All across the country there has been renewed interest in vocational education, now commonly known as CTE (Career Technical Education). Montana recently doubled its annual statewide appropriation for high school CTE and Nevada has tripled funding for these classes. Mat-Su’s Career and Technical High School is one of Alaska’s highest performing schools.
And then there is Juneau, where we just learned that the Juneau School District would be discontinuing its automotive program classes. Why? Because it cannot afford the $40,000 rent they pay to the University of Alaska Southeast to use their facility (for 18 hours a week) across Egan Highway from the Juneau-Douglas High School.
Didn’t our Assembly recently pledge UAS $1 million to entice them to keep their teacher education program in Juneau? One would think UAS would be proud of its 35-year partnership with JDHS and work with the JSD to keep this important program around for another 35 years, after all, many JDHS students that have an interest in this career path could then go on to UAS for more vocational schooling.
Fully funding the auto shop program should be a priority for our community and actually we should be doing more vocational programs that mirror what the Mat-Su is doing for their youth.
Scott Spickler,
Douglas