MORAN — For more than a year, school officials in Allen County have pursued ways to better teach students they know probably aren’t going to college.
The usual barriers — cost and logistics — often stood in the way of serving up additional vocational or technical education courses that could make a student more marketable directly out of high school.
“We had very little idea about where we were going, or what we were doing,” Marmaton Valley-USD 256 Superintendent of Schools Ken McWhirter said.
Enter Ray Maloney, owner of Ray’s Metal Depot in LaHarpe, and one of the region’s most avid backers of tech ed courses at the high school level.
Maloney is in the midst of acquiring the old Diebolt Lumber property — papers have been signed — with the purpose of getting a regional technical education center off the ground.
Maloney has offered two of the old lumber yards’ primary buildings to a group of seven area school districts (including Iola, Humboldt and Marmaton Valley) and three community colleges (Allen, Neosho and Fort Scott.)
Suddenly, those original pie-in-the-sky discussions don’t seem so far-fetched, McWhirter said.
Now the real work begins.
“This happened all of a sudden,” McWhirter said Wednesday, at a meeting of administrators from several of the participating school districts and community colleges, as well as Maloney himself. “Now that we’ve got a place, we need to figure out what we’re going to do, and how we’re going to do it.”
Much of Wednesday’s discussion revolved around the logistics of getting the tech ed center started, and how it would affect the various school districts.
Participants also discussed initial student surveys to gauge their interest in specific types of programs.
The education center would be modeled after similar venues in Pittsburg and Hillsdale, with the community colleges providing instruction to mostly high school students, although other post-secondary students likely would be part as well.
The students, in turn, would either earn dual credit, or some other certification, depending on the types of classes offered.
Most prominently suggested were courses dealing with construction or other industrial arts, or welding and metalworks; and health careers, such as nursing.
However, Maloney noted the Diebolt property is diverse enough to provide instruction for a host of other programs — anything from cosmetology, to learning how to operate a day care facility.
“Whatever you need, we’ve got it,” Maloney said, indicating that other facilities at the lumber yard, including two model homes, also could be made available for tech ed training.
The educators ended Wednesday’s session by touring the Diebolt facility southwest of LaHarpe. One observor noted the space exceeds that of Pittsburg’s highly popular tech ed center.
“That’s what is so exciting,” agreed Jack Koehn, Iola-USD 257 superintendent of school. “We have a place that’s flexible, where we can do a lot of things.”
“There are trades out there the kids haven’t even thought of,” McWhirter added.
INSTRUCTORS from area community colleges would teach the classes, which would be free (for the most part) to high school students. Some students might be asked for some form of tuition or fee to cover expenses for materials used.
“We know that for many students, even a $10 or $20 charge is more than they can come up with, and could be a hurdle between them getting a good-paying job and just not showing up,” explained Alysia Johnston, Fort Scott Community College president. “We’re certainly willing to work with USDs to develop scholarship opportunities for students.”
Much of the funding for the program would come from the state, courtesy of Senate Bill 155, which provides total reimbursement for students enrolled in college-level career and tech ed (CTE) courses, with students typically earning some type of certification upon completion.
Because of how the law is structured, the funding would go to the community colleges, which would be responsible for hiring instructors and providing equipment.
Funding also is available to school districts to transport students off-campus.
Aside from having to buy some “consumable materials” — welding rods, for example — the cost to area school districts would be minimal.
“Right now, your cost is your commitment,” Johnston said, in response to a question from Iola-USD 257 Board of Education member Tony Leavitt.
The colleges, in turn, must be assured of enough student participation for them to recoup enough state funding to break even.
“We don’t have to make a profit, but we do have to break even,” Johnston continued. “I’m not going to ask our Bourbon County taxpayers to subsidize this program.”
DISCUSSION also focused on whether the facility could be open for students by this fall.
While some initial programs could be started that early, a more feasible goal would likely be in fall 2017, said Tosca Harris, dean of the Iola campus at Allen Community College, noting that area districts will begin pre-enrolling for the upcoming school year in mid-February.
“With all of the logistics involved, Feb. 15 is probably too soon,” Harris said.
“This will change as we go along,” added Stacey Fager, Iola High School principal.
Leavitt agreed.
“We don’t want to screw this up,” Leavitt said. “Are there other concerns out there? That’s what worries me. What haven’t we thought about?”
Johnston said she and Regena Lance, FSCC’s dean of instruction, will huddle in the coming days with college administrators from Allen and Neosho counties to determine which courses they could provide, and when.
Meanwhile, individual districts should begin the process of once again surveying their students on specific courses.
“I can tell you we will make mistakes,” Johnston said. “It won’t be perfect. The first couple of years probably won’t run smoothly. The biggest thing will be logistics” such as finding instructors, and setting up uniform schedules for all of the participating schools.
Johnston said school officials also will need to look at whether Maloney’s property will need infrastructure upgrades, such as improved electrical service, to handle a welding class, for example.
“There are all sorts of requirements, from air quality to water temperature, that they’ll hit you with from all angles,” she told Maloney.
Meanwhile, the participating school districts — Iola, Marmaton Valley, Humboldt, Uniontown have been the most active, although officials from Erie, Chetopa/St. Paul and Jayhawk-Linn have expressed interest — will begin exploring whether an advisory board should be established to help streamline the planning process.
Collaborators also need to decide how the tech ed center is structured, and whether an inter-local agreement is needed among the participating institutions.
“We probably want to keep it as simple as possible,” said Bobbi Williams, superintendent of schools at Chetopa-USD 505.
MALONEY SPOKE briefly about his passion for tech ed courses, and why he considers such a program just as vital to high schools as traditional classes, such as math and English.
“I don’t know who the 23rd president of the United States was, or how to dissect a sentence,” Maloney said. “I wasn’t interested in that. If it wasn’t for journalism class, where I drew cartoons for the school newspaper, I wouldn’t have gotten my English credit to graduate.”
It wasn’t until he got to shop class that Maloney felt in his element, he recalled. And he knows there are other students just like him.
“I don’t look at students like that as ‘at-risk,’” he said. “I look at them as bored.”
Maloney also led a discussion about who would teach at the center.
Would Erie, he wondered aloud, be willing to part with its highly popular auto mechanic and metalworks instructors? Would Humboldt be willing to give up its industrial arts teacher?
Maloney said such instructors would be needed to ensure the tech ed center’s popularity among students from multiple districts.
That’s not necessarily the case, Leavitt responded.
Part of the political strategy in ensuring the center’s long-term viability is alleviating concerns among the school districts that their teaching staff isn’t being raided, Leavitt said. “If a district is concerned about that, they may pull away,” he said.
Leavitt envisions the individual high school courses as more of a feeder program for the tech ed center, where a student may learn the basics of welding before attending the tech ed center to learn about pipe-fitting, for instance.
Koehn noted other districts that have developed tech ed courses have seen little drop-off in their other programs, such as FFA or industrial arts.
WHILE THE funding mechanism for a regional tech ed center is in place now, there’s no guarantee it will be around forever, Johnston acknowledged.
“SB 155 is what’s making this possible, but it will go away at some point,” she said. “We know that.
“But while it’s here, we want to ride this,” she continued. “Once we set it up and get it going, and get to a certain place, with an influx of business and industry resources, we will have a center that’s workable if and when SB 155 goes away.”
Johnston said the state almost certainly would provide other sources of technical education funding if that were to occur.
KOEHN noted Iola would be the largest school district involved in the tech ed center program.
“I spent 29 years at a smaller district,” Koehn said, “and I know how smaller districts think. I want to assure everybody we have no desire to dominate anything. We’re here to collaborate. There’s no type of a hidden agenda. We’re here because we need desperately to find career tech ed programs for our students.”
Leavitt, meanwhile, praised Maloney for his efforts in bringing the tech ed center a huge step closer to reality.
“You have no idea what you’ve already accomplished,” Leavitt told Maloney “Having this group together, talking like this, is an accomplishment. I also can tell you this isn’t going to go as fast as you want it.”
“I want it going today,” Maloney responded.
“We’re breaking new ground,” McWhirter said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
