TST BOCES grows with two significant grants

By Jamie Swinnerton
Tompkins Weekly

 

Starting this fall around 20 students will start earning their associates degrees in either Computer Science or Advanced Manufacturing through the brand-new P-Tech Academy at TST BOCES. Students of the P-Tech Academy enter as ninth graders and over the next six years, they work simultaneously to earn their high school diploma and an Associates Degree in Applied Science from Tompkins Cortland Community College. The academy was made possible when TST BOCES was granted around $3 million over the next seven years to get the academy up and running. After seven years, the program will be supplemented by funds from the local school districts.

But the P-Tech Academy isn’t the only big change coming to BOCES. Within the same grant cycle, the organization was awarded almost $1 million a year for the next five years to expand the adult education programs that BOCES has been providing for years. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WOIA) grant is funded through both the federal government and state government and is designed to help job seekers access the necessary training and education needed to succeed in the labor market and match employers with workers trained in the industries that need workers. Diahann Hesler, outgoing Director of Career and Technical Education and P-Tech, said the organization has applied for the WOIA grants before and received much smaller amounts, but this time she decided to go all in and apply for three grants. TST BOCES ended up getting even more than it asked for.

“Part of that grant involves just traditionally what we’ve been doing, which is providing adult education to students who don’t have their high school diploma, helping them achieve their high school diploma, doing the testing,” Hesler said. “Then, this new sort of realm of WIOA is to really increase training and that’s the part that we really focused on.”

The organization serves about 350 adult learners for English as a Second Language (ESL) and has been recognized by the state for its achievements in this area and will be training other teachers in the state. The WOIA grant money will be used to build training programs for ESL learners. Before funding cuts forced TST BOCES to cut down on training opportunities, the organization used to put out a big catalog of its offerings for the community to peruse. With this money, Hesler said TST BOCES hopes to bring back some of those lost programs.

As part of the grant application, TST BOCES had to identify areas of need in the community, find local business partners, and create local pathways of training opportunities for those needs. Hesler said the organization selected three pathways: healthcare, manufacturing, and hospitality. For healthcare, TST BOCES will develop a home health-aid training in the first year, develop certified nursing assistant training the second year, and develop phlebotomy training the third year.

“The model for the training is different,” Hesler said. “It’s not just that someone comes and sits and does so many hours of training. It has to be an integrated model. What that means is, it has to build the student’s skills in the literacy area and the math.”

The training will use what Hesler calls a “push-in” model which means that instead of sending students to another class to learn the necessary math and literacy components, a specialist will come in to teach those components as part of the training. The funding will be going, in part, to paying for these teachers. ESL teachers will be brought in to teach the students the necessary vocabulary as part of this push-in, integrated model of training.

 

“We’re also going to add a digital literacy component,” Hesler said. “So, students will exit with a resume, they’ll exit with computer skills, interviewing skills, how to basically use the computer for whatever aspect they’re training for.”

The training for the healthcare program is partnered with Visiting Nurse Services of Ithaca and some of the nursing homes in the area where students will have a place to do their clinical hours. The hospitality program is partnered with Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC) and the City of Ithaca for a six-week training before they are threaded into internships and apprenticeships in numerous areas of the hospitality industry.

The manufacturing training will build on a program that TST BOCES already has for a precision machining program in Candor. What has for two years been an introductory model of training will become a “full-blown, credential model,” Hesler said.

Along with using the money for the push-in teachers, Hesler said the organization hopes to use the money to hire a job developer whose goal will be to create partnerships with local businesses, make sure what TST BOCES is offering in the training meets industry standards, and develop new training. To comply with new state regulations, TST BOCES will be hiring a new case manager. The bulk of the grant money will go toward these positions and the push-in teachers. All of the new training is expected to start this year.

“Okay, here’s the window, here’s the money, let’s go after it, let’s just tackle this and let’s really grow adult ed,” Hesler said, explaining why she chose to apply for a larger portion of funding than the organization usually does. “We need to do it anyway and here’s funding to help support it.”

The P-Tech (Pathways in Technology Early College High School) Academy will be open to students this coming fall and will be housed in Dewitt Middle School, across the street from the TST BOCES campus, but the possibility of bringing the program onto the campus is being explored.

“They come for a full-blown high school, and they exit with a free associates degree,” Hesler said of the new TST BOCES P-Tech program. “They start taking college classes right when they’re freshman, so they’re doing their high school credits and their college credits all at the same time, and we’re partnered with the businesses. So, the businesses come in and provide authentic projects for the students to work on.”

Like the training programs, the students of the P-Tech academy will also be funneled into internships and apprenticeships through the BOCES program. The organization applied for the money two years ago but were not selected, so when the opportunity came around again BOCES applied again.

“Our partners in the community, the business partners that we have, along with the Chamber, the workforce development board, and TCAD were really supportive of us going for it, and so were our school districts who really wanted to get this grant to build this school that’s much more hands-on and project based for a group of students that will probably excel in that environment,” said TST BOCES superintendent Jeffrey Matteson.

Both grants help define better career pathways for local community members, Matteson said. P-Tech for young people looking to get into computer science or manufacturing, and the adult education classes for older individuals looking to gain new skills.

“We’re growing all the possibilities for kids, which is what we should be doing,” Hesler said of the organization’s push to create new programs and training. The hidden gem of Tompkins County, as she likes to think of it, is ready to keep growing.