Frank Mascetta meets his students at the door of his classroom at Southern Westchester BOCES with a handshake. It sets the tone for his class, where all his students are treated like the emerging professionals that he’s training them to be. Mascetta says inspiring his students’ curiosity begins with hands-on experiences.
“They start to understand because they’ve touched it,” he said. “That’s how they learn.”
As part of the two-year National Center for Construction Education and Research program, Mascetta’s students will be introduced to the ins and outs of residential and commercial wiring systems — from reading prints to planning circuits and bending pipes. By their second year, they’ll be designing and installing their own electrical systems in one of the framed-up model homes that range across the warehouse-size classroom, and Mascetta will be acting more like a foreman than a teacher.
The Electrical Construction program is just one of 19 Career and Technical Education tracks offered at the popular BOCES, which currently enrolls more than 800 students from 32 different districts.
BOCES and other CTE programs offered through New York’s public schools can be a major economic boon for communities because they prepare students to get well-paid, in-demand jobs right out of high school. But without proper funding, these programs will keep leaving students out, said Mairead Schuelein, president of the Southern Westchester BOCES Teachers Association.
“This year there were waitlists for at least six of our programs, including nursing assistant, automotive technician, animal science, and plumbing,” said Schuelein. “Higher reimbursements from the districts would allow us to increase capacity.
Additionally, if there were improvements to the BOCES Aid formula, districts would hopefully have more money to be able to have additional students attend our programs.”
Ulster BOCES is preparing the next generation of nurses through their Health Occupations program.
Frank Mascetta has been teaching electrical construction for 27 years at Southern Westchester BOCES.
Jon Miller, Digital Media Educator and President of the Oswego County BOCES TA.
This legislative session, NYSUT is urging the Legislature to pass S.528/A.3430, which updates the BOCES and special services funding formula to ensure that CTE programs receive the funding they need to grow.
The legislation would increase reimbursement for CTE and maintain and modernize state aid, something educators say will help students — and employers, said Schuelein.
Missing in action: Immense labor shortages predicted
Today’s CTE programs aren’t just the key to gainful employment for students, they’re opportunities to spark joy and instill confidence through authentic skill-building. They’re also critical to addressing workforce shortages in a number of different sectors, including construction, manufacturing and healthcare.
According to recent labor analysis, the current wave of Baby Boomer retirements is expected to spur the largest labor shortage in U.S. history.
“We spent the last 20 years making everyone white-collar workers, and now there’s no one to fix the plumbing or service the HVAC system,” said Jon Miller, president of the Oswego County BOCES TA. “We don’t have the workers we need, and we’re not investing in the infrastructure to get these kids out into the field.”
Oswego County BOCES, or CiTi BOCES, offers 18 career programs for the county’s nine school districts, including automotive, coding, construction, digital media technology, heavy equipment, nursing, and welding, and currently enrolls more than 370 students. Unfortunately, many of the career programs are waitlisted, leading to backlogs in the local economy.
Welding is one of CiTi’s most oversubscribed programs. Between facilities and instructors, the program has capacity for 90 students, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed.
“(American Welding Society) is predicting a shortage of 300,000 to 500,000 welders in the next few years,” said Zachary Thompson, a welding instructor at Oswego County BOCES and member of the Oswego County BOCES TA.
Thompson said local employers are plentiful; in fact, he can’t train welding students fast enough to fill the ranks at Fulton Boiler Works and Universal Metal Works, not to mention companies that are expected to open soon, like Micron.
BOCES programs are trying to train tomorrow’s workforce, but the obstacles are many, Miller said. One of the biggest problems? Teacher recruitment.
“We went from a pool of teachers to a trickle, and it goes back to pay,” Miller said. “In the private sector, I can make double what I’m making right now. How are you going to get professionals to go into teaching if they have to take a 50-percent pay cut?”
CTE teachers continue to teach the very latest industry standards; paradoxically, state funding formulas for CTE teacher salaries haven’t been updated since 1992.
The NYSUT-backed BOCES bill would increase the amount of teacher salaries that is aidable, effectively making salaries more commensurate with private sector jobs. Miller said that’s a step in the right direction.
“Teacher salaries are an investment in the future,” Miller said.
Building a new future
Students at Orange-Ulster BOCES are getting in on tomorrow’s hot ticket jobs today. The program boasts 32 different career tracks, that are split amongst 11 academies. “The most popular programs are construction trades, health careers, vet tech, welding, and heavy equipment,” said Laura Beck, president of the Orange County BOCES TA.
“Enrollment in these programs has definitely increased since (the pandemic),” she said, adding that the construction trades program has seen the biggest waitlists.
Beck attributes the growing interest in construction trades to the huge job losses people witnessed during the pandemic. “They saw that people in the trades stayed employed. These are secure jobs, and that’s important in today’s economy,” Beck said.
Orange-Ulster BOCES educates 2,050 students from 18 different districts, and Beck said keeping up with student demand isn’t easy. She said her union is pushing hard for the BOCES bill, which would help these under-resourced programs enroll more students.
“It’s absurd to me to base salaries on 30-year-old statistics,” Beck said.
Help the aging, help the young
The Capital Region BOCES has 20 programs that enroll more than 1,300 students from 24 school districts. Education programs span the most in-demand national career clusters, including building trades, electrical trades, HVAC, heavy equipment repair and operation, health careers/nursing, manufacturing, welding, and automotive.
Right now, most of those programs have waitlists.
“Enrollment at Capital Region BOCES has grown by nearly 300 students over the past five years, reflecting a strong and increasing demand for CTE,” said Jeff Palmer, director of Career and Technical Education at Capital Region BOCES. “Expanding capacity for BOCES programs requires investment in state-of-the-art facilities, classrooms, and labs to meet the growing demand.”
“We’ve been advocating for updates to the BOCES aid program for a long time,” said Katie DiPierro, president of the Capital Region BOCES Faculty Association. “If we could get that passed, that would be a huge help.” Increased funding is essential to adding seats to classrooms, addressing teacher shortages, and filling gaps in the labor market, she said.
In the Capital Region, BOCES training programs have been an important way to fill the demand for qualified healthcare employees.
“We have constant shortages in healthcare,” said DiPierro. “There’s such a great need across the medical field, but the need is especially great in the nursing homes.”
Capital Region BOCES offers a two-year health career program that includes clinical hours at nearby nursing homes and culminates in a nurse assistant certificate, DiPierro said. “The needs are right here in our local population, and so if we could have our local students in those jobs, that would just make sense,” she said.