Claremont school district plans for tech center funding

By BILL CHAISSON
[email protected]
CLAREMONT — The Claremont School District will be applying for state funding to renovate their career and technical center in the funding cycle for 2024-25. In a state-wide schedule they were slated to be eligible for funding in 2022-23. “It is only a 75 percent match,” said Cory LeClair, acting superintendent of SAU 6. “That means we would need, for example, to come up with $2.5 million of local money for a $10 million project. We need to plan out something like that with care and caution.” 

A story by Archie Mountain in the July 19 Argus Champion stated “Claremont declined an opportunity to apply,” which led to a flurry on social media. In fact,recent turnover in staff and administration caused the district to reschedule its plans. Earlier this year the Claremont tech center lost its director and four of its teachers retired. When Superintendent Middleton McGoodwin spoke with new director Alex Herzog shortly after he started on June 4 he told the new director the district “needed to be strategic about when to apply” for the renovation funding. McGoodwin who was told in late May that his contract would be terminated, resigned on June 14.

LeClair, who stepped in as acting superintendent until an interim was hired, said that she did not think that the SAU 6 board had ever discussed the tech center funding schedule, and she did not know why. They will, however, take up the issue at their Aug. 15 meeting. When asked how the district and the board would go forward, she immediately laid out a multi-part plan.

“The discussion at the August 15 meeting is the next step,” she said. “Then we need to get [tech center] staff hired for the fall. We need to gather community feedback and to look at local and regional data for the job landscape. Then we need to find out what the students want, and then we can start the budget process.”

McGoodwin and other SAU administrators have already had meetings with Eric Feldborg, the director of Career and Technical Education at the state Department of Education to get an explanation of how the funding cycle worked. Frank Edelbut, the Commissioner of the state department of education, toured the Claremont tech center two weeks ago and also met with the director of the Newport tech center.

The two Sugar River Valley Technical Centers were established in the early 1990s and an agreement was made that they would have complementary programs. LeClair said she was aware that Newport had “reached out to the state to end the agreement” but neither she nor Herzog knew the status of that movement. Whether the agreement survives or not will be a factor in renovations at each center.

While the Claremont administrators were proud of the physical state of their facility, they acknowledged that they are in a rebuilding phase that will include raising enrollment and either adding or modifying existing programs. “If we are going to have, for example, an electricians’ program,” said Herzog, “should we focus on the building trades?” He noted that the Newport center had an auto mechanics program, but perhaps a Claremont electricians program might focus on electric vehicles. It would be a question of finding out both what the community wants and what it is willing to pay for.

“I know we’re pretty strapped,” he said. “I’m a homeowner too. We’ve got to spend wisely and get our money’s worth.” The schedule that SAU 6 received from the state suggests a budget of $6 million for renovations. Herzog called that is an arbitrary number put in by the state officials as a placeholder.

Herzog inherits a tech center that has lost three programs recently to budget cuts. One program was designed to produce preschool paraprofessional staff, but the jobs available did not pay a living wage. His predecessor, he said, also tired of defending programs before the budget-conscious school board. 

LeClair said that some existing programs would change to reflect changes in the marketplace. “Something that was called Machine Tools 1 and 2 might turn into ‘Advanced Manufacturing’,” she said, “because the programs have to evolve with the industry to which they are connected. A machine shop doesn’t look like it did a generation ago.”

She said the district already has an informal relationship with the new Claremont Makerspace, and that they would be formalizing the relationship.

Enrollment in tech center programs has also declined, Herzog said, because parents steer their children away from the trades and toward college. He is working on a “loose marketing plan” that will use social media to counter this kind of thinking, which he said is already on the retreat because of the ever-rising cost of higher education.

Herzog said that his own parents had steered him away from the trades and into college. He now has a doctorate in education, but after a career as a college administrator he said he is very glad to be dealing with the trades, his original interest. “We are going to put this forward as an alternative way to pay for college,” he said. “You can work as a plumber in order to pay for college. If you’re a plumber, you’re going to need to know how to run a business, right?”

Herzog, a former school board member, said he liked what he has heard from SAU board members. “They want to see the tech center used more,” he said. “We have a couple of years before the state needs to know how the Claremont Career and Technical Center will go forward.”