Vermilion Parish School Board centralizes its Career Campus

The Vermilion Parish School Board has long offered its students career dual enrollment classes.
Beginning this past August, the school board made a big change to the program, moving its Career Campus to Abbeville High School.
The move allows students earning college credits for taking welding, industrial agricultural mechanics and medical assistant programs to go to the campus at Abbeville High, rather than take the classes at South Louisiana Community College’s Gulf Area Campus in Abbeville.
Lonnie Richard, the school board’s career tech education supervisor, said the move allows the students flexibility in scheduling.
“This is more efficient for us because it allows us to work with the scheduling for the kids,” Richard said. “Before we had to make our kids fit into (SLCC’s) schedule. Now we can make our schedule fit as many kids as we can.
“This has been easier for us, the school board, to schedule.”
Seniors from all of the schools in the Vermilion system can take the various courses. In the years the programs were housed at the SLCC campus, schedules did not always match up with students who still had classes to take at their home high school.
“Let’s say there’s a kid who has to go to their high school in the morning and has to take English four,” Richard explained. “Let’s say that same student is taking medical terminology, and that class is only offered in the morning at SLCC.
“By the time that kid can get to SLCC, they have missed that class.”
The logistics certainly now favor the students.
“We can now see how many kids who want to come to the Career Campus need to take certain classes,” Richard said. “We may not be able to accommodate all of the students. It also tells us when we need to put certain classes.
“We’re trying to put out the best scheduling we can.”
The programs are on solid footing after the school board hired three instructors from SLCC to run the programs at the Career Campus, which is located at Abbeville High, but is a separate campus.
“We really have some experienced people involved with the Career Campus,” Richard said.
Keith Sherman, who runs the industrial agricultural mechanics program, taught at SLCC for 13 years before coming on with the school board this year.
“We offer students industry based certification,” Sherman said. “When they graduate high school, they can easily transition into the work force. Or they can move on and get more credits at SLCC, and if they stay with that, get a technical diploma from SLCC. Right now they are getting the initial certification, plus the industry based certification, among other credentials.
“There is absolutely a benefit to what we are doing.”
Sherman said youth in the work force is greatly needed.
“There are hardly any qualified technicians under the age of 30,” Sherman said. “There is a deficit that we are trying to fill.”
Mark Simon, who has 17 years of experience with teaching welding at SLCC, said the age gap is even greater in his focus.
“The demand for welders right now is very great,” Simon said. “Right now, in the United States alone, the need is for hundreds of thousands of welders.
“That need is right now.”
Simon’s class is a good place for students to start to erase that shortfall.
“Companies are calling me all of the time for welders,” Simon said. “They tell me to just get them started.
“There is that much demand.”
The field can be lucrative for those who take that path.
“The pay is high,” Simon said. “There’s nothing wrong with a pipeline welder making $250,000 a year. There’s nothing wrong with a kid getting out of my class and making $80,000 a year and being home every night.”
Students interested in the medical field also have options at the Career Campus. Linda White, who taught at SLCC for more than 22 years, said her courses help students in that direction.
“We get them started in the medical assistant program,” White said. “They can finish at SLCC. They can go on to get their L.P.N and their R.N.
“This is a good stepping stone.”
Richard said he feels the programs at the Career Campus are all terrific for students.
“This is absolutely something great for the parish,” Richard said. “We have had it before and we are trying to grow it.”