MEXICO – Automotive technology, early childhood education, electrical trades and culinary arts are the programs the Region 9 School of Applied Technology board believes should be offered if and when the vocational school acquires for more space.
The list, in that order of preference, will now be presented to the superintendents of the three sending districts at a special meeting next week. The board tentatively set that meeting for April 4.
The decision came Tuesday night after a study of student preferences, costs to acquire the necessary equipment, jobs availability and pay scale in western Maine and statewide.
No one expects all four programs to fly, although most would like to see such an expansion of offerings, but all believe additional vocational programs are a necessity to meet the needs of students in the River Valley and Bethel areas.
The board has been working with architect Jim Reuter of the Bethel firm of Smith Reuter and Lull to develop an expansion plan at the River Road school. They’ve also looked at the NewPage Corp. administrative building and Mountain Valley High School.
However, it was decided that programming should come first.
“Before a building, we have to decide what those programs should be,” said Director David Driscoll.
“We have to make some priorities,” said board Chairman Norman Clanton. “We’ve got several conceptual proposals, then the price tags. Then we heard from the superintendents that the price tags would be a real problem.”
Tentative proposals came in as high as $7.3 million for an addition onto the existing school.
Clanton said a joint meeting of the board’s program and facility committees last week emphasized support for jobs available in the area.
According to research conducted by Reuter, the costs to introduce a culinary program was the highest, at about $823,000, while early childhood was the lowest, at about $385,000. For automotive, the figure was estimated at $471,000 and for electrical trades, $393,000.
In student preference, according to student surveys conducted in 2005 and 2006, culinary arts came in tops, followed by automotive technology, early childhood and electrical trades. In wages, according to labor statistics based on the 2004 Occupational Employment Statistics Survey, the electrical trades were the highest paid, followed by automotive technicians. Workers in the culinary arts or early childhood were paid almost the same.
At next week’s meeting with the superintendents of SAD 21, SAD 43 and SAD 44, the board hopes to learn what their preferences are before going ahead with a referendum.
The vocational school must also decide whether to move quickly on a possible building project because the state Department of Education has said it will likely not hold $1.5 million in grants and no-interest loans beyond autumn, Driscoll said.
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