By Sarah Dingwall, OCN Staff
Originally published by Overton County News
Overton County Board of Education and Livingston Academy celebrated the grand opening of the new LEAD Career Center facility on Wednesday, Jan. 22 with a ribbon cutting and tour through the new facility on LA’s campus.
Director of Schools Donnie Holman opened the ceremony thanking everyone and said, “It’s always wonderful to be together for such a momentous occasion like this. It’s wonderful to be together for something good.”
Holman continued by saying, “This state-of-the-art facility represents a commitment to providing our students with hands-on and focused learning opportunities.”
Holman also told everyone that the new facility will not only be for high school students, but also for middle school students from all of Overton County.
Holman went on to praise Lesley Riddle for having the vision for this project and the school board for the foresight to make sure it all happened. Gratitude was also shown for the CTE teams, the teachers at the high school, the career coaches, and Innovative School Model (ISM) planning committee for everyone working well together and the IT team getting everything set up.
Holman said he was grateful to everyone who contributed to making the vision a reality.
CTE Director Riddle said, “This has been an undertaking. ...When Governor Lee announced the Innovative School Model and Overton County Schools was about to receive $3.2 million that had to be gone in (snaps fingers) this amount of time, there was a little bit of a panic. So as we started talking, we got so excited about all the things we could do for the middle school and high school.
“There was a restriction on building, the amount of money, the percentage of the money that you could put in to building something, so we couldn’t just say, okay, we are going to take $3.2 million, and we’re going to build a building. We could only use a certain portion of that.”
Riddle went on to explain that each of the middle schools received $500,000, except Wilson, they received $200,000 just due to size, to use toward ISM.
The ISM team was told to focus on CTE, careers, focus on the community, and region, the high demand, and high-wage job opportunities in this area.
Riddle said, “The question that kept coming to our mind that was presented to us from the state was, how can you make your middle schools look different? How do you make school look different for middle school students?”
Riddle explained the answer was to put careers in front of the students all the time. Career coaches were hired and CTE teachers from the high school helped create micro labs of a variety of specialties, including health sciences, robots, cosmetology, small businesses, broadcasting, cooking, teaching, sewing, photography, woodworking, and many more.
Riddle said, “We have micro labs of health science that rotate between the middle schools and they’re presented by the career coaches, and it’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that, so they can play and so they’re being introduced to careers that are in high demand in our region, and they can either say, ‘wow, I’ve fallen in love with that,’ or ‘I don’t want to do that at all,’ and both of those are wins, we think.”
Space was a major factor in building the center. With only a portion of the money from the ISM grant available for building, costs of material and labor increasing, Riddle approached Holman about the financial issue, and Holman brought it before the board, and the board said if the board only needed to pay half of the cost, it is the right thing to do for the school and for the students.
“If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be in this nice of a building. I mean, we would still have something, but it wouldn’t be this nice. So I’m very grateful to work in a cooperative group that sometimes sees the bigger picture,” Riddle said.
Sarah Dingwall / OCN photos
Overton County Board of Education, Livingston Academy faculty and staff, and community members celebrate the new LEAD Career Center at Livingston Academy on Wednesday, Jan.22, with a ribbon cutting and ceremony.