New Skill Center Could Train Students in Four Districts

Students in four area school districts could soon have a place to get technical and industrial training, giving a leg up in the workplace to those who are not headed to college when they graduate.

As part of his State of the City address on Thursday, Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner announced an initiative to convert the old Waubonsee Community College property on Galena Boulevard and Stolp Avenue into a skill center for students in the Oswego, Indian Prairie and East and West Aurora school districts.

Under Weisner’s proposal, the city of Aurora would buy the old Waubonsee building, vacant since the college relocated to its new downtown campus. The city would rent out one-third of the space to the East Aurora School District for administrative offices, which would allow them to keep two-thirds of it for the new skill center.

“The other two-thirds of the building will be dedicated to providing workforce development and technical training to nearly 300 high school students from any of the four school districts to the extent to which they choose to participate,” Weisner said.

The school districts would work with Waubonsee on the new center, Weisner said, and organizations like the Illinois Manufacturing Association, Valley Industrial Association and local unions would be invited to collaborate.

The idea is in its most preliminary stages, according to Marsha Hollis, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning at the Oswego School District. Hollis said the four districts involved have not even sat down together to work out any details.

“We haven’t even had a concept design meeting to discuss what would go into that location,” she said.

Weisner said a technical and workforce training center would fill a “critical shortfall” in the community, and “better prepare high school students for the jobs of tomorrow.”

But Hollis said the needs differ between the four school districts. Oswego, she said, has a battery of industrial arts and technical classes at the high school and junior high school level. The curriculum, and the needs a new center would fill, would be different in each district.

“That’s why we need to sit down and say, what is the vision for this space?” she said. “We need to come to a collaborative design.”

Hollis also mentioned the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics school at Aurora University, which will also bring together those four school districts when it’s funded and constructed.