At John Stark Regional High school, more than 200 students — or about one in three — tried to sign up for a welding class this year. Seventy-two of them got a spot. None of them are currently able to take it.
In July, the Weare school found itself without an instructor. It hasn’t been able to hire anyone to fill the role, let alone add a second welding teacher as administrators had hoped.
“It’s not a class just anyone can teach,” Principal Gary Dempsey said.
With the level of student interest, Dempsey began advertising for a second welding teacher in April, he said. When he learned his school would lose its existing welding teacher in July, that position was posted, too. But both positions remain empty.
“Hopefully, if we find an instructor, then we can run the classes,” Dempsey said. “A lot of these kids want to go into welding as as a career, and to lose that opportunity because of staffing is really difficult for me.”
Joab Owen, who formed and led Stark’s welding program, is now at Concord Regional Technical Center, or CRTC. Leaving the role wasn’t easy, but Owen was once a student at what is now CRTC, working in the automotive program. His son will attend this year.
“I always said to myself that if there was a program at Concord then I’d want to teach it,” he said.
That the town of Weare rejected a new teachers contract was another factor, too: “It was a little push,” he said.
While John Stark sends dozens of its upperclassmen each year to take career and technical education courses in Concord, it has long hosted a few tech classes in-house. There are a limited number of spots at CRTC and, with transit time, attending classes there can take a bite out of the school day. Also, until this year, welding wasn’t available at Concord.
Under Owen’s tutelage, the John Stark course had a big draw and its students found success, placing well in state welding competitions. Dempsey sung Owen’s praises, as did numerous alumni online when CRTC announced his arrival.
John Stark students joining the CRTC program at this point isn’t an option – the tech center filled its roster months ago, pulling from across the region. Because John Stark students thought they had an in-house welding course, they didn’t apply to the new program.
Dempsey’s hope is to see his school’s program continue. He is working to find other opportunities for students who now have empty spaces on their schedules, via evening courses at local colleges and collaboration with local welding companies. Other teachers at the school are also stepping up to teach new classes where possible.
Those are all band aid measures, Dempsey said. The popularity of tech classes, welding especially, is only growing.
“I need a full-time instructor,” he said. “I can’t fill up Concord’s program just with John Stark kids.”
When Dempsey announced that John Stark wouldn’t be able to run the welding class this year, the move caught flak online, both from disappointed students and at least one state politician, who decried John Stark’s ability to continue other unique courses, like a new Arabic class, while losing those core tech offerings.
The issue at John Stark, however, is staffing.
Voters at town meeting this spring turned down the district’s proposed budget and a new teacher contract, wary of its added costs and rising property taxes.
“That has ramifications,” Dempsey said. “Teachers are leaving for various reasons — but some of those reasons are pay.”
It isn’t only the welding program affected by vacancies, but engineering, small engines and physics, too.
Owen said the contract rejection directly contributed to his decision to leave.
“I never had looked [for other jobs] before this year,” Owen said.
Filling career and technical education instructor roles can be a challenge because of the expertise required. Plus, an instructor has to be ready for what Owens called the “nuances of adolescence.”
Furthermore, for many trades, what a school district is able to pay its teachers is substantially lower than what someone would make working in the field.
“People say, ‘Why don’t you have somebody from industry come teach those classes?'” Owen said. “Who is going take a gigantic pay cut from whatever they might be making? Because that’s what it would be.”
Across the state, even as public school enrollments taper and more families leverage the state’s voucher program for private or home schooling, public career and technical education programs like CRTC are growing in demand.
Even as they stressed about rising property taxes, Henniker and Weare voters boosted funding to send students to tech classes at CRTC.
As state funding for career and technical education falls per-student, local districts are left to pick up more and more of the tab. In the last few years, this has meant John Stark had to limit the number of students it could send to Concord. The funding boost means that’s not an issue this year, Dempsey said.
“We’re going to be able to send as many kids as we can,” Dempsey said.
