PARIS – As they’ve been doing since 1974, the boards of SAD 17 and SAD 39 met to ratify the cooperative agreement by which the Oxford Hills Technical School functions.

A lot has changed since 1974, when the tech school and Oxford Hills High School operated out of two separate buildings. Since 1998, the tech school and the high school are now one school, renamed Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School.

“It is our great fortune to have this school,” said SAD 39 Supt. William Shuttleworth at Thursday’s meeting at the high school of both school district members, tech school board members and administrators.

In the SAD 17 towns of Norway, Harrison, Paris, Oxford, Waterford, Hebron, Otisfield and West Paris, and the SAD 39 towns of Hartford, Buckfield and Sumner, “it often goes unappreciated that we have a world-class school,” Shutteworth said.

SAD 17 Superintendent Mark Eastman said he and Technical School Director Thomas Cope gave presentations recently at the Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education. “We’re so envied around the state,” Eastman said. “The seamless integration (of tech school and mainstream academics) is such a powerful and important concept for young people.”

SAD 39 currently has students filling 44 slots in tech school programs, Shuttleworth said. SAD 17 students fill the rest. Since both programs have been integrated into one school, the tech school has “seen a steady growth in technical programs” such as advanced communications, culinary arts, automotive technology, computer-aided drafting, marketing, forestry, graphic arts and law enforcement.

The tech school board has tried to add at least one new program each year. Budgetary concerns for the past two years have put a hold on such future initiatives as an early childhood development program and a job coach for diversified occupations.

Cope said great strides have been made in the past year in expanding the number of articulation agreements tech school students can have with colleges, which allows them to earn college credits while still in high school. Cope said it often inspires students to go on to higher learning when they already have met certification standards that many colleges and technical schools require.

Under the cooperative agreement that both boards passed unanimously Thursday, the Oxford Hills Technical School, formerly called Maine Vocational Region 11, creates a board of directors for OHTS that reviews programs and oversees the budget. It also creates a director position, currently being filled by Cope.

Representation on the tech school board is based on population, and grants nine seats to SAD 17 and two to SAD 39.

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