High schools participating in the Stateline Career & Technical Education Academy are Beloit Memorial; Beloit Turner; Clinton; Evansville; Janesville Craig; Janesville Parker; Orfordville Parkview; and South Beloit, Ill.
BELOIT — The Alcoa Foundation was scheduled to present a $61,000 check today to boost technical education in Rock County.
The money will help the Stateline Career & Technical Education Academy. The SCTEA is a joint effort of seven school districts, Blackhawk Technical College, UW-Rock County and local employers.
Planning has been going on for more than a year to create high school programs that lead to careers in health care, automotive maintenance, construction and other occupations.
The donation comes from a company that plans to shut down its Beloit factory. Alcoa had committed to the donation before it was known that it would be closing, said Sue Holtz, lead consultant for SCTEA.
It was the right thing to do, Holtz added.
The academy's business partners had set a goal of $1.5 million to pay for materials, training and other expenses, Holtz said, but then the economic downturn pulled the plug on many possible contributions.
Efforts continue to find grant funding, and most potential donors have asked that requests for funding be postponed for six months to a year, according to minutes of the organization's recent annual meeting.
Still, "the biggest challenge SCTEA faces is funding," according to the minutes.
Lack of money hasn't stopped the academy from getting off the ground this fall. Beloit Memorial High School will begin offering its automotive technology program at the Beloit Eclipse Center.
Students from Clinton, Beloit Turner, and maybe Orfordville, will travel to Beloit each day for classes, said Steve Huth, coordinator of vocational education for the Janesville School District.
Also up and running—or continuing—will be courses leading to health careers at all the high schools, Huth said. Those courses would lead to nursing programs at Blackhawk Tech and/or UW-Rock, or to other health occupations, such as phlebotomy.
A key goal for the academy is to guide students through courses in high school and college that make them career-ready when they graduate. To make that work, an advisory council of business people has a say in what is taught in the classroom.
Each high school will be a center for teaching at least one of the career paths.
Programs in construction, hospitality/culinary arts, pre-engineering, and welding are planned to start in September 2010.
Evansville and Janesville house-construction classes, which work with local builders, will tie into the SCTEA program, Huth said.
Janesville Craig, and to a lesser degree Janesville Parker, will be centers for culinary arts, because recent renovations have made possible classes that use the cafeteria kitchens, Huth said.
Planning over the past year has focused on aligning the educational programs among the high schools and colleges, Huth said.
Another planning challenge has been arranging for high school juniors and seniors to travel from one school to another for courses, given the varying school schedules.