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Show Vocational Ed. Center Will Provide For Variety of Needs in Grand County Moab's recently -approved vocational education center should not be confused with the Grand County Center for Continuing Education, Assistant Assis-tant Superintendent of Grand County Schools, Bill Meador told Moab Rotarians Monday. Mon-day. When underway, both of these programs will be separate sep-arate additions to the educational edu-cational program in Grand County, - and each will have its own , direction and goals. Mr.- Meador stated that planning for the vocational education; center began over three years ago, following construction of three, other such centers in the State: at Richfield, Logan, and Roosevelt. He stated that when it was decided to try for such a program in this county, the School Board decided de-cided against beefing up the present shop facilities in the high school building, which would have been made obsolete ob-solete by a full-fledged vocational voca-tional education program. Since that time, work has been underway in soliciting support from both the State Department of Education and the Four Corners Regional Commission for construction of a center here, and both of those units have now approved ap-proved the center. "Work should get underway under-way on the physical plant sometime this year, aiming at opening the center for general use in the fall of 1970," Mr. Meador stated. It will be operated to provide pro-vide for vocational training- in trades and industry, in business procedures and . in other special need areas. The new building will be buUt directly east of the present high school building, it will be constructed entirely entir-ely with State and Federal monies, along with local funds approved last Thursday in the 1969-70 Grand School budget. The center will consist con-sist of five large shop areas and five classroom areas. Mr. Meador stated that although al-though no architect had yet been contacted for specific work on the project, it was felt through preliminary estimates es-timates that the building and equipment would cost in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars. "We ara looking at a building containing con-taining approximately 16,000 square feet of floor space," he said. Mr. Meaapr stated that one of the most beneficial side-effects side-effects of the new center, will be that present shop facilities fa-cilities in the high school can be abandoned and remodeled for other instructional uses. Programs going into vocational voca-tional education will free five classrooms, as well as the large shop, which can be converted con-verted to a group educational education-al area he said, indicating that this" should take most of the expansion pressure out of the high school plant a facility fa-cility that is now showing the signs of overcrowding as larger elementary and junior high classes move on to high school work. In staffing the new center, the district is looking to one full time instructor, two part time instructors, and others selected from the business or trades fields who can be qualified as instructors. This may result in the reassign- ment of some of the present high school personnel, he indicated. Auto mechanics, welding, building trades, business and secretarial training, and several sev-eral other fields are geing viewed as ones to begin the work in the new center. Mr. Meador stated that it was hoped that a close working relationship could be developed develop-ed between the School District Dis-trict and local industry and business, so that the center might be extremely useful in filling the training or retraining re-training needs of the local area. It is also conceivable and expected that the center will attract a number of students from other communities com-munities in the Four Corners area, he said. The center will be utilized for regular daytime program evening and adult programs and will cooperate closely with the Continuing Education Educa-tion Center, which is designed de-signed primarily to provide post-high school opportunity for persons wishing to do work toward a college degree. de-gree. The center will also be given the assignment for rehabilitation and retraining programs, working with local lo-cal industry and the Department Depart-ment of Employment Security. Secur-ity. J. G. Pinkerton, Grand County School Board President, Presi-dent, was also present at the meeting Monday. Mr. Pinker-ton Pinker-ton told Rotarians that the School Board felt a growing responsibility to persons with no inention of going on to college. Many persons, he said, do not desire to go on for a formal college education, educa-tion, or who do not have the capabilities for college work. The Board felt that it was important to provide as good a vocational training program pro-gram here as possible to meet the needs of this group of people, he said. |