Cape Girardeau school officials vote to expand career center facilities

Members of the Cape Girardeau Public Schools Board of Education approved a motion to contract Brockmiller Construction to construct a new welding laboratory for the Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center's welding program.

The cost agreed upon is not to exceed $4.5 million, and funding for the project is fully refundable because of money being allocated by the state to help improve the school-to-work pipeline in Missouri.

"What we don't want to do is get away from the spirit of this project. We don't want to gut it so much that it wasn't going to be an effective lab," Cape Public Schools assistant superintendent Josh Crowell said during an evening meeting Monday, Feb. 26. "I think where we ended up is we're going to have, again, just a jewel for our school district. We also have to understand that this is a domino effect. This is going to free up multiple areas of space inside the current CTC building. Adding this onto the MAC building is where that's going to go. We have space to expand there and, from that freed up space, that's going to allow other programming needs to take place within the CTC building."

Costs include a robust HVAC system designed to properly ventilate the air because of the burning gas required to weld, as well as a bridge crane to help students haul steel across the shop.

The project is designed to help CTC become a regional hub of sorts to train future welders at a higher capacity, which Crowell said could come close to tripling student capacity.

According to CTC director Brock Crowley, adding a new welding lab can create "endless possibilities" for CTC and its students.

"We're setting it up where we have the capability to do a lot more than what we're doing now," Crowley said. "In particular on the the advanced technical training side, so advanced welding. We've done a bunch of surveying and things like that with students as far as (asking), 'Would you be interested in coming back for advanced welding?' But, really, what we're going to open it up to even more so is we have some pretty big plans for certification, testing and things like that, which will draw folks in regionally as well. Being able to offer those AWS (American Welding Society) tests and be a certified test site -- which is a long and difficult process, and I think we can get there -- but it will open up a lot of opportunities. It gets everybody in one location. Right now, we're operating two separate welding labs that are running simultaneously. It's our biggest nine-month technical program. But there's a lot of other things we've heard from advisers like leadership things that come in like rigging and those types of things that we can maybe add as a part of that outside of advanced welding processes."

In other business, board members approved a request from CTC to assist with funding a vocational education enhancement grant.

The proposal includes funding equipment for various programs -- automotive technology, automotive collision, computer coding and programming, computer networking and security, criminal justice, culinary arts, electrical trades, fire science, HVAC, landscape and horticulture, medical assistant, precision machining, paramedic, respiratory therapy and welding.

The total cost of these upgrades is estimated at $745,722.50, with $149,144.50 being matched by the Cape School District.

"The great news with the enhancement grant is that it's 75-25," Crowley said. "So, it's 25 cents on the dollar that the district matches. It's a really great opportunity for us to stay relevant, particularly with all the things we have going on, to put the students in front of and utilize equipment that they're going to see in the industry."

Board members also approved a renewed lease agreement with Mineral Area College to allow the school to continue using CTC classrooms and office space for its Cape Girardeau Outreach Center.

Visit www.capetigers.com to find the agenda for Monday's school board meeting along with supporting documents.