The Rural Regional Tech Center, in LaHarpe, is the newest feature in the ecology of learning in southeast Kansas, and its advent hasn’t gone unnoticed.
In November, Thrive Allen County handed its top honor to the tech center at the group’s annual community awards banquet. Thrive praised the tech center — and its many backers — for marshaling the support and resources required to transform the dream of a vocational school from an idle want into a solid reality.
With the first semester coming to a close, USD 257 Superintendent of Schools Jack Koehn provided board members with a “big picture” snapshot of the tech center at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.
“While it hasn’t been without its costs,” Koehn reflected, “we really do have a vital program on our hands.”
Of the 20 students enrolled last semester, explained the superintendent, 15 are from Iola. The others are from Marmaton Valley and Crest. Students were provided three construction-skills courses during the program’s inaugural semester. Koehn flashed slides of some of the student projects to date: three picnic tables, a fence, a staircase leading up to a second-floor office, various room remodeling jobs. Next up: full-scale outbuildings — “cabins,” they’re calling them. Probably more like sheds, said Koehn, “but with pretty intricate rooflines.”
The costs incurred for the tech ed program are shared across four districts: Iola, Uniontown, Marmaton Valley and Crest. (While Uniontown doesn’t have any students enrolled at the tech center today, they expect to soon, and so contribute on the grounds that they will benefit from investments made in the center’s infrastructure and curricula.)
Each district’s contribution is based on size of enrollment. As the largest of the participating schools, Iola pays 58 percent of the operating cost — utilities plus facility improvements — which equals about $3,500 per semester.
A second expense, explained Koehn, concerns “consumable tech fees” — materials and supplies, essentially — which amounted to $4,200 total during semester one. (Future production welding classes will require higher consumable fees: roughly $75 per credit hour versus the current $35 fee attached to construction.)
“This is something we’re going to have to keep an eye on,” warned Koehn. “I still think it’s a pretty good bargain. But, depending on how many kids we have going out there, that cost could sneak up on us in a hurry.” The board briefly discussed ways of remediating the danger. One suggestion: Encourage outside parties to sponsor student scholarships that would help offset costs.
Additional concentrations of study are already being added to the course schedule. Besides the production welding program, which will be provided by Neosho Community College, the tech center is in talks with Allen Community College regarding a CNA/CMA (nursing) program to begin next year.
But this is only to scratch the surface of what may be on offer at the tech center down the road. Heavy equipment operation, electricity, wind energy operation, computer aided manufacturing, HVAC, information technology, nail tech — a partial list of potential programs under discussion at the LaHarpe facility.
BUT FOR the tech center to achieve its fullest ambitions, said Koehn, its partners need to create an organizational structure capable of supporting its expanding stature.
“We’re probably going to end up forming an interlocal,” explained Koehn. Similar in outline to the district’s ANW Special Education Co-op, an arrangement of this sort would allow for an executive director, clerical support, a school board representative, “policies, bylaws, all those kinds of things. But it takes at least six months to get established, because it has to be approved by the attorney general.”
In the meantime, the principals behind the rural tech center need to focus on “strategic growth,” said Koehn, laying particular emphasis on the phrase’s first half.
The superintendent laid out four strategic priorities:
