Forum on Career Technical Education in Essex County, 10 am – 1pm, Saturday, May 4 at Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School (ENSATS), 565 Maple Street, Hathorne, MA. Sponsored by the Education Working Group of Progressive Democrats of Massachusettes.
How can Massachusetts educate the workforce required to fill the jobs of the future? How can we provide educational opportunities that meet the needs, interests, and aptitudes of all our high school-aged students? Is it acceptable for there to be thousands of young people languishing on wait-lists to get into the public schools that meet their needs?” To learn more about these questions, please join us for a forum about the needs and opportunities for Career and Technical Education (CTE), (vocational education), sponsored by the Education Working Group of Progressive Democrats of Mass.
With the Massachusetts economy booming, employers are finding it difficult to hire enough people with the skills that are needed. Nowhere is this truer than in Essex County. Rapid technological change has placed a premium on technical education that is sufficiently flexible to adapt to an ever changing labor market in such new areas as, for example, advanced manufacturing. Essex County has two public schools that are specialized in this kind of education — ENSATS and Greater Lawrence Technical School (GLTS) — yet the number of places available at these schools is only about one quarter the number of applications.
Each of these schools has embarked on dual school programs involving academic courses in traditional high schools in the morning and technical programs in vocational/technical schools in the afternoon. But these are only pilot programs involving a handful of students. So the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has set aside one million dollars to fund Planning Grants and Implementation Grants for programs that increase access to students now on waiting lists to attend vocational schools or to enable more students in traditional high schools to be in vocational programs. Since this may not be sufficient to meet the needs of these students, a bill to provide an additional million dollars is pending as an amendment to next year’s state budget. Citizen advocacy will be important in getting this bill enacted into law.
In the first panel of the forum, Superintendent-Directors Heidi Riccio (ENSATS) and John Lavoie (GLTS) will explore these and other issues and how these two technical high schools are helping to solve them. In a second panel, representatives of employers, educators, students, parents, and workers will present their perspectives. Over lunch, the panelists will lead breakout sessions to allow members of the audience to participate in the discussion. Afterwards there will be a training session in public advocacy – to help move several important bills forward in the Massachusetts legislature. Following closure of the forum, those wishing to do so will be given a tour of the ENSATS facilities.
Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts (PDM) is a volunteer-run, statewide network of grassroots activists, who are seeking to advance public policies of opportunity and inclusiveness at the state and local level via public education and advocacy. PDM’s Education Working Group has identified access to high quality Career and Technical Education as a critical need. This forum is part of PDM’s effort to educate and activate citizens about this important issue.
The forum is free of charge and parking is available. The venue is handicapped accessible. We ask those who are planning to attend or would like further information to send an email to Dirck Stryker at dstryker@aird.com. Please also indicate whether you would like to participate in the tour.