Plans for a career and tech education center have hit a hitch, Jack Koehn, USD 257 superintendent of schools, told school board members at their meeting Monday night.
“The community colleges are very reluctant to commit to much, if anything,” he said, citing their fears that funding for the program is at risk.
“Wherever I go, I’m always asking if the SB 155 funds are in jeopardy, and nobody has said anything to indicate they are,” Koehn said of the state funding for the program.
Koehn related the discussions from a recent meeting of area high school and college administrators.
“We’ve had to start from scratch and consider if we could do a program without the colleges,” Koehn said, noting the school districts of Eudora and DeSoto have such an arrangement.
About 12-15 students per class would be necessary to launch a program.
“I know we could provide those numbers from Iola alone for building trades,” Koehn said.
Pre-enrollment numbers from a few weeks ago indicated about 25 Iola High School students had signed up for welding and construction trade classes for next fall, according to Stacey Fager, IHS principal.
One ray of hope is that Fort Scott Community College would be willing to support a construction trades curriculum, Koehn said.
“They said if that’s all we’re talking about, they could swing that,” he said.
The biggest hurdle for the high schools taking on the program if the area community colleges do not participate is that the instructors would not only have to be licensed in their particular trades, but also would be required to have a teaching certificate.
If managed through the community colleges, a building trades instructor, for example, would need only to be licensed in that particular field as well as have so many industrial hours logged. They would not be required to have teaching degrees.
“The bar is set much lower if the colleges provide the instruction,” Koehn said.
Whatever the scenario, Koehn said he has received nothing but positive responses to the idea of a career tech program being developed at the site of the old Diebolt Lumber south of LaHarpe.
The classes would be half-day and draw students from a half-dozen area communities.
“We have to start in baby steps, which is OK,” Koehn said. “Even if we start with one class this fall, that’s better than none. And I believe the success of that class will lead to the development of another for the spring semester. If we start with building trades, then maybe by spring we could offer a welding class.”
