There, Husted visited an engineering center, which Kettering hopes to expand and make compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Liz Jensen, principal of the school’s Career Technical Center, told Husted the school hopes to knock down a wall and deal with an old staircase leading to a mezzanine where students perform design work on computers.
But the bottom line is, more space equals more students, Jensen said. “This one (expanded) classroom will increase our capacity by 60 students.”
Kettering offers skilled trade programs in digital design, engineering, health care, IT, fire science, cosmetology and more — 14 disciplines in all.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
“I have my eye on an HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) program in the future,” Jensen added. Two of her longest student waiting lists are for those interested in health care and HVAC work.
Fairmont senior Ruby Lake, 18, told Husted she plans to study engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. “I’m really interested in working in the manufacturing industry, but that could change after my time at Purdue.”
“Come back to Ohio,” Husted told Lake.
“Kettering’s attitude on genuinely wanting input from the industry is second to none,” Angelia Erbaugh, president of the Dayton Region Manufacturers Association, told Husted in a discussion at a Fairmont library.
In budget proposals, the administration of Gov. Mike DeWine seeks $300 million total to bolster career training.
Of that, $200 million is sought for the state’s career tech construction grant program, to address waiting lists for programs and the lack of education for what are seen as critically needed occupations.
The administration also seeks $100 million for Ohio’s career tech equipment grant program, an effort to expand career-technical education programming across Ohio.
One of the biggest barriers schools and districts face in starting a program is funding to support equipment purchases, the DeWine administration says.
If the need for career technical training is increasingly urgent, so is offering that training closer to where students are, some advocates say.
Kettering schools say the district’s career technical center lets students learn marketable skills without sacrificing what might seen as a traditional high school experience — studying closer to home, participating in sports and more.
“In our setting, you don’t have to leave any of your powerful academics, you have your extracurriculars, you take all of the advanced placement classes ... it’s an amazing opportunity for our students,” Jensen said.
Shannon Cox, superintendent of the Montgomery County Educational Service Center, emphasized that students who attend the Miami Valley Career Technical Center (CTC) in Clayton or the Upper Valley CTC in Piqua can still participate in sports and extracurricular experiences like dances and the National Honor Society.
“But it is a separate facility,” Cox said, referring to buildings devoted solely to career technical training. “Kids leave their traditional home school and they do go to a different facility.”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
What leaders like Cox are working toward is having career-focused training in traditional high schools. The Kettering CTC takes students from Kettering, Oakwood and Centerville. The Mad River and Dayton school districts have career tech classes on-site at their high schools, and Huber Heights is building a career tech center at Wayne High School.
“We’re not going to solve the workforce issues that we have if we don’t move the career tech experiences into the traditional high schools,” Cox said.
The state simply can’t build enough buildings to get every student the workforce experiences he or she needs, Cox said. Weaving that training into traditional high school curricula is a must, she and others believe.
To meet the demand from students and employers, the Miami Valley CTC is adding 10 new programs at its main campus in Clayton and its satellite programs in the next year, leaders there said in February.
Nick Weldy, Miami Valley CTC superintendent, recently said that before ongoing expansion, his school turned away 350 to 500 students a year because he didn’t have the space to accept all students who wanted to come.
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