IN JANUARY, nine South Shore towns voted in a landslide to build a new, larger vocational technical high school for the region, broadening opportunities for generations of students and bolstering the economy with the promise of young, skilled workers.
In an age of close votes, this special election wasn’t. The proposal, to build a new $273 million school facility that could open in 2028, won 78 percent of votes cast across the nine towns. The new facility will allow the South Shore Regional Vocational Technical School in Hanover to increase student enrollment and offer new programs in fields that range from plumbing to veterinary science.
It marks an important stride forward in our state’s growing embrace of vocational technical education as a lynchpin of our secondary school offerings – at a time when the state sorely lacks the number of seats needed to satisfy the surging demand from students and parents. And the timing for those future members of the workforce couldn’t be better; the demand for skilled, properly trained workers virtually ensures these students a bright career pathway.
The resounding endorsement of a greater role for voc-tech also signals a major opportunity to expand seating capacity in such schools, simultaneously equipping more kids for successful careers and addressing a skilled labor shortage – recently labeled a “long-term” threat to the state’s economy by Associated Industries of Massachusetts president Brooke Thomson.
Policymakers should take notice and grab for the win-win.
On Beacon Hill, Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll recently put down a marker of $75 million for laboratory modernization funding in the Fair Share supplemental budget that was filed with the Legislature. Similarly, in the higher education bond bill filed by the governor, a $100 million reauthorization of the capital skills grant program was requested.
These are both positive steps, but not sufficient to meet the overwhelming demand for Chapter 74 voc-tech education by Massachusetts students and families. However, there is room for the House and Senate to build on their own record of support for vocational and technical programs in the upcoming budget and legislative process. And advocates from all sides need to seek compromise in the debate over vocational school admissions so that the primary focus remains on the root problem – eliminating voc-tech waiting lists across the state for students seeking this unique form of education that prepares them both for a career and/or college.
Social justice advocates, using selective data, argue that regional vocational technical high school admissions practices are discriminatory. The state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently conducted study sessions on voc-tech admissions policies. These sessions have highlighted that certain criteria, like middle school grades and guidance counselor recommendations, may have a negative impact, while assessing student attendance, discipline history, and interest voc-tech can be critical to participation in this unique form of education.
Moreover, these sessions have highlighted the fact that efforts by voc-tech administrators to increase and diversify their applicant pool are significantly hampered by some school superintendents not allowing voc-tech schools access to middle school students to educate them about how they can choose voc-tech for high school.
These superintendents, often in urban communities, deny students and families this information because funding follows the student should they choose to attend a voc-tech school. Meanwhile, more forward-thinking superintendents at traditional high schools have been adding Chapter 74 voc-tech programs to their own offerings to students to meet this growing demand, bringing the statewide total of such programs to 92. This builds capacity beyond the seats available at the 29 regional voc-tech and agricultural high schools.
These sessions have also demonstrated the financial chaos that a blind lottery for vocational school admissions could create for existing regional voc-tech seat allocation agreements between member municipalities and elected school committees. This would be hugely disruptive and counterproductive to our collective efforts to expand access for all students to a voc-tech education.
Compromise among those with different viewpoints is what the Healey-Driscoll administration and the Legislature, working with the state education department, should be seeking. Divisive, prolonged arguments about competing data points do a disservice to the students and families that want a vocational technical education, as evidenced by both the recent South Shore vote and student waiting lists that exist across the state. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts economy and employer community scream for more voc-tech grads.
The most direct route to sustaining a thriving, diverse population for our vocational schools is building capacity to allow for more seats for more students. Additionally, voc-tech school officials should be allowed full access to reach out to all middle schoolers to make them aware of their opportunities and alternatives. Youngsters, and their parents, uninspired by traditional high schools should have access to the information, as well as to enrollment in a nearby vocational school.
As the proud parents of two daughters who graduated from Worcester Technical High School, my wife and I have seen the benefits of a voc-tech high school diploma. A student with a diploma, an industry-recognized credential, has a lifelong competitive advantage. This advantage benefits both the student and the Commonwealth, whether the student enters the workforce immediately after high school or upon college graduation.
As lieutenant governor, I worked with Gov. Deval Patrick and the Legislature to establish what is now known as the Capital Skills Grant program, which has thrived over three administrations, representing both political parties, allowing voc-tech schools to upgrade and expand, but also for traditional high schools to add Chapter 74 programs of their own. Funding for this program, Lab Modernization Grants, and enhanced Massachusetts School Building Authority funding should be the cornerstones of a sustained multi-year effort to expand access to Chapter 74 programs.
While in office, I visited each of the 64 vocational-technical education programs in the Commonwealth that were in existence at the time, because the students training in those schools represented the workforce of the future. Now, as president of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, I know how vital those well-educated, properly trained students of yesterday have become as workers in our current economy.
Those students equipped with voc-tech experience are work-ready, because they’re sent to the workplace. Students with the entrepreneurial itch leave voc-tech schools ready to launch their own careers, drawing on the skills they’ve developed in high school. Why wouldn’t we want more kids with skills like that?
Voters, students and their families, as well as Massachusetts businesses want more voc-tech seating capacity. The primary and bedrock focus for policymakers, parents, and the business community should be providing as many students as possible with the high-quality opportunities that a voc-tech education provides while maintaining many of the tenets that have made this form of education so successful.
Timothy Murray is president and CEO of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce and chair of the Alliance for Vocational/Technical Education and the Worcester Technical High School General Advisory Board. He is a former mayor of Worcester and lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth.
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