New LBSD CTE Center slated to open for 2024-25 school year

“Two roads diverged in a wood…and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

– Robert Frost, in his poem “The Road Not Taken”

While a majority of graduating seniors choose the common “road” to pursue a college or university degree, others opt for the “road not taken.” Among them are high school students who are gifted in vocational areas, such as welding or carpentry.

These are gifts and career paths that leaders of the Long Beach School District (LBSD) don’t want to overlook, and that’s just one reason why they’ve decided to invest millions of dollars to pave a wider pathway to success for students seeking vocational careers right out of high school through construction of a new Career and Technical Education (CTE) Center. 

More than one hundred people, including State representatives and City leaders, current and former leaders of LBSD, and representatives from the University of Southern Mississippi were on hand for the May 11 groundbreaking for a new, multimillion dollar CTE Center that will provide additional opportunities and classes for vocational students in the Long Beach School District.

“This is so important to our community and our students. They’re now going to have another opportunity to be able to make sure that they are as successful as they possibly can be once they leave the doors of Long Beach High School,” said LBSD Superintendent Dr. Talia Lock, who is a Long Beach High School graduate herself.

The 2,800-square-foot facility will open new doors for students choosing to go straight into the workforce upon graduation to work in fields such as carpentry and welding. 

Expected to be complete in July of next year for the 2024-2025 school year, the new CTE Center will be located at 1 Bearcat Boulevard, across from the LBSD Central Services building on Commission Road, and will be able to accommodate hundreds of students with an expanded curriculum and additional vocational and technical education classes, such as auto mechanics.

“We do now have CTE programs, but most of them are going to be college-bound type of CTE programs that we have, a program for business and finance,” said Lock. “We have a program for engineering, nurse sciences, a teacher academy; but we don’t really have a vocational type of program such as auto mechanics, welding, things like that. Right now, we don’t offer that curriculum, so to be able to offer these additional vocational, technical programs for some of our students is one extra layer that we can provide to make sure they succeed.”

The cost of the new CTE facility and equipment rings in at a little more than $10 million and will strengthen the district’s current CTE program, adding education and specialized training in the fields of auto mechanics, welding, carpentry and digital media.

“This is an investment in those students,” said Ward 1 Alderman Patrick Bennett, who helped spearhead the project. “If you look in the workforce right now, a lot of the in-demand jobs require only high level technical training. We’re going to focus on some of the more industrial jobs on this campus. We also have implemented a program called work-based learning … basically, we can give students credit for any meaningful job experience, whether that’s working at an auto shop or Ingalls. We can get them on-the-job training where they can learn the soft skills, and we can actually give them credits through the high school.”

“This is an investment not only in our kids, but it’s an investment in the city and our local economy,” Bennett said.

At the groundbreaking, Long Beach School Board President Tim Pierce pointed out the District was not going to rest on its laurels as being ranked number one in the state of Mississippi when it comes to education.

“Over the years, we have been really worried about those kids who may slip through the cracks, who may not have that opportunity because they’re not college bound,” Pierce said. “For me, we are giving these kids the opportunity to be productive and take part in society. I couldn’t be happier. We’ve done a lot of things over the years that I ‘ve been very proud of, but I think this has got to be the top because for those kids, this is their future.”

Leaders pointed out that the investment has been years in the making and required teamwork across-the-board.

“At the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, Richard Bennett [District 120 Mississippi Representative] helped us secure the funding for the facility and for the equipment that we needed to make this become a reality. He saw this need for our community and for our students, and he fought hard for our Long Beach School District to get the funding needed to make this goal a reality,” Dr. Lock said before Bennett, a Long Beach resident who serves as Chairman of Education for the Mississippi House of Representatives, took to the podium at the event.

“A lot of people don’t realize Long Beach is the poorest school district of the six counties on the Coast,” Bennett said. “We did more with less than any other district that I know of, and you’re the number one school district in the state of Mississippi academically. That is a reflection of the community that we live in. It’s a reflection of our school Board, a reflection of our teachers, our leadership. Our schools are a reflection of our community.”

Leaders at the groundbreaking say they hope the new programs offered at the CTE Center will lead to even more students choosing to finish high school and to get their diplomas.

According to the Department of Education, eight years after their expected graduation date, students who focused on CTE courses while in high school had higher median annual earnings than students who did not focus on CTE.  

AnderCorp will be serving as the construction manager for the new CTE Center and will be working closely with MP Design Group on the project.