Let's Support Vocational Education
- Jean Nam
- Apr 11
- 3 min read
As a society we have learned so much about the value of incorporating various styles of learning into public education. Some kids are visual learners, some are book learners, some are hands-on learners. And we have seen public education grow and expand to try to meet kids where they are.
Minuteman Technical Vocational High School, for example, is an amazing place which has so many more opportunities for hands-on experiential learning, internships, and areas of study which just don't exist at Lincoln-Sudbury High School. Lincoln-Sudbury and Minuteman Tech are amazing high schools, who together, can offer our kids opportunities in a wide variety of areas of study and styles of learning.
Unfortunately, as things stand today, our kids have no guaranteed spot at a vocational school. Every since we left the Minuteman Technical Vocational School District, our kids have been getting boxed out of the very few out-of-district spots at Minuteman and Assabet.
It's time to take some action to address this problem.
We need to understand how much money it will take for Minuteman or Assabet to even consider taking us back. Beyond just tuition, they will no doubt expect some sort of rejoining fee. And since we voted (at Town Meeting in 2016) to leave the Minuteman Vocational district, we’re going to need to eat some crow and make an equally strong statement of commitment to convince them that we want to come back.
Here’s the idea. Let’s vote for more funds in our operational budget for vocational education. This would be a Town Meeting vote to show our commitment to vocational education. As a rough calculation, currently Dover pays about $280,000 to send 4 to 5 kids to Minuteman. So, if we committed $600,000 in our budget, that would be enough to fund about 7-8 kids with money left for a rejoining fee. This could at least get the discussions started!
We currently have $400,000 allocated in the proposed FY26 budget. Can we find another $200,000? I think the answer is an easy Yes.
Every year we allocate $300,000 to something called the “Reserve Fund.” It’s a fund that is there in case some emergency comes up during the year. For the last several years we have not touched this fund. In fact, I’m not sure if we’ve ever used this fund? When the funds are unused, then they flow into “Free Cash.”
My proposal is to move $200,000 from the Reserve Fund into the Vocational Education budget line. Then we can show vocational school districts that we are committed to $600,000 for vocational education. If we don’t use the money for vocational education, then it will flow back into “Free Cash” - just as it does when the Reserve Fund isn’t used.
By voting a solid amount of money into our budget for vocational education, we make a strong statement to vocational districts that we are serious about wanting to join a district and we already have Town Meeting support for the funds. It gives us a great starting point for negotiations. And, if we don’t use the money next year, then it flows back into Free Cash, just as it always does every year. We aren’t sacrificing any other services with this move, we're just making our money work for us!
It’s time for us to do something concrete to give our kids more opportunities. I will be offering an amendment to the Budget article at the upcoming Town Meeting (May 5-6) to more robustly fund vocational education.
If you would like an email reminder during Town Meeting of when to show up to vote for this, please click below and subscribe to my mailing list. Remember, these decisions are made at Town Meeting where we typically have 100-150 people (fewer by the end of the meeting) deciding. Please add yourself to this mailing list so that you can cast your vote to try to give our kids more opportunities.
