Minuteman Tech's Superintendent Proposes Closing Popular Vocational Programs

On the table and scheduled to be decided this coming Wednesday, September 10, 2014, is a plan to shut down Minuteman’s Welding vocational program.
Welding has been popular with our District’s students for decades, and is currently a core vocational offering at 34 other MA vocational and academic high schools. In place of welding, the superintendent will retain a pet agricultural program that is popular with as many as 37 out-of-district tuition students that are subsidized by Weston tax payers. The Minuteman HORTICULTURE program has fewer than 7 (seven) member students enrolled. This is lop sided for a school that should be down-sizing.
As of June 2014, the WELDING program had 26 member town District students in grades 9 through 12 plus a Post Graduate student for a total of 27 member students that have qualified and earned a spot in Minuteman’s welding program through hard work and good grades. But in the future, there will be no welding training offered to our students.
Member town students determined to learn the welding technology will be denied the opportunity to learn welding technology in their own vocational district, and will be forced to apply as a tuition student to one of the other 35 vocational programs in non-district cities and towns.
The superintendent’s plan will deep six Welding, but he will retain an apparent pet agricultural Horticulture program that has only 7 member towns students enrolled, but has an additional 37 (thirty-seven) non-member out-of-district tuition students enrolled.
Weston and other district member towns will be paying tuition to another vocational district while subsidizing 37 non-member students by $7,000 each annually. That’s over $250,000 to subsidize 37 students from Boston, Brighton, Cambridge, Dorchester, Medford and 10 other non-members cities and towns that Weston subsidizes through inflated assessments. This is when there are 18 (eighteen) other horticultural vocational programs in MA with three (3) of those programs nearby including Keefe Tech in Framingham. This is while Weston pays subsidy inflated assessments.
Do we need to subsidize 37 non-member tuition students? Why do we need an extra instructor (at $88,000 a year) just to teach non-member students when we can provide the program to our 7 students and fill the empty seats in a single classroom section with far fewer tuition students for a marginal profit (not at a loss) and keep teaching welding technology for our kids?
Ask the Minuteman superintendent or the principal at 781-861-6500, or attend the September meeting to explain their rationale why your kids can go to Minuteman to learn to grow plants, but cannot learn a lifetime skill and have an opportunity to start their own businesses.