New Hanover County students soon may be able to attend a vocational high school that takes them straight from graduation to gainful employment. Several school board members are working with Rep. Rick Catlin, R-New Hanover, on a plan to open a vocational high school, and they plan to take their idea to the school board next month.
Tammy Covil, Lisa Estep and Bruce Shell are working with Catlin, who says a state law already allows school districts to open career and technical high schools to provide students with in-demand job skills upon graduation.
The school board trio envisions something similar, with a course of study that allows students to obtain a high school education and marketable vocational skills simultaneously. But it would go a step farther.
A 2013 General Assembly bill calls for changes to the high school graduation requirements that could accommodate a vocational high school, and, Catlin said, contains the mechanism to start a pilot program. Since the bill’s passage there has been no movement on the concepts it supports, he said, and he hopes New Hanover County will lead the way.
There are two dedicated vocational high schools in North Carolina, including one that opened September 2014 in an old Coca-Cola bottling plant in Raleigh. Local school board members visited Raleigh’s Vernon Malone Career and College Academy. The school had 131 students when it opened, but Shell said that number is expected to grow.
However, that school must operate within the state’s current graduation requirements, which among other things require four years of English and at least three years of math. It may be possible to condense some of those requirements and add career-specific courses such as technical math, Estep said.
New Hanover and many other counties have early-college high schools that combine some of the ideas being considered for the vocational school, but the emphasis is still on earning a two- or four-year degree. The goal of the vocational school would be to train students for specific types of jobs without requiring a college-bound curriculum.
“It is time to go back to vocational pathways so that students have options,” Catlin said. He was inspired by observing German schools; his company has done business there. Active involvement from the business community in the form of public-private partnerships will be essential to the success of a career and technical high school here, he said.
Establishing the school will be a challenge, from a logistical standpoint and also because many people consider college the only path to career success.
“We are addicted to the college pathway,” Catlin said. But college isn’t for everyone, and the community needs skilled tradespeople and technicians, he said. Offering skills and academic courses that will be used on the job may deter dropouts and help employers fill jobs that often go vacant, he said.
It costs about $40 million to build a high school, Estep said. Soliciting business participation and making use of a converted industrial building could eliminate the need to build a fifth high school for the foreseeable future, she said.
It is too early to decide which courses and career fields might be offered, but Covil said she and her colleagues wanted to come to the rest of the school board with a plan before proposing the idea.
But the board’s chairman said he and other members were not included in those discussions.
“It is certainly something we all support,” chairman Don Hayes said. But he said it is something the full board needs to discuss.
That opportunity will occur during the May board meeting, when the full school board will hear what Covil, Estep and Shell have learned and outline what comes next. A meeting took place Monday with superintendent Tim Markley and Amanda Lee, interim president of Cape Fear Community College, Estep said. There’s plenty of interest, although Estep acknowledges these are just the early stages.
Next steps include more detailed planning, necessary curriculum changes with Catlin spearheading efforts to win state approval for funding.
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