Career Center Director Says CTE Co-Op Makes Financial Sense For Most School Corps

Madison Consolidated Schools are leaving the Southeastern Career Center, but the center's director says the program offer a savings to most area school corporations.

Southeastern Career Center photo

(Versailles, Ind.) - The Southeastern Career Center in Versailles is losing students from one of its member schools.

Madison Consolidated Schools announced last week it would be leaving the career center cooperative following the 2019-2020 school year. Superintendent Jeff Studebaker told The Madison Courier that the school corporation was spending approximately $200,000 annually to send 20 students to the career center.

On Wednesday, the career center received Madison’s official withdrawal letter. The same day, SCC director Derek Marshall issued a letter to the Madison School Community - the entire letter can be viewed below.

“I would like to say thank you for allowing us to serve your students over the past several school years. It is with regret that I have received an official letter this afternoon that Madison Consolidated Schools plans to withdraw from the Southeastern Career Center after the 2019-2020 school year,” wrote Marshall.

Of the twelve area school corporations who send students to the career center in Versailles, Madison Consolidated Schools had the lowest number of billable students at 22.

The cost per student in the 2018-2019 school year was $2,617.70, according to Marshall’s letter.

“Each member school does pay a yearly membership fee as well as a portion of their taxable funds to help maintain the property and equipment at the career center. The benefit of this cooperative agreement is that each school system has access to over $3 million dollars of equipment and 17 different programs with 30 different CTE courses,” Marshall stated.

An inaccurate figure of $10,000 per student has been circulating, Marshall indicated. The figure likely came from doing math on Studebaker's comment in the newspaper. But that $200,000 number mentioned by Studebaker took into account MCS' per student contributions to the SCC in addition to transportation costs and other associated expenses.

Marshall gave examples of how other school corporations utilizing the SCC for their CTE students financially benefit from it.  Southwestern Jefferson County Schools had 40 billable students and was able to keep $13,900 in funding to spend on other programs and classes. Jennings County Schools was the largest student contributor to SCC as they sent 140 students and were able to keep $107,230 to spend on other programs and classes.

“Each school community must decide what is best for their students and we applaud and admire the leadership of MCS for doing what they have decided is best for their students. We also applaud the local business that have participated in this decision,” said Marshall.

According to Marshall, more than 3,000 college credits and 700 industry certifications were awarded to SCC students in the 2018-2019 school year.

MCS will offer other career and technical education opportunities for its students on-campus.

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