Wills says she’s waited for three years for a CTE plan from V’ACTE but doesn’t have an acceptable one yet; McCarver says Board has no business discussing alternative CTE locations unless asked by staff to do so; Wills waiting for East County Superintendents view on centralized Campus; McCasland reminds Board that East County has been asking for improved CTE for several years
Second District representative Deb McCasland asked the Yavapai Community College Governing Board at the March 6 meeting whether it would consider alternatives for the site of a Career and Technical Education facility on the East side of the County. She commented that the Yavapai-Apache Nation and the Valley Academy for Career and Technical Education (V’ACTE) were interested in possibly asking the College to evaluate one of several buildings on the Highway 260 corridor for a central CTE facility. (Recall the College located a West County CTE facility on a separate campus at the Prescott airport several miles from the main Prescott Campus.)
The response from the College staff was unambiguous. They said that their only consideration for a CTE facility on the East side of the County was Building “L” located on the Verde Valley Campus in Clarkdale. They listed several reasons for this decision including renovation and operational costs, available space and driving distance.
President Wills said she has been waiting for “three years” for a CTE plan from V’ACTE but has yet to receive one that she finds acceptable. She also said that almost ten of the top 12 priorities for the East side of the County were being addressed. West County Board Representative Pat McCarver said that the Governing Board had no business discussing alternative locations for a CTE building. That, from her perspective, was the sole prerogative of the staff. Only if the staff made a recommendation to the Board for purchase of a building should the Board act. Representative McCasland indicated her dissent from McCarver’s view but no one else on the Board joined her.
Wills also indicated that she is waiting for a response from the East County superintendents as to whether they even want a centralized CTE facility over there.
A ten-minute video of the entire discussion follows below. A tiny portion of the discussion where Representative Ray Sigafoos explained his prior statements regarding $5 million for purchase of a building has been edited out and will appear in a separate video on the Blog.