Yuma’s JTED leader keeping eye on legislature

Several bills being introduced in the state Legislature would affect Yuma County’s joint technical education district, one of which would restore funding for certain “fourthyear” programs.

One of those bills, SB 1269 (and there are others with related language), would restore funding for students in the fourth year of certain programs. Right now, JTEDS may not include freshman students in their daily student counts, so many schools disallow them from entering those courses.

Plus, freshman year of high school can be a confusing time in a student’s life, Imes said.

But the bill doesn’t mean freshmen only, Imes pointed out. Fourth year students may be recent high school grads who started a four-year program as a sophomore or junior, or freshmen in community college or an adult.

“That one in particular, I don’t think it was going to make it because there’s money attached to it,” Imes said, noting the bill would restore funding for the fourth year of agriscience, automotive technologies, construction, engineering or manufacturing.

Not funding the fourth year defeats the purpose of offering Career and Technical Education courses, he said, as one of Arizona’s education requirements is for students to graduate college and career ready.

“Somebody that’s graduated could at least finish the program to earn a certification,” Imes explained, if the funding was restored after having been cut in 2017.

“Again, that’s our end goal is for students to receive an industry certification so that they can contribute to the economic development of the community,” Imes said. “If we’ve got a student that’s halfway through the program and graduates without their credential, then part of the mission we have doesn’t get met because they’re not going to receive that certification.”

HB2205 has Imes concerned as it would prevent any CTE teacher and administrator from serving on a JTED’s governing boards.

“We oppose that, especially in rural Arizona,” Imes said “It’s really difficult, at times, to get community members to run for board positions. So that wipes out a pool of candidates or people that really understand CTE and the educational frameworks.”

SB1027 would eliminate JTEDs from being graded with Arizona’s Accountability Measures, the revamped letter scoring system. The data and accountability measurements would remain in place, Imes said.

“The bill just eliminates a ranking of those data measurements as is compared to each other,” he said.

Full funding for all the state’s JTEDs could be equalized, Imes noted. Currently, if a JTED has more than 2,000 central program students, they only receive 95 percent of the average daily membership funding. The three JTEDs that would affect are in the Phoenix and Tucson areas.

While Imes said he’s keeping an eye on what’s going on in Phoenix, he and the STEDY staff are keeping local issues in focus and focusing on partnerships and collaborations that benefit everyone.

“That’s the beauty of Yuma County, is that we do collaborate with other organizations,” he said, “and we do it well.”