Tech school growing

By MARK SAGE/Staff

A lot’s changed in the seven decades since students completed what must have been the mother of all assignments: to build their school.
But then again, there’s a lot that hasn’t changed.
On the one hand, the kids those days couldn’t have imagined all the building would hold for the kids these days. Yet they wouldn’t be surprised by the auto classes or the ones in masonry and carpentry.
The point is, it’s not your father’s vocational education, except when it is.
The building, started as a Works Progress Administration project in 1934, opened in 1938, according to Assistant Principal Jackson Barker. It was originally home to some building trades classes and auto shop, he said. And it was popular. According to the school’s Web site, an addition was built 26 years after it opened, to satisfy demand. The William N. Neff Center for Science and Technology came in 1975. Brian Johnson, principal of both campuses, said it’s a different world now.
In reality, the vocational school – or more properly career and technical center – world has changed even in the past five or six years.
For one thing, there are more kids. Johnson said enrollment this year was around 530. The increase, about 200 in the half-decade span, is due to new courses and to the fact that the school does everything it can to recruit new students and work with their schedules.
For instance, Johnson and Barker do presentations every year to high school and middle school students, telling them what’s available at the center.
“We offer a lot of different things to a lot of different kids,” Johnson said. “Our schools have a variety of things that are available to students in Washington County, no matter what they want to do.”
In fact, Johnson said that not even he knew what all the center offered until he became principal there.
A whole new slate of classes came in six or seven years ago, but didn’t always replace an existing program. There’s still a masonry course and a carpentry course, independent of the building trades course. There’s welding and auto body and auto repair. And there’s cosmetology. Those haven’t changed and remain popular. But the old print shop changed. It’s now computer technology and design. Drafting, still the same in name, is mostly all computerized and computer-aided nowadays. Plumbing and electricity are no longer separate classes. They’re covered under the building trades curriculum, despite the salaries plumbers and electricians can make and the demand for them.
“It doesn’t mean it’s going to be popular with kids,” Johnson said.
Some classes are perennial favorites, though. Take cosmetology. It’s full – the career and technical classes can only accommodate 20 students per class – every year, usually with juniors and seniors only. Likewise, the criminal justice and pharmacy tech programs are insanely popular. Johnson said the criminal justice program as “to turn kids away every year.” The school keeps a full load in its masonry class, too, he said. Advertising and design is full. So is robotics.
Some of the classes attract students at least in part by their reputations. The health care programs, Johnson notes, are outstanding. The LPN program has for three years running scored 100 percent passing rate on the state licensing exam. The pharmacy tech program has done the same for two years.
The old idea that technical school graduates can’t or don’t go to college just doesn’t measure up to reality, Johnson said. There are, of course, some students who attend the school with no intention of going on to an advanced degree. They come to get trained and certified for any one of the good paying jobs available to cosmetologists, masons or welders, to name a few. Others, though get to the school and begin to think differently. Johnson said a few years back, a student came to the Neff Center with no plans for college, until he took drafting. He’s now earning his degree. Still others come to the center because they know they want to go to college and want to get a head start. Cisco networking classes, one of the seven courses offered that provides dual enrollment credit with Virginia Highlands Community College, allows students to earn 22 college credits.
“I would say a large percentage of our students go on to the community college or other four-year schools.”
Many of those who don’t go on to a college, go to apprentice school or just on to good jobs.
Nursing, nurses aides and pharmacy tech candidates all complete national licensure requirements before graduation. Cosmetology students pass a state licensing exam. Welding, auto and Cisco students all pass industry certification exams. All have the opportunity to go right into the work force, making good money.
Johnson said the career and technical education centers help in the job hunt, too. Courses help students with soft skills; they learn how to do portfolios, how to land those good-paying jobs.
The technical school taught Johnson a thing or two, too. He said he was amazed at the lack of discipline issues at the school, particularly since four school feed into one.
“They’re here because they want to be here,” he said.
Students who go there doing something they want to do, something they enjoy.
Even as the days of the old-fashioned vocational school are over, Johnson said academic pressures mounting against all schools have hurt a lot of tech centers. So far, he said, school leadership has been able to avoid trouble in Washington County. The previous tech center administration, Johnson said, developed a more flexible schedule that works with more student needs. Some Abingdon High students, he said, come to the Neff Center for just one period.
A meeting set for Monday at 7 p.m. at Abingdon High might end up helping the career and technology center attract even more students to its18 classes. Dr. Alan lee sent out an e-mail last week noting that only Holston High of the four county high schools operates on a modified block as opposed to the traditional seven-period day. The modified block allows students, traditional and career and technology, to earn more credits, he said. The traditional seven-period schedule puts students at a disadvantage as the Virginia Board of Education increases graduation requirements. To look at block scheduling, the school system invited James Madison University professor Dr. Michael Rettig to speak on the pros and cons of scheduling.