CARIBOU, Maine — If Caribou High School junior Kameron Rackler had not entered the school’s career and technical education center as a freshman, it might have taken him longer to find his passion.
Rackler was part of the first cohort of freshmen, sophomores and juniors to take part in Caribou Technology Center’s new exploratory program in fall 2021. The program let him take classes in all the center’s ‘hard trades’: welding, auto body, auto tech, commercial driver’s license, carpentry, construction and large equipment repair and maintenance.
In his sophomore year while studying agriculture, Rackler discovered welding. He is now earning his commercial driver’s license but plans to enter the welding program next year, where he can earn college credit for the Intro to Welding class.
“I want to be a pipeline welder and travel all over the world,” Kackler said.
Kackler is one of over 9,818 Maine students enrolled in a Career and Technical Education, or CTE, program in 2023, up from over 9,600 in 2022, according to the Maine Department of Education. Enrollment has increased alongside demand for young trades workers to fill in gaps left by post-COVID shortages. But traditionally, only high school juniors and seniors have been allowed into CTE programs and on a part-time basis, a trend that is changing but remains the norm in most Maine schools.
On Thursday, a newly formed state task force will hold its final meeting in Augusta and decide whether they will recommend the state build and fund a comprehensive, residential four-year CTE high school for interested students.
If built as recommended by Gardiner-based Hart Consulting, the school would be located within the Brunswick and Bath area and enroll students as freshmen into four-year career and technical programs within the trades and medical fields. Students from across the state would live on campus and graduate with their high school diplomas, taking both CTE and core academic classes on site. The estimated cost is $60 million, based on the total construction cost for the Sanford Regional Tech Center.
A recent feasibility study recommended to the task force that a comprehensive school serve at least 300 full-time students and 100 part-time students from Brunswick, Bath and surrounding towns. The Brunswick area was chosen due to its proximity to 150 companies at Brunswick Landing, a major aviation, technology, manufacturing and energy hub, and to higher education institutions.
But even if that does not happen, the state should still do more to help local school districts and CTE regions serve more students, said task force member David Keaton of Caribou.
“The situation for CTE in Maine is bigger than just one comprehensive school. There are a lot more challenges to addressing what’s currently happening,” Keaton said.
Keaton is the executive director of Maine Association of Career and Technical Education, representing Maine’s 27 Career and Technical Education centers and regions. He retired from a 35-year career in education two years ago and most recently served as director and superintendent for Region Two School of Applied Technology in Houlton.
Maine has eight CTE “regions” which exist outside a school district and have their own board of directors and administration. But most CTE programs exist within “centers” on a high school’s campus. In either scenario, student enrollment greatly depends on balancing CTE interests with core academic classes they need to graduate.
To combat this issue, the state legislature passed LD 436 this year. Gov. Janet Mills signed the bill into law in June. The law requires school districts that operate a CTE center to negotiate with sending schools on which CTE classes should also qualify for core academic credit. Districts must finalize credit agreements before June 2025.
That’s an initiative that Caribou Technology Center Director Amy White and Student Services Coordinator Tracy Boaz are fully behind.
“Out of our 15 programs, only three can give students any academic credit,” White said.
Currently, CTE students in Caribou’s center can earn high school science credit for taking agriculture, a fine arts credit for culinary arts and a math credit for any trade covered in the exploratory program. The lack of dual-credit options means most students, especially those from other towns, cannot take CTE courses full time.
For years, Caribou Technology Center, located adjacent to Caribou High School, has been slowly expanding its offerings to include freshmen and sophomores and provide more incentives for those students.
Ten years ago, the center began enrolling sophomores as part of regular programs, which was a natural fit for students eager to learn a trade, White said. The exploratory program began two years ago to get more students immersed in the center before they commit to a certain program.
The efforts are paying off so far. Enrollment increased from 178 students last school year to 198 currently, 11 of whom take CTE courses in the morning and afternoon. All 15 programs are at capacity, with no more than 15 students per class, and most programs have wait lists. Agriculture remains most popular, with 25 students.
White and colleagues are exploring how to turn Caribou Technology Center into its own comprehensive, four-year program. Ideally, White said, that would mean enrolling students into all-day CTE programs and giving them credit for academic courses better suited for trade and medical programs, like technical writing for English credit.
More state investment in Maine’s CTE system could bode well for districts like Caribou who are already trying to become four-year programs, even if the state does not build its own school, Boaz said.
“We have a lot of parents who want their children in CTE as soon as possible, but there needs to be better pathways for students to get academic credit,” Boaz said. “If we could be a tech high school, that would be a big deal.”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that students would live in dormitories at a new 4-year comprehensive CTE school.
