Barton Community College’s automotive program is on its way out, but some other form of Career Technical Education could take its place, Vice President of Instruction Elaine Simmons told BCC trustees.
Closing the program officially will be on the Board of Trustees agenda at the July 27 meeting. The expensive program has been plagued by low enrollment for years, she said.
“I hated to think years ago that this day would come, but we’re there.”
Board Chairman Mike Johnson agreed. “Any time you close a program, it’s never a positive thing,” he said.
“We didn’t have any new students last year,” she Mary Foley, Barton’s executive director of Workforce Training and Economic Development. The last six students recently finished the program.
In 2015, the automotive program was realigned so that high school students could graduate with a certificate in auto maintenance and light repair. Some Great Bend High School students enrolled in the courses then but Great Bend USD 428 Superintendent Khris Thexton said the high school stopped offering automotive to students last year.
“GBHS added welding and that impacted automotive enrollment,” Simmons said.
Some of the automotive equipment at Barton can be used by maintenance staff while larger items such as lifts and tire mount machines can be sold, Foley said.
The next question will be what to do with the space occupied by the automotive program. The college has a partnership with Case-New Holland to provide training for the company’s service technicians and field representatives. Perhaps that partnership could be expanded, Simmons suggested. “It’s always been a closed program, only for those already in dealerships,” she said. A technician program that is open to the public might be a possibility.
“Those are beginning conversations,” she said, adding there are other ways the space could be used. Barton’s welding program is expanding. Barton is also closing its carpentry and plumbing programs at the Larned Correctional Mental Health Facility. A proposal has been drafted to teach a carpentry class on campus in January.
Board Chairman Mike Johnson noted that when the college got approval from the Kansas Board of Regents to teach carpentry at the correctional facility, it was approved for either location. Plumbing could also be approved, he said. He asked if the process of offering a new program would take a year.
“It shouldn’t take that long,” Foley said, adding it could take three or four months to get approval from the Kansas Department of Education and the Higher Learning Commission. “I’m hopeful we could get it up fairly quickly.”
