PORT ANGELES — Port Angeles High School sophomore Bradley Shumway had already registered for next year’s classes when he found out the North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center would likely not resume next school year.
Shumway signed up for the culinary arts and cinema and TV production classes earlier this year, two classes he can’t take at PAHS.
“I took it not so well,” said Shumway, Associated Student Body president. “I cried. I bawled, actually.”
Since students learned two weeks ago that the skills center would close, they have been given few answers as to what next year will look like for them, said PAHS sophomore Jordan Campbell, who is taking the cinema and TV production class twice each day.
“Everything has been ‘maybe,’ ” he said. “Everything is up in the air. There’s no official word from anyone.”
Shumway said he has been eager to pursue culinary arts and had planned to earn a food service management certificate from Peninsula College and transfer to a four-year university.
Peninsula College’s Food Services Management program is operated in partnership with the skills center.
“I don’t know how it’s going to play out for my future,” Shumway said. “Because of this, it makes me second-guess if this is something I should be doing — if I really want to go to college after this.”
Shumway and Campbell are among about 70 students who benefit from the center.
To break even financially, the skills center needs to have 150 students enrolled full time.
Shumway and Campbell both take core academic classes in the morning at PAHS, then take classes at the skills center from 12:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.
“We have children who are devastated. They don’t know if their program is going to keep existing,” said Sarah Methner, Port Angeles School Board vice president, during a board meeting Thursday night. “It’s unacceptable.”
The skills center has been possible because of an inter-district administrative council made up of the Port Angeles, Sequim, Cape Flattery, Crescent and Quillayute school districts and Peninsula College.
Sequim, Cape Flattery, Crescent and Quillayute school districts have all said they want out of the agreement, citing decreased enrollment and increasing difficulty to get students into the program.
Each district agreed originally to pick up its share of the bill at the skills center. Historically, PASD has paid the deficit.
David Knechtel, business and operations director, said the skills center has lost $1.8 million in recent years, of which nearly $1 million was other school districts’ share.
“How do we go about collecting that?” Dr. Joshua Jones, president of the PASD school board, asked, saying the issue really comes down to dollars.
“We’re at a point where we’re feeling we have a responsibility to the kids who have gone down the road to get a certificate.
“Regardless of what the other four districts are going to do, for our students, for our kids, that money could go a long ways.”
Jones said it was such a serious issue that the board wants a report on the skills center during every board meeting until the issue is resolved.
State Rep. Mike Chapman, D-Port Angeles, said in an interview Friday he would help keep the skills center open in any way he can.
“We would need to work to figure out what we can do from the legislative standpoint,” he said, adding he doesn’t have specific ideas at this time.
Chapman said he hopes that before any decisions are made, PASD officials will reach out to him and the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for possible solutions.
“I just know this isn’t the time to look at shutting down job-training programs,” he said. “I’m offering to help in any way the school district thinks I or the Legislature can help.”
Port Angeles School District is looking into what classes and programs from the skills center it can transfer to the high school, but it’s clear not all programs will remain, said Superintendent Marc Jackson on Wednesday.
“We’re moving as expeditiously as we can so students are aware of this before school ends,” he said. “We will have to redesign how we approach career and technical education.”
Jackson said autobody, welding and medical careers are programs that could easily be picked up at the high school. There are currently 54 career and technical education classes at PAHS, he said.
The cosmetology program will end, he said, and Peninsula College will pick it up over the summer and get students as close as they can to completing the hours required for the program.
He said both culinary arts and cinema and TV production are “up in the air.”
Classes that transfer to the high school would likely be more than one period, Jackson added.
Among the reasons for the anticipated closure is the state’s “Core 24” mandate, requiring students graduating in 2021 to have 24 credits, Jackson said.
The class of 2020 will need only 22.5 credits.
The number of required elective credits is decreasing from 6.5 to 4 as well, Jackson said.
“It’s been frustrating because we want to get kids into the skills center, but we can’t because there has been policy that has taken us in the opposite direction,” he said.
“Kids can’t get into these classes because they don’t have three hours in a block.”
Under state law, a skills center can be supported by a single school district, but only if that district has more than 12,000 students.
The Port Angeles School District has closer to 4,000.
“It’s hard to operate a skills center without kids,” Jackson said.
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Reporter Jesse Major can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56250, or at jmajor@peninsuladailynews.com.
