State Education Department Studying Technical Schools

The following is a press release from the state Department of Education:

(HARTFORD, CONN.) The 2011 session of the Connecticut General Assembly (CGA) passed legislation creating a CT Technical High Schools (CTHSS) Task Force to study the finance, management and enrollment structure of the regional vocational-technical school system.

Under the legislation, the study shall:
 conduct a cost-benefit analysis of

(A) maintaining and strengthening the existing regional vocational-technical school system operated by the State Board of Education,

(B) developing stronger articulation agreements between the regional vocational-technical school system and the regional community-technical colleges,

(C) transferring the regional vocational-technical school system to local and regional boards of education, regional educational service centers or the regional community-technical colleges, and

(D) maintaining or transferring adult programs offered at the regional vocational-technical schools;

 consider the effects of maintaining the existing regional vocational-technical school system or transferring the regional vocational-technical school system to local and regional boards of education, regional educational service centers or the regional community-technical colleges on facilities, equipment and personnel management of the regional vocational-technical school system; and,

 compare and analyze the findings of subdivisions (1) and (2) of this subsection.

By January 15, 2012, the task force must submit a report on its findings and recommendations to the joint standing committee of the CGA having cognizance of matters relating to education.

The CTHSS Task Force member appointments have been recently completed by the appointing authorities and the first meeting of the task force was conducted on September 27th at the Legislative Office Building (LOB) in Hartford. The chair of the task force is Mark E. Ojakian, the Deputy Secretary of the state Office of Policy and Management in Hartford. Four additional task force meetings have been scheduled between now and December 13th with the next three meetings to be conducted at technical high schools and the final meeting to be held at the LOB in Hartford.

The next meeting of the task force is scheduled for next Monday, October 17th at the Eli Whitney Technical High School in Hamden, CT from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Meetings are open to the public and a portion of each meeting agenda is reserved for public comment.

The CT Technical High School System maintains a public website for the school district and each of technical high schools and the school system will be maintaining a task force web page on the district website where information regarding task force membership and meetings will be published.

The link to the CTHSS Task Force web page is listed below:
http://www.cttech.org/task-force/