There’s a new twist in the ongoing effort to build a career and technical education center in McDonough County.
Macomb School District 185 Superintendent Patrick Twomey said they will explore the idea of creating an intergovernmental agreement between the school district and Spoon River College.
Twomey said like the school district, SRC is committed to creating a CTE center.
“They’re committed to filling that space with meaningful career and technical education coursework so our residents can benefit in the long run,” Twomey said Monday evening after a special school board meeting about the proposed CTE program.
Board members said they support having the superintendent look into an intergovernmental agreement. Twomey said the district and SRC will first need to get the okay from their attorneys. He said once they receive the go-ahead, it could take several meetings to hammer out the details.
Twomey told the board the idea just came up during the day on Monday, but the premise is that both the school district and SRC would have input and control over the CTE center’s operations.
In addition, a joint venture would require less of a financial investment from each, and Twomey said both will have funding available because each will receive money from a new wind farm in McDonough County. The school district also is taking in about $1.8 million per year from the local one-cent sales tax for McDonough County schools.
He said construction of the CTE center could begin in 2027, and that it could open in the fall of 2028. He said the district wants to follow an aggressive timeline.
“We would want to keep our foot on the gas pedal because we think that every year it goes by, it’s another group of students leaving our institution who were not provided those lifelong skills that we know they need,” Twomey said.
Other partners in the project include the West Prairie and Bushnell-Prairie City school districts and the Macomb Area Economic Development Corporation. Students from the county’s other school districts would also be eligible to attend classes at the CTE center.
“We want to make this an inclusive project for all school districts within the county,” Twomey said. “It’s really about, what’s this look like as a region and how do we serve the region in the best possible way.”
During Monday’s meeting, Macomb school board members did not vote on a preferred location for the center, but indicated interest in having it located at SRC. That way, board secretary Kristin Terry said, the school district would not have to pay for staffing or maintaining it.
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