Area school district officials will meet to discuss community college issue

The director of the Cape Gir-ardeau Career and Technology Center plans to meet Friday with superintendents and other officials from area school districts to discuss possible steps to determine the feasibility of establishing a new community college.

Career center director Rich Payne has invited superintendents and principals from 11 school districts and two private schools to attend the meeting at the career center.

Some Cape Girardeau civic leaders have suggested that the Cape Girardeau career center could be expanded and developed into a community college to serve the region.

Under Missouri law, voters would have to approve a community college taxing district. Such college districts typically encompass several school districts.

The career center currently provides vocational training to high school students in 10 school districts as well as students from Notre Dame Regional High School and Saxony Lutheran High School.

The 10 school districts include Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Kelly, Scott City, Chaffee, Delta, Leopold, Oak Ridge, Advance and Woodland. Officials have been invited from all of those districts as well as from the Nell Holcomb School District, a kindergarten through eighth-grade district, and Notre Dame Regional and Saxony Lutheran high schools.

Payne said the meeting could set the stage for providing data to the Missouri Department of Higher Education that could help determine the feasibility of creating a community college for the region.

That region could encompass school districts in parts of four counties including Cape Girar-deau, Bollinger, Stoddard and Scott counties, he said. Those school districts currently aren't in a community college taxing district, Payne said.

Dennis Parham, superintendent of the Woodland School District in the Marble Hill, Mo., area, believes the issue needs to be studied.

Community colleges, he said, primarily serve students seeking technical skills.

"We are talking about students who are more interested in entering vocational areas rather than academic areas," Parham said. "They don't need a four-year degree program at SEMO or some place like that."

Parham said a community college would benefit school districts such as Woodland that have a number of students who participate in the state's A-Plus program, which pays for two years of community college classes after high school.

It would be more convenient for residents in Bollinger County to travel to a community college in Cape Girardeau for post-secondary vocational training than to drive to Mineral Area College in Park Hills, Mo., Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff, Mo., or even Southeast Missouri State University's campus in Sikeston, Mo., he said.

Parham said Woodland High School graduates who learn technical skills can obtain higher-paying jobs. "That raises the standard of living for the entire community," he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123