McCann bucks low enrollment trend, showing vocational ed. growth
Jayden Dean, 7, hammers while Justin Horn, 16, holds a metal pencil holder in place. The device was fabricated in the metal shop and was available to visitors to test their skills, during an open house at McCann Technical High School on Tuesday, November 29, 2016.
GILLIAN JONES - THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
PostedSunday,December 25, 20166:45 pm
By Larry Parnass,
NORTH ADAMS — For three days in January, Colby Ghidotti, a middle-schooler who grew up surrounded by Lego blocks, will wrap up school and ride down to McCann Technical School in North Adams.
For an hour or so, he'll sample life in the school's shops. "I definitely want to come here," Ghidotti, 14, said on a recent visit to McCann. "That's something I really want to do."
He's ready to get building again — and he's hardly alone.
Across Massachusetts, more than 3,000 students have been on waiting lists to attend the state's 37 vocational schools.
While there is no waiting list at McCann, that's only because enrollment figures for secondary education have been falling across Berkshire County.
Except at McCann, that is, where enrollment has grown, its superintendent said. Steady interest in vocational education keeps McCann's classrooms and shops filled to normal capacity.
The roughly 48,000 vocational students enrolled across Massachusetts make up about 17 percent of the public high school population, according to a recent report by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.
That group is advocating for additional state funding to clear out waiting lists, arguing that the $27 million it would cost to meet all current demand for vocational school placements would benefit the state economy and help address the "skills gaps" faced by businesses.
In the past decade, vocational school enrollment grew 14 percent in Massachusetts, as students and families came through the Great Recession eager to link education to future jobs.
In Pittsfield, educators expect to significantly expand their vocational options with the September 2018 opening of a new Taconic High School.
For now, there is no waiting list for vocational education, said Richard Brady, Pittsfield's assistant superintendent for career technical education. The city's schools enroll 370 vocational students, 173 at Pittsfield High School and 197 at Taconic.
"We can handle more than that," Brady said. He said educators are encouraged by the stepped-up interest shown when vocational schools expand their operations, as he said has happened with the Roger L. Putnam Vocational-Technical Academy in Springfield.
COMPUTER AGE
At a recent McCann open house, prospective students watched as computer-controlled machines drilled tool parts, one of dozens of demonstrations provided in shops throughout the 70 Hodges Cross Road building Nov. 29.
Nikki Kirk, a 17-year-old senior from Adams, watched as a robotic device she programmed prowled a classroom. She allowed a visitor from The Eagle to take the controls and steer the loaf-sized gizmo straight towards her teacher, who, looking bemused, stood his ground.
Kirk opted for an Information Technology focus. She said she's been interested in computers for years, experience that helped her rise to become captain of the robotics club.
"It's kind of where everything's going now," Kirk said of computer science.
For her, McCann is only the beginning of her pursuit of mastery in her field. She plans to earn a four-year bachelor's degree in software engineering, hopefully at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
James Brosnan, McCann's superintendent, said more than 60 percent of his school's graduates go on to earn two- or four-year college degrees.
"That wasn't the case 20 years ago," Brosnan said. "These are people who make things. Fix things. Design things. We're creating that career path at an earlier age."
"They have a skill set," Brosnan said of McCann graduates. "They think, `I can produce this.'"
During the open house, Thomas Mahar, chairman of the McCann School Committee, roamed the building, checking in with students and families. "The reputation of McCann alone is what is drawing people here," Mahar said. "I've been talking to parents out there — and they're influential."
PARENTAL HOPES
That includes the parents of Colby Ghidotti, the North Adams teen who didn't have to be pushed too hard by his parents, David and Carrie, to visit McCann. The family lives in North Adams and Colby uses school choice to attend Clarksburg Elementary and Middle School.
"It's very impressive, I'm telling you," Carrie Ghidotti, who works as a property manager in Adams, said of McCann at the open house, as she stood in an IT classroom.
For three weeks next month, her son will spend Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons exploring McCann's choice of shops. He starts out with a particular interest in the Computer Assisted Design program.
Computers also rule these days in the Machine Technology department, where current McCann student Sam Parks of Lanesborough, 15, was working a CNC device — it stands for computer numerical control — housed in a splash-proof enclosure. He came to tour the school two years ago. His father Evan attended McCann.
"I thought it was really cool. I really love manufacturing things," said Parks, who hopes to become a mechanical engineer. As he spoke, he kept an eye on the computer-controlled drill shuttling through its appointed rounds, the bit flooded with a white foam that was both cooling and lubricating the metal surfaces.
Parks said not just any job will do, once he's trained. "It has to be that I'm on a job that I really enjoy doing," he said.
A classmate, Rutger Thurston of North Adams, a 15-year-old sophomore, said that after trying out life in the Machine Technology shop, he was hooked. "I've always loved making things."
He hopes to make a single-cycle engine this year. Another project: a metal bust created through a CNC software application that reads from a photo.
"In this shop we can make anything out of metal," he said with evident pride.
His message to prospective students: Come try it out.
Will Kipp, a senior from Hancock, came to McCann from homeschooling and rose to be chapter historian for the Skills USA unit at McCann, the national competition through which vocational students test what they've learned.
Just as he was once home-schooled, Kipp's education today takes place, in part, outside of traditional classroom settings. He is working at Marland Mold Inc. in Pittsfield on a coop placement, where he fashioned a mold for plastic caps used for water bottles. Another assignment called for him to make hinges for the doors of armored vehicles.
"I just enjoy making," he said. "Taking things that are raw and turning it into a finished product."
That same desire, Kipp said, is what pulls young people toward McCann — and other vocational schools.
"We come here and are allowed to touch so many things. We're discovering things we didn't know," he said. "I think that's a lot of what these kids are thinking."
After McCann, Kipp said, he may join the military, building on the public safety role he's already played as a volunteer firefighter for two years. Longer term, he said, he wants to pursue biomedical engineering and wants to invent biomedical devices and techniques used by trauma teams.
NEW TOOLS
Around a corner, inside the Computer Assisted Design shop, teacher Tim Tinney stood by as visitors inspected equipment that hadn't been invented when he was a student at McCann decades ago.
"When we were here it was the old drafting boards," Tinney said. "Technology has definitely taken a turn.
As with the school as a whole, most students graduating in his department go on to higher education, but about 30 percent enter the job market. Opportunities there are much on parents' minds, he said.
"They ask, `Where can my kids go after graduation?'" he said. "They're more prepared for either venture."
Even those who enroll in college find themselves sought-after by the employers they got to know during McCann coop assignments. Many take part-time jobs while on school breaks, Tinney said. "They fall right into the position."
But first, if they want to pursue vocational training, they have to fall into the ranks at a place like McCann.
That's where 13-year-old Stephen Perreault of Adams is at. He and his mother, Linda, made their way through McCann's open house — partly to look, but also because another Perreault family member, Andrew, is enrolled as a junior in the Computer Assisted Design program.
Stephen Perreault, who now attends St. Stanislaus Kostka School, said he particularly liked watching a welding simulator be put through its paces by a McCann student.
Machining and engineering run in the family, Linda Perreault explained, as does an entrepreneurial spirit.
"I think it would be neat to have a business," Stephen Perreault said. "I've just always been interested in metal."