Turning the dirt: Ground broken on Baker County Schools' Agricultural Education Center

Oct. 12—NEWTON — Small towns have been hit hard by population loss. Many students in such communities graduate from high school, leave for college and never return.

For those who don't have the option of college and stay behind, there needs to be an opportunity to get skills that will allow them to get good-paying jobs, Baker County School Board Chairman Malcolm Parker said Wednesday.

Speaking to an Albany Herald reporter prior to the ground-breaking ceremony for the school system's new Agricultural Education Center next to the school campus, Parker said, "We are starting with the ag program. We are very excited that we're going to further train students because we live in the middle of ag country. We want to train those who will not go to college."

The facility, made possible by $200,000 in state funding, will include classroom space, a shop for small-engine instruction, a tractor for instructional purposes and include welding and basic carpentry, Parker said.

"We have a greenhouse where they are doing some things," he said. "It's going to be very versatile.

"We did have an ag program when I was in school, and I have used what I learned in that and shop class more than anything except the basic classes."

For Baker County K-12 junior Yllen Hernandez, the Agricultural Education Center will be a great place for area students to learn valuable skills, including welding and growing vegetables like tomatoes and lettuce.

"I think it'll help us," Yllen, who is in her sixth year with the school system's Future Farmers of America, said. "My daddy used to be a farmer. I kind of grew up farming. I've thought about being an ag teacher, because a lot of my family also work in greenhouses."

The center will include an agriculture mechanics pathway, said agriculture instructor Jacob Floyd, who also is the FFA advisor and is in his first year at Baker County.

"It will allow kids to have hands-on learning," he said. "That's one of the things we're going to work toward giving these students."

The two legislators who worked to secure funding, state Sen. Freddie Powell Sims, D-Dawson, and Cuthbert Republican Rep. Gerald Greene, are both retired teachers. The two attended a meeting with state Board of Education officials at which they told Baker County representatives that the first thing to make clear was that there was no money available for construction.

The two promised to each bring in $100,000 in funding from their respective legislative houses.

"On the way home, I called Freddie and said, 'How in the world are we going to get $100,000?'" Greene said during remarks to the audience of about 65 students, educators, community members and local and state officials.

The lawmaker said he begged and pleaded for funding, and both he and Sims were successful.

"It's all about you, the students of Baker County," he said. "It's all about what we can do to support these communities."

Sims said with her background as a teacher, and with a family that includes two grandfathers and a husband who farmed, she is interested in helping students in Georgia's rural areas.

"I enjoy doing anything I can for students," she said. "They are our future. Without resources, they can't do what they need to do. They need resources to do well.

"Working across the aisle to get things, that's the way you have to do it. It's not a 'me' job, it's a 'we' job. These children deserve the same things every student in America does."

Baker Schools Superintendent Roy Brooks kicked off the program preceding the ground-breaking by summing up Sims' and Greene's contribution: "You two have made this dream a reality," he said.