WS Tech image, size take a hit

PRINGLE – It’s like a rock dropping from a billow of helium balloons. As enrollment climbs in Luzerne County school districts, it is sinking like a torpedoed boat at West Side Career and Technical Center, plummeting 23 percent in seven years.

It sank even as high school enrollment in the Center’s five member districts climbed 6 percent, enrollment in Wilkes-Barre Area Vocational Technical School rose 7 percent, and enrollment at Hazleton Area Career Center soared 26 percent. The West Side slide came despite a major push by the state to enhance career centers and their use, despite expanded recruiting, and despite offering potential students more flexible scheduling.

And it came at a price. Because most expenses are fixed – salaries, benefits, and building operation - the fewer students enrolled, the more it costs per student. West Side Business Manager David Williams estimates the per-pupil price will spike from about $10,000 during the recently ended school year to close to $12,000 next fall.

But there is an enormous variable making accurate calculations difficult. The “articles of agreement” signed by the five districts that run West Side expire tomorrow, and a fractured Joint Operating Committee remains unable to come up with a new agreement that satisfies all involved. Unless a miracle occurs, on Tuesday morning two districts that provide three-quarters of the Center’s enrollment will no longer be signed on at West Side.

Wyoming Valley West School Board members have demanded more representation on the joint operating committee that runs West Side, currently made up of three representatives from each district. WVW sent 268 students to the Center last year, nearly 70 percent of total enrollment. The Wyoming Area School Board has insisted on a change in language regarding legal liability for students sent to the Center. Wyoming Area sent 41 students to West Side last year.

Students will still be able to attend West Side, but the two districts won’t have any representation on the operating committee. The move has left a lot of parents and children angry and confused – they’ve filled Joint Operating Committee meetings in recent months – and has impacted the Center’s enrollment, Administrative Director Betsy Ellis said..

A record number of students - 262 – took the test required for admission next fall. “It was the largest number in years,” Ellis said. Yet next year’s estimated enrollment of about 400 will be no better or even worse than last year. “All this publicity about the articles of agreement has absolutely hurt our numbers for next year,” Ellis conceded.

Last year was just another in a steady drop that goes back to at least 1999-2000, the earliest data available from the state, when enrollment was at 559.

“I think we have not done – OK, this is something I’m working on, so I should say I think I have not done – enough to change the perception of career and technology education. I truly believe parents still have the 1960s perception,” which was, bluntly, that the schools were for students too stupid to go to college.

Dallas School District Superintendent Frank Galicki agreed. Dallas has had the biggest drop of students enrolled at West Side, from 61 in 2001-02 to 30 in 2006-07. Too many people, he said, now believe college is always the best option for a student.

“We need to do a better job of preparing our students for a career, and explaining that the best career pathway may not be solely college,” Galicki said. He praised Ellis, who assumed her post at West Side last year, for taking major steps in that direction.

The state, Ellis notes, has made a major push in recent years to change the perception and nature of career training, encouraging partnerships with area businesses and business organizations, and requiring schools to get students thinking about their career options as early as eighth grade.

West Side and the other tech schools have responded, trying to recruit students at an earlier age, working with guidance counselors and superintendents to reshape the way students think of tech education, and updating curriculum to more closely match the jobs available.

The local impact, at least on career center enrollments, has been mixed at best. While enrollment in the county’s three tech centers has climbed by 123 overall since 1999-00, it hasn’t kept pace with the increase of high school enrollment. The number of students who could attend a career school (Grades 9-12 at West Side, 10-12 at the other centers) rose 7.2 percent, while the number attending career schools climbed 5.7 percent.

Similarly, of the county’s 11 districts, nine had a smaller percentage of eligible students attending tech schools in 2006-07 than in 2001-02.

Lake-Lehman School District Superintendent James McGovern expressed bewilderment over the district’s failure to reverse that trend. He said that, despite a concerted effort last year to show students West Side is a viable and even valuable option for some, the number of students he expects to send to West Side next year has increased by only two or three.

West Side is a rare beast, a “comprehensive vo-tech” that takes students all day and teaches both the career training and their academic courses. Most other careers centers, including Wilkes-Barre Area and Hazleton Area, are half-day schools that provide only career training.

Wilkes-Barre Area offers training in eight fields that West Side lacks, and does it at about half the cost, roughly $6,200 per student, thanks to that half-day deal. But Ellis says those factors are not hurting enrollment.

“We need to change the perception of what is done in this building, and that is something we have to do internally, we have to bring parents in here. I would like to bring parents in next year during the evening and have them do a project in one of our programs.

“With the way costs are rising, people aren’t even going to be able to afford to send kids to college. A child can come here and learn a career.”