LETTER: Central Vermont voters get a say on Career Center budget
Feb. 17, 2023To the community:
The Central Vermont Career Center has been serving the communities of Central Vermont – and its students – since 1969. Through a hands-on, career-based approach to education, the Center has been training generations of Vermonters to work as mechanics, designers, chefs, plumbers, electricians, contractors, hair stylists, barbers, EMTs, nurses, and more – jobs that are of vital importance to our communities and economy. After many years of being thought of as “the other option,” the importance of career and technical education has come to the forefront recently and is now recognized as a critical component of a high-quality, PreK-12 education.
In 2013, Act 77 introduced “Flexible Pathways to Graduation” – and career and technical education specifically – as a viable and important opportunity for students looking to explore internships, work-based learning, and hands-on training as a pathway to graduation and from there to a satisfying career.
This year, the newly created Central Vermont Career Center School District is asking for your continued support at the polls. We have drafted and approved our first budget – one that for the first time, each of our six sending districts has had direct input to. While our district is new, our budget process remains the same: It is embedded in each town’s annual school district spending, just as it has always been. By supporting your local school district budget, you will be supporting the Central Vermont Career Center. Since tuition to the center has already been included in your local school district budget, there will be no additional impact on your taxes.
The approved Central Vermont Career Center tuition is $18,748 per full-time student. After applying federal and state grants and on behalf payments, the remaining (anticipated) tuition billed directly to our sending schools will be $8,278. For more information about the Center, its offerings, and its budget, we invite you to look through our Annual Report. You’ll find the report online here.
We hope you will vote in person on March 7 or request an absentee ballot for the Career Center be mailed to you. We are grateful for the support we have received over the years; we are proud to be giving our graduates the opportunity to remain in Vermont in careers that they love; and we hope you will support us by voting on your local school district budget.
Thank you,
The Central Vermont Career Center School Board: Jill Remick, Lyman Castle, Janna Osman, Terri Steele, Alice Farrell, Jonathan Young, Jason Monaco, Jim Halavonich, J. Guy Isabelle and Flor Diaz Smith
More information about the career center is online at cvtcc.org and information pertaining to Town Meeting Day voting is online here.