In 2022, the City of Camden enacted a law requiring businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies that employ 25 or more staff in the city to submit a twice-yearly detailed employment report that includes the number of their workers who live within the city’s borders.

In the second half of 2024, the most recent timeframe for which data was available, just 13% of the total workforce at 52 Camden employers consisted of city residents.

That figure isn’t good enough for Maurice Towns, the new principal at Mastery High School’s Camden campus.

One of his priorities in that position, he said, is to enrich the school’s workforce development program so that participating students can leverage the experience they gain from it to graduate from high school with a job that provides benefits and a livable wage.

Towns said some of the inspiration for the strategy came from his childhood, part of which was spent in the city’s Cramer Hill section, and from observing that many of his relatives who also lived in the city did not have access to post-secondary training or education.