Vocational School is Alive and Well

Quad - State Business Journal, Dec 2003 by Peterson, Maggie Wolff

If it were up to Steve Straight, the headline of this story would be, "Dowell J. Never Closed."

People who have lived in the Winchester-Frederick County area for awhile would understand the reference to the vocational school near 1-81, that at one time was operated cooperatively by Winchester and Frederick and Clarke counties. Regularly, a committee made up of the school superintendents of the three jurisdictions, along with other administrators, would meet to discuss budgeting and curriculum issues for the Dowell J. Howard Vocational School.

There, students learned trades including cosmetology, auto mechanics, health occupations and masonry. Each year, students built an actual house that was later sold, and they accepted cars for routine maintenance in the school's work bays.

Other students learned the basics of food preparation, operating the school's cafeteria at times. Still others gave perms, manicures and shampoos in the school's cosmetology department.

But in the early 1990s, interjurisdictional cooperation at Dowell J. Howard ended, first with Clarke County's secession, and finally with Winchester's. Administrators spoke of bringing tech-ed back to each jurisdiction's "home schools," meaning the high schools would pick up the slack of a largely gutted vocational curriculum. No longer were students going to be sent elsewhere to learn the trades that would support them without a college education.

The break-up was not without bruised sensitivities and political baggage.

"I wasn't for it," said Dr. John C. Capehart, former superintendent of the Winchester Public Schools. "I felt they should have continued with it, to feed manufacturing job opportunities for kids. I saw the business side."

But by the time the deal was done, Capehart had retired from the Winchester Public Schools and Glenn R. Burdick was at the helm. Dennis Kellison, who today is the superintendent of the Winchester Public Schools, was then superintendent of the Clarke County school system.

Capehart said the rejection of Dowell J. Howard by two-thirds of its constituency was due to a feeling among administrators that it wasn't pulling its weight. "For a long period of time, it was never utilized to the extent that it was hoped," he said.

Students didn't want to divide their days between their home schools and another facility, and some programs, such as printing trades, were chronically under-enrolled, Capehart said. "It became an economic issue of getting the most for the dollar," he said.

"Clarke County pulled out, Winchester City pulled out and Frederick County reimbursed them for their investment and bought them out," said Straight, who today is coordinator of technical education for Frederick County Schools, which continues to own and operate Dowell J. Howard.

Programs including cosmetology, masonry, plumbing and electrical contracting were closed, and although the general public perception was that vocational education was gone, the Dowell J. Howard Vocational School was not, Straight said. Some automotive programming survived, along with a new emphasis on computer-related careers.

Today, a 23-member advisory committee, composed of school administrators and regional industry representatives, helps the school determine its direction. Participants cover industries as varied as orchard agriculture and land development. "It's a cross-functional group," said Holly Combs, quality assurance and team development manager at Southeastern Container Corp., who chairs the advisory committee.

Additionally, the committee oversees the administration of federal grants that account for about a quarter of the school's funding, primarily as start-up and seed money for new programs and equipment. For example, a Certified Nursing Assistant program now at Dowell J. Howard was undertaken with federal grant funding. "It's a pilot," Combs said. Another new curriculum at Dowell J. Howard reflecting current market trends in health care is an Emergency Medical Technician program.

Today, vocational education is formally known as Career and Technical Education. "The term has changed," Combs said. And programming is sensitive to market demands.

"It's very important," Straight said. "I can't offer courses that don't have a local employment option."

These days, that definition of "local" includes a ten-county swath aimed eastward toward the Washington, D.C., suburbs. Certain bedrock trades, such as masonry and plumbing, aren't attractive to local kids, even during the current homebuilding boom.

"Kids think of [plumbing] as snaking drains," Straight said. "In fact, 80% of plumbing jobs are new construction." And with immigrant labor available to stack bricks, masonry is being accomplished even without young locals entering the trade.

Future plans, Straight said, are to "add classes back," including electrical contracting, which was axed at the vocational school during its scale-back phase. "There's a huge demand for this program. Kids respond to that curriculum and kids will take it."