By LESLIE EIKLEBERRY
Salina Post
Technical colleges and others in Kansas rely heavily on federal funding to provide quality education to Kansas students was the message educators conveyed to Kansas Congressman Roger Marshall Friday.
Marshall was in Salina Friday to meet with various constituency groups. He started off his stop in Salina with a look at Kansas State Polytechnic’s unmanned aerial vehicle program. He ended his time in Salina at a meeting with the Salina Military Affairs Council.
In between, the Republican First District congressman met with educators and others in a Workforce Funding Roundtable hosted by Salina Area Technical College. Approximately 15 educators, business and industry representatives, and economic development officials participated in the discussion.
Marshall asked the various education institutions represented at the meeting to tell him how they are using funding from the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act and what their views are about Perkins.
Greg Nichols, president of Salina Tech, noted that because his institution is a technical college under the state umbrella, it doesn’t have local mill levy authority.
“We rely heavily on Perkins funding for continued training for our instructors,” he said.
Nichols explained that it is important for instructors to stay up-to-date with the ever-changing technology in order to provide the kind of quality education that helps students become valued employees in the workplace. He said instructors go to national or regional meetings to receive training from industry leaders.
“The funds are critical for us because honestly, I’m not sure how we could keep up to date in all the fields that we have,” Nichols said.
Salina Tech offers allied health, auto collision repair, automotive technology, business administrative technology, commercial truck driving, computer aided drafting, construction technology, continuing education, dental assistant, diesel technology, electrical technology, general education, HVAC, machine tool technology, medical assistant, police science, practical nursing, and welding technology.
Nichols said that Salina Tech also uses Perkins funding to help purchase equipment critical to training students so they know how to do their jobs once they are out in the workforce.
“Some of the equipment is critically vital for the programs but it’s so expensive to run that I’m not sure we could invest our funds (in equipment) without some addition” of Perkins funds, he said.
“Is it a huge part of our overall budget? No. But it is the part that if you don’t have it, you really suffer tremendously,” Nichols added.
Salina USD 305 Superintendent James Hardy said that the district has “embraced the idea that we’re the supply side for the workforce, not just for Salina but for the state, so we recognize that and we’re all in on career and technical ed.”
“We have a great community partner in our tech college here,” Hardy said. “We have some articulations agreements that they (Salina high school students) start at our place and they come here to finish. Our students can finish here with a job that will pay extremely well, better than college grads in a lot of cases.”
Hardy also noted that Salina Tech’s placement rate “is huge.” According to information from Salina Tech, it’s placement rate for its students is in the 90 percent range.
Marshall asked Hardy how career counseling has changed over the past 15 years or so.
Hardy replied that students in eighth grade begin to explore job interests and an individual plans of study are created. When students enter their freshman year, they take general classes, but they also can move into a pathway of study that focuses on particular career fields in which the students are interested, he said. By the time the students graduate from high school, “they pretty much know what they want to do,” Hardy added.
Carter File, president of Hutchinson Community College (HCC), said that “technical education is differentiated from general education in that, in my mind, the cost.” He noted that his institution also uses Perkins funding to help with equipment costs and updating faculty training.
“If you don’t keep your faculty current, if you stay out of training for even five years, you’re behind. You’re a lifetime behind. So those are the great things Perkins can do,” he said.
He said that Perkins funding also can be used as seed money to help start new training programs.
Cindy Hoss, vice president of academic affairs at HCC, noted that faculty in discipline-accredited programs also have to go to training to meet industry standards in order to keep the accreditations active.
“So it is critical to have that money to be able to send them,” she said.
Steve Porter, of HCC’s Business and Industry Institute, said the institute listens to the needs of business and industry and then works with academic departments within HCC to help develop training programs to meet those needs.
File said it was important to connect students with business and industry as soon as possible, even into the middle school level, so that students can see first hand that technical careers are great careers and that they can start thinking about such careers earlier.
Chuck Scott, executive director of the Dickinson County Economic Development, said that one challenge for his organization was creating a pipeline of new employees for the businesses in the county, so he was interested in hearing others’ ideas about that.
“Most of our high school graduates don’t stay in the county, so we have that challenge, too,” he added.