Skills center progress updated

Planning under way

COLUMBIA BASIN - Superintendents, school and college staff and the business community met Tuesday to discuss the next steps in planning a Grant County Skills Center.

Moses Lake School District Superintendent Steve Chestnut said he invited superintendents to the meeting from the 10 Grant County school districts and from Othello School District in Adams County. He also invited principals and career and technical education directors.

Chestnut said two years ago, Grant County was selected for a skills center feasibility study. The study came back positive and the Legislature provided $927,000 to design the center.

"So now, we are in the process of looking for an architectural firm," Chestnut said.

Organizers will next need to ask the Legislature for the funds to build the skills center, which costs an estimated $24 million, according to preliminary estimates from Architects West, Chestnut said.

Consultant Gene Sharratt provided an overview of his next activities. He will meet with superintendents, principals, career and technical education directors, tech prep coordinators, Big Bend Community College leaders, legislators, news media, and state superintendent's office leaders.

Organizers are planning site visits to skills centers in Aberdeen, Tri-Cities, Tumwater, and Boise, Idaho Chestnut noted all the meeting attendees were invited to the visits.

Assistant Superintendent of Career and College Readiness for the state superintendent's office John Aultmann provided an overview of Washington skills centers and a Comprehensive Career and Technical Education Bill.

"There's a lot of interest in skills centers around the state, and particularly in underserved areas," Aultmann said.

He said the skills centers allow school districts to provide training in high-demand programs that would be too expensive to fund on their own.

The 11th skills center in Washington was funded in Skagit County last year, Aultmann said. The skills center partnered with Skagit Valley Community College.

He noted Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Congressman Brian Baird, D-Wash., held a series of field hearings about the need for skilled workers.

Sharratt said when he conducted a skills center feasibility study in Grant County and Othello, there was a sense of necessity among businesses, career and technical education directors, and superintendents.

The same need for a skills center was expressed by students, parents and political leaders: "We don't need one. We have to have one," Sharratt said. "I don't think I ran into a single person who said to me, 'we don't need a skills center.'"

During the feasibility study, businesses expressed the greatest need for workers in the areas of agriculture, welding, business construction, computer support technician, automotive service technician, computer network systems, medical office, fire fighting, medical lab technician, and medical sciences.

Sharratt said he plans to return to the businesses to find out whether they still consider those areas key.

He noted the school districts are not guaranteed to receive the $24 million in funding, as the economy could change other interests competing for state funding.

"We've got to work harder, in my opinion, in the next six months," Sharratt said.

Sharratt said the concept of branch and satellite campuses is very important, particularly for school districts which are more than 30 to 45 minutes away from the main campus future location in Moses Lake.

He noted skills centers and school districts used to compete for the same student because students could only be funded at a maximum of 1.0 full-time equivalent. Because of the work of Aultmann and others, the maximum funding was increased to 1.6 full-time equivalent.

Moses Lake High School Principal Dave Balcom, Big Bend Community College Dean of Professional and Technical Education Clyde Rasmussen, and Grant County PUD Hydro Engineering Assistant Davie Alporque discussed their visit to West Florida High School of Advanced Technology.

Balcom said the advice they received from the school was to make sure their skills center doesn't look like a skills center from the outside.

He noted the school gives students an entrepreneurial sense. It offers a full-service cafe every Friday, with food served by culinary arts students, and a doggy daycare for senior citizens.

Some programs offered by the school are sports medicine, lineman, CISCO networking, and pre-nursing, Balcom said.

Rasmussen noted the students enter the school at the ninth-grade level. Only 300 new students are accepted into the school each year, for a total of 1,300 students on campus.