Career center in St. Joseph County? Here's what educators, business leaders are exploring

SOUTH BEND — A group of educators and community leaders are coming together to explore what it would take to bring a career center to St. Joseph County.

It’s an idea that’s been discussed for years. The centralized hubs — sometimes run as cooperatives or hosted by a single school district — generally supplement traditional high school education with specialized courses preparing students for in-demand career fields.

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A career center, for example, might offer trade-specific lab space or workshops with heavy machinery or equipment not typically found in a high school. It also offers an opportunity for high schools to pool resources for courses they couldn’t typically support on their own because of barriers like low enrollment or challenges finding a qualified instructor for highly specified courses.

The conversation is especially relevant today, community leaders say, as Indiana high schools adopt programs better aligned with new state graduation requirements driven by experiential learning.

“Increasing the support and advanced coursework for our students is increasingly more vital to their post-secondary success and their competitiveness in the workplace,” enFocus executive director Andrew Wiand said. “All of this is meant to be additive to what exists today to increase the success of our students.”

Leaders from the South Bend Regional Chamber and enFocus have been meeting with area administrators and career and technical education directors for the past six months or so to explore what such a center could look like in St. Joseph County.

Planning is in the early stages, but those involved envision a model that brings together students from multiple school districts at one, centralized hub — likely to be housed somewhere in the South Bend area.

This all comes at a time when the Indiana Chamber of Commerce is urging state leaders to make Indiana’s “leaking talent pipeline” a priority and as local legislators have teased at forthcoming efforts to “reinvent high school.”

“If we can build a center that has a nice variety, that helps make people career-ready and it sustains over time, it’s going to be a success,” said Jeff Rea, president and CEO of the South Bend Regional Chamber.

The case for a career center

The conversation of opening a career center has existed for years, but picked up within the last year or so as area leaders considered funding opportunities through a state-led effort to generate regional economic growth. The idea was not quite mature enough at the time to secure READI grant funding, Rea said, but those discussions led to a new collaboration worth exploring.

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After gauging interest from other area school districts and business partners, Rea said, the chamber decided to hire enFocus to explore the concept as a regional resource and draw up a business plan for the creation of a new center.

“If we can get kids excited about a career path, our ability to keep them here is going to be much greater,” Rea said. “If they see themselves in a job here and they understand and see what kind of training and what kind of salary they can make, I think that’s all better.”

St. Joseph County is the largest county in Indiana without such a center, Rea wrote this summer. New Prairie High School sends students to Michigan City’s A.K. Smith Career Center in LaPorte County and Mishawaka and Penn high schools send students east to the Elkhart Area Career Center.

Both centers offer advanced programming in subject areas like automotive technology, cosmetology and culinary studies. Some classes carry college credit and industry certifications.

Career pathways do already exist within local St. Joseph County high schools. South Bend schools offer a variety of medical, engineering and performing arts-based studies through its high school magnet program. And, Penn-Harris-Madison, for example, offers several specialized pathways, like fine arts, health and STEM, through its high school academy program.

Part of what enFocus is looking at now is how to supplement, and not necessarily replace, existing programs. Those involved in planning foresee opportunities for upperclassmen enrolled in area high schools to travel to a South Bend career center for a half-day or three-hour class that builds upon their career interest. In some cases, students may take introductory courses at their own high school and pursue more specialized concentrator, or capstone-style, classes at the career center.

With nearly 300 South Bend students graduating with a career and technical education concentrator last year, South Bend assistant superintendent Rafi Nolan-Abrahamian says, there’s a heightened demand for these types of programs.

“One of the primary objectives here is simply to expand the number of pathways and course offerings,” Nolan-Abrahamian said of a potential career center. “We would not see it competing with existing magnet programs. We would expect the bulk of our health sciences pathways to remain at Washington High School. We would expect the bulk of our computer science and engineering programming to remain within Riley High School.”

Logistics still being developed

Now enFocus has been assisting the local districts in their understanding of logistics, such as how curriculum would be shared, what a governance model could look like and what type of staffing would be needed.

Those involved in planning have been hesitant to speak publicly early in the process about what specific courses or pathways would be offered, saying only that they hope to align it with growing industry in the area, such as advanced manufacturing, health care and business. They have been clear, however, in their belief that programmatic needs should drive the discussion of what a career center facility looks like.

“We were really thinking long-term,” Rea said. “How do we build the workforce that our companies here need? And, what are the skills that they need? And what kind of training do they need? And, what do the jobs of the future look like that we’re training them for?”

Last spring, South Bend school leaders floated the idea of converting Clay High School into a career center but quickly moved away from the discussion after push back from the community.

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Though something central is preferred, Rea said, the team hasn’t done a comprehensive site search yet and without a specific location in mind, it’s too early to say how much a center would cost.

The South Bend school corporation said during its 2020 referendum campaign that it would dedicate $8.5 million to a career innovation center. State and private grants might also be pursued should efforts move forward.

Organizers say sustainability of the center is key. One idea being explored is a tuition-based model where districts sending their high schoolers to the career center would pay the host district for educating students.

Wiand said he expects a draft plan could be completed as early as this spring. Local school boards and other community leaders would then be given an opportunity to weigh in.

If the right partnerships and funding falls into place, a center could open in 2025.

Email South Bend Tribune education reporter Carley Lanich at clanich@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @carleylanich.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Educators, business leaders explore St. Joseph County career center