NORTHAMPTON — Gabriella Smith moved from Pennsylvania to western Massachusetts a few years ago because her family heard about the educational opportunities at the oldest vocational school in the commonwealth.
“We all just get a head start in life, so it makes getting a good job a lot easier,” said Smith, referring to students at Smith Vocational and Agricultural School on Locust Street in Northampton.
As a freshman two years ago, Smith sampled four different trades during a four-week exploratory period, but gravitated toward “collision repair” or automobile body work. She enjoyed all the different skills, from painting a newly installed part to welding the electrical systems of a Tesla, but she narrowed her focus to estimation and appraisal in her junior year.
Collision repair is not Smith’s career goal — she plans to study neurology in college — but her time at Smith Voc has provided a secondary career option, potential job security and even lifelong friends.
“The school is like a family,” she said. “At a regular high school, we might go to school together for four years and then never speak again. But I still talk to the seniors from last year. We’ve definitely built a lot of trust here, and a lot of trust and like security in the shop.”
Smith is just one of many students in recent years who have flocked to vocational and technical education over a traditional public school pathway. The demand for vocational programs has grown exponentially over the last two decades, both in the commonwealth and nationally, and the upward trend is not slowing down.
“It’s not really a choice of either-or,” said Smith Voc Superintendent Andrew Linkenhoker, referring to vocational versus a traditional high school. “That if I send my son or daughter to a vocational school, he or she’s learning a skill, but they’re not going to get the academics, or the other way around. The students who come here, they get both.”
According to the Pioneer Institute, Massachusetts enrollment in career technical schools rose 24% between 2005 and 2020.
That growth is also reflected at vocational schools in western Massachusetts. Smith Voc’s enrollment has gone up 36% over the last 11 years, from 440 in 2014 to close to 600 this school year. In Turners Falls, Franklin County Technical School teaches nearly 650 students, a 40% increase from the 463 students enrolled in 2015. Even South Hadley High School’s vocational programs that started 16 years ago with 20 to 30 students are now nearly at 100 students.
Applications to CTE schools far outnumber the amount of seats available. Smith Voc regularly receives over 300 applications for the 150-member freshman class, and the waitlist is extensive.
“That interest is statewide,” Linkenhoker said. “So at some of the other vocational schools over 1,000 students aren’t getting it. It’s so crazy how popular the voc tech schools are now, which is great.”
While vocational technical education remains popular with students who want to pursue a trade, the growth in interest extends far beyond jump-starting on a career path. More and more students are turning away from traditional college-preparatory education in favor of career technical education (CTE), either out of fear of future student loan debt, or out of a desire for a hands-on educational model and an opportunity for career discovery.
Experts say the trend is not slowing down anytime soon.
“I think that the great news is in vocational education, there’s something for everyone,” said Aaron Polansky, president of the Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators board of directors. “And what it does, really is, I think it opens doors and creates opportunities so that students can be multi-dimensional.”
Open for opportunity
When David Ferreira, communication coordinator at Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators, began 1991 at Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical School District in Rochester, the student population had dipped to 425. By the time he left 16 years later, 580 students were enrolled.
What changed during his tenure was the introduction of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS. The statewide assessment forced CTE high schools to increase their academic rigor, and by the late 2000s the schools were producing scores that matched or exceeded other public schools, he said.
“Relevancy was always an issue in the traditional academic high school. You walk into math class, and you hear, ‘When am I ever going to use this math?’” Linkenhoker said. “In the vocational schools, it’s an automatic relevancy. I might be in math class during my academic week learning about slopes and the following week, I’m in carpentry, and I have to figure out the angle for these stairs.”
Smith Voc has given students like freshman Leif Pauli and junior Christopher Hanks a chance to leave their district’s academic high school and opt into hands-on learning. Hanks had applied to the CTE school for three years before finally landing a spot. Now, he gets to make silly creations with his friends while also building life skills like self-sufficiency.
In 2016, South Hadley High School began adding vocational programs and has since developed five programs in culinary arts, carpentry, criminal justice, graphic design and hospitality. Principal Elizabeth Wood said the school’s dropout rate has gone down, graduation rates have increased among its most vulnerable populations and MCAS scores rose after embracing a comprehensive school model.
“So it was really a time of big change for South Hadley High School,” Wood said. “ We were looking at really being super student focused, and getting away from this idea that we’re going to dictate what’s best for students, and we really allowed students to dictate what was best for students.”
Part of the reason for this change was to keep students in-district for the most popular vocations, saving roughly $18,000 per student in tuition. However, Superintendent Jennifer Voyik said the budget savings are simply a benefit of expanding educational opportunities for students.
“You really do get the best of both worlds,” Wood said. “You have access to all of our clubs and activities. You have access to our teachers and your friends and everything that you would want to have in South Hadley, while also experiencing the style of education that you want to experience.”
For some, college days are over
The climbing cost of higher education likely expedited the push away from a college track, Franklin County Technical School Superintendent Richard Martin said.
CNBC calculated that a tuition at a four-year public college increased 213% from 1987 to 2017 using data from the College Board’s “Trends in College Pricing 2017” report. Student loan borrowing and debt has skyrocketed, and in some cases outpaced, the rise in college tuition. As more than 43 million Americans grapple with their portion of a federal student loan portfolio exceeding $1.6 trillion, families are turning to vocational education as an alternative.
“I hear from parents about the economic viability,” Martin said. “It’s going to cost a parent $150,000 to $250,000 to educate kids at a four-year college, and they may or may not make what a typical trades person is going to make.”
However, CTE students can continue their education after graduation. Martin estimates that 25% of Franklin County Tech’s student body will enroll in a college or university after high school, while the majority of graduates will simply move into their respective trade.
However, Wood said the “education pendulum” has moved away from the collegiate norm of her high school days. For Smith Voc juniors Tate Ordge and Collin Parker in machine manufacturing have a family history in the trades. Parker’s parents and grandparents both attended Smith Voc, and Ordge’s uncle taught electrical at the school. Both “never had college on my radar.”
“They’re finding that the trades allow somebody to be a productive citizen, to have a great paying job and support a family, so why not without the college debt,” Linkenhoker said.
Meeting the demand
As South Hadley continues in its design phase of the Mosier Elementary School building project, Wood and Voyik have discussed adding two new vocational programs. By moving first grade from Plains Elementary School to Mosier, the high school could launch an early childhood development program that would work with pre-k and kindergarten students. Technical upgrades in the new building would also open an opportunity for an information technology vocation.
However, Voyik and Wood explain that space will always limit vocational programs at South Hadley. The school district simply could never provide the necessary accommodations for agricultural programs or plumbing within its existing building footprint.
Even vocational schools need expansion to continue building their programs. In the past decade, Smith Voc turned the former Northampton Parks and Recreation building into animal science classroom space, an old pig barn into a pet grooming and kennel facility and built a new barn for horticulture training.
Franklin Tech established a new aviation mechanic technology program with a brand new facility, and Pathfinder Regional Vocational Technical High School in Palmer is negotiating to lease Cold Spring School in Belchertown for two new programs.
In response to the rising demand, the state allocated $60 million in Career Technical Education (CTE) program capital grants to upkeep facilities and support vocational training.
“That’s a wonderful form of support that was generated by the state,” Polansky said.
But capital expansion limitations remain a common issue within vocational schools as well. Linkenhoker said that Smith Voc’s shop capacity is at 720 students, or 15 students per shop in each class. The factor limiting enrollment to 600 students, however, is the amount of academic classroom space.
“The need is there. The interest is there. Show me the space,” he said. “It’s like ‘Field of Dreams.’ If you build it, they’ll come.”
