GOOD JOB MINUTEMAN WELDING TEACHERS AND STUDENTS!

GOOD JOB MINUTEMAN WELDING TEACHERS AND STUDENTS!
Congratulations to all Minuteman teachers, parents, Welding industry representatives and business owners, and especially all the students that came to Minuteman on September 10, 2014, to speak out and defend their Welding Program. The administration’s anticipation that so many of you would attend the meeting to save the Welding program, and your vocal presence convinced the superintendent and principal to reverse their plans to close Welding.
Welding has been a core Commonwealth vocational program now being taught in 34 vocational and academic high schools throughout Massachusetts. Welding has always been an important vocational program within Arlington, Belmont, Lexington, Needham, and our 14 other Minuteman District member towns for decades. Member town students have sustained Welding on their own with 25 to 30 member students choosing Welding as their profession every school year.
This was all prompted after a school committee taskforce formed to evaluate the latest version of the Education Plan yet again the week before. Taskforce members were told by the administration that the Welding program had to be closed because of lack of student interest, the inability of the school to provide certification, and the investment required to replace aging and obsolete equipment. These “facts” were enough to convince the two taskforce school committee representatives from Needham and Lincoln to cast deciding votes to close the Welding program in favor of Horticulture during a September 2nd meeting a week earlier (The Belmont and Sudbury reps voted to keep the Welding program).
The administration’s revised plan is based on a serendipitous visit to a MA vocational school that had a flourishing Welding program presented to the superintendent, principal and others needed solutions to retain our Welding program thereby eliminated the confusion created by the administration the week before.
The superintendent’s revised plan includes a guarantee that all Welding students will have the opportunity to earn a professional Welding certificate and the superintendent’s personal commitment that all welding student work and learn using much needed new welding equipment. That an entrepreneur and welding business owner informed all attending the September 10th meeting that his welders earn an average of $143,000 a year in salary and benefits and that he would donate $100,000 towards buying needed new welding equipment powerfully influenced not closing Welding and for providing students with much needed new equipment with which to learn the profession.
It was a job well done by all.