long as it’s here, let’s make the best of it. Let’s grow with this if we can and look at the success stories that we’re seeing.”
Preparing for the future
Back in class, Batchelor is answering students’ questions about the future of data centers, and nothing is off limits.
“I shouldn’t ask this question,” says a guy with gray in his hair. “Are we killing our own jobs? Don’t you think a machine could do this?”
Technically, Batchelor says, but only part of it. If someone digs a trench and hits a line, or a branch falls in a storm:
“That’s where we come in,” he says. “Man is the only one that can fix those things. There’s always gonna be a need for us.”
He gives another example: robotic surgery. Sure, it’s a thing, “But who’s gonna put the person on the table? Who’s gonna go back in and check them?”
When it comes to installing fiber, he thinks a similar thing will happen.
“Somebody’s gonna have to get the machinery there and work on it, too,” he says. “That’s just another level you can take up on the job training, and you’d be ahead of the curve for it.”
He continues: “Somebody’s gotta understand the inner workings to maintain it,” and maintenance is “where you really make your money.”
“Does that ease your mind a little bit?” he asks.
Several heads nod.
While no one mentioned fear of an AI bubble or the data center boom going bust, they voice other concerns.
One guy says his light bill has gone up. Was it because of the data center? What about pollution?
Batchelor says whatever happens, fiber is the future of energy, of communication.
“Your trade, there’s always gonna be a demand for it one way or another."
This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.
