Residents will vote Tuesday night, May 19, on the proposed school budget.
FRENCHVILLE, Maine – The largest addition to the proposed school budget for Frenchville and St. Agatha is a $469,700 increase for the St. John Valley Technology Center so it can re-introduce two new programs and add another.
Voters in the two towns will be able to vote on the proposed $7.8 million education budget during a district budget meeting next Tuesday.
The budget represents a $534,480 increase over the previous year.
The center plans to re-introduce its electrical construction program, which had been dormant for two years because of a lack of an instructor. Kevin Lavoie, Director of the St. John Valley Technology Center, said that Scott St. Peter has been hired to re-launch the program and that nine students are already enrolled to start the program in the upcoming school year.
The commercial driver’s license program, which was inactive for a year, is also being reintroduced. Lavoie said Peter Corriveau will bring four decades of trucking industry experience to the course, adding that ten students are already signed up.
The tech center also will be adding a co-op education program in which students can do job shadowing, internships and pre-apprenticeships. And it is replacing its advanced technology programming with a new pre-engineering program which works with electrical instrumentation, motor controls, and programmable logic controllers. Six students are already signed up for this program, according to Lavoie.
The proposed budget contains $21,980 and $95,140 cuts to regular instruction and facilities maintenance, respectively. It also includes a $64,740 addition to student transportation and a $48,195 addition to system administration.
Lavoie said that while the tech center is seeing a significant cost increase, these programs will help meet the region’s needs. Students at the school often obtain experience by helping with real projects throughout the greater St. John Valley Community. Just this year, students have been forging a massive Acadian sculpture out of the old international bridge to be displayed in Madawaska. Students are also working to create a replica of Frenchville’s historic Bangor and Aroostook Railroad train station.
“Introduction of new programming and re-launching our suspended programs elevates our budget by 25.9% change from the last fiscal year,” Lavoie said. “Despite the increase to our total budget, these are relevant and essential programs to meet the rising needs of our economic and workforce development needs within the region.”
The meeting is set for 6 p.m. on May 19 at the St. John Valley Technology Center in Frenchville, according to the warrant approved by the MSAD 33 board earlier this week.
