DESOTO VO-TECH:
Horn Lake site opens Wed.
Career Tech Center West in Horn Lake is already popular with students.
The doors haven’t even opened yet, but the DeSoto County school system’s newest vocational-technology center is already a hit.
Career Technology Center West in Horn Lake is the centerpiece of the 2015-16 school year as classes begin next week in Mississippi’s largest public school system. Teachers report to class Monday, followed by students on Wednesday.
Opening day enrollment is expected to top 33,000 at the district’s 42 elementary, middle and high school campuses countywide. About 275 new teachers join the system’s roughly 2,200-teacher staff.
The rapidly growing system has become accustomed to opening new schools in recent years, and this year will be no different with the Horn Lake vo-tech center’s opening. The campus, at Interstate Boulevard and Nail Road, replaces the previous smaller votech center operated at Southaven High School and will serve students on the western side of the county who want to follow a vo-tech career path as opposed to a college preparatory path. The school system opened a similar vo-tech facility a couple of years ago in Olive Branch for students in eastern DeSoto County.
“We expect to have an opening enrollment of about 400 students, which is very near our capacity,” Principal Paul Chrestman said of the new Horn Lake center.
The large opening enrollment underscores outgoing Superintendant Milton Kuykendall’s assertion that the system has to do more to address the needs of students not interested in college. Kuykendall frequently cites a statistic showing that 80 percent of jobs don’t require a college degree.
“How many of you know somebody working at something that has nothing to do with their college degree?” Kuykendall asked rhetorically at a ceremony last week naming a street outside the campus in his honor.
Opening the $13 million Horn Lake vo-tech site before leaving office was a dream of Kuykendall, who began his career with DeSoto County Schools in Horn Lake as, first, a basketball coach and, later, principal at Horn Lake High School.
Kuykendall, 67, will
step down midway through the academic year when he leaves office at the end of 2015. He will be replaced by the winner of Tuesday’s four-way Republican primary battle for superintendent since there is no Democratic opponent in the November general election.
Candidates vying to succeed Kuykendall include: Jerry Darnell, Jim Ferguson, Edith Robinson and Cory Uselton.
For opening day Wednesday, Chrestman said the vo-tech center will have shops areas and five classrooms ready for use, as well as administrative areas.
“So that will give us enough space for all our programs to start the school year,” he said.
Areas not yet finished include two health sciences classrooms; the robotics and engineering area; labs for information technology, digital media technology and student services; and a culinary area.
Chrestman said those areas are expected to be finished two to three weeks after school starts.
School system officials A construction worker walks through the metal shop at the DCS Career Technology CenterWest building in Horn Lake. Although not completed, the building will be open and classes will meet on Wednesday, the first day of school. are keeping fingers crossed that a variety of other projects undertaken on campuses over the summer will be finished in time for the return of students.
Contractors gave school board members an update Paul Chrestman a couple of weeks before classes began, saying that winter weather earlier this year slowed work and was making questionable whether some projects would be finished by opening day.
Among the projects officials are watching are air conditioning system replacements at Oak Grove and Hope Sullivan elementary schools, which were the two projects cutting it closest other than the votech among 11 upgrade and construction projects this summer.
Contractors said they would have temporary AC available if they couldn’t finish work by the start of school.
Also, spokeswoman Katherine Nelson said classroom additions at DeSoto Central will not be finished by the time school starts.