FRANKLIN COUNTY, Va. – Franklin County Public Schools hosted a Town Hall Thursday at 6:00 P.M. regarding the need for a new Career and Technical Education center in the county.
Last year, over 1500 Franklin County High School students got at least one credit in a career and technology education class.
However, according to Franklin County School Board Chairwoman Dawn McCray, there are still students who wish to take those classes.
“We have lots of students on waiting lists, we have students who can’t take their first priority choices,” McCray said. “We have demand, but we don’t have the space.”
The current CTE center doesn’t enough classroom space, and superintendent Dr. Kevin Siers also says that are safety concerns for students getting to and from class.
“It is located across Tanyard roads from Franklin County High Schools so we have students crossing Tanyard road multiple times a day,” Dr. Siers said.
Parents and school officials both agreed that - due to smaller class size - students are losing out on certification opportunities.
“Because of that, we aren’t able to maximize the total number of students we could put into certifications programs such as masonry and carpentry and a lot of the building trades alongside the automotive trades.”
Franklin County also wants to offer a new welding program and introduce both a cosmetology and a mechatronics class.
With a new CTE center, school leaders believe that they can offer these new classes and more to their students, giving them a higher-quality education before joining the workforce.
“By being able to expand those classes offered, we can help fast-track that,” McCray said. “They can take those, they don’t have to wait for those courses to come along, or they have to wait for once they graduate, so we’d have to find those alternative options for them.”
The proposed facility would include space for classes that would prepare attendees for fields such as robotics, welding, business and cybersecurity, among others.
Dr. Siers says that Franklin County has already bought land for a new CTE center and is looking at ways to rezone the land.
Once the rezoning is done, the school can look into finding an architect to create up-to-date designs before putting it out for bid.
According to Dr. Siers, once a design is made, it would take around two to three years until a new CTE center would be completed.