New Dexter, TCC agreement brings potential benefits

As Poplar Bluff Technical Career Center and Dexter R-XI prepare for a new partnership, potential improvements appear down the line for both schools.

After over a year of work, Dexter students will make the 30 minute trek to TCC for morning classes.

With a new agreement, approved by the state board of education, Dexter High School students can take trade courses in Poplar Bluff.

Auto collision instructor Denni White shows Dexter students one of the tools used in his class at the Poplar Bluff Technical Career Center.DAR/Michael Shine

Each of the 14 trades taught at TCC will accept four Dexter students, although TCC Director Charles Kinsey said there is some wiggle room with that number once students apply.

“Poplar Bluff, Dexter and Southern Reynolds will be in the same bucket,” he said. “Say I have seven or eight Poplar Bluff kids, I’ve got Dexter and I’ve got Southern Reynolds, but say I have three extra Dexters. 

“I may contact some of these Poplar Bluff kids and say ‘Hey, would any of you be interested in doing it in the afternoon, if I have openings.’ If I have a couple openings for that program in the afternoon, I can move the Poplar Bluff kids because they just walk up the hill, and I can get those three extra Dexter kids in.”

A Poplar Bluff Technical Career Center student shows interested Dexter students around the HVAC classroom.DAR/Michael Shine

That flexibility is beneficial both to the R-I district because of tuition funding and the partnering school because more of their students take part in the program. 

Potential enrollment growth

There’s 20 Dexter students attending the Sikeston R-IV Career and Technology Center.

Dexter High School Principal Alana Dowdy said she’d like to see the number of students taking part in trade programs increase.

Kinsey said part of the challenge with increasing participation comes from the culture around trade industries.

To combat that, Kinsey discussed several ways to bridge the gap. He said it takes face-to-face time with students and parents.

Prior to state board approval for the change, Kinsey went to visit with Dexter students to discuss what options would be available to them.

“It would have been fine for it to be other staff members, but I wanted to make sure we’re kicking off these students in a specific way,” he said. “And not telling them ‘this is your own option.’ I’m not telling them that. I’m telling them these are a multitude of options you have.”

Students came out to TCC at the end of last week to meet with current students and teachers, see the facility for themselves and learn more about the programs they found interesting. 

Kinsey said the conversations start with eighth grade students, and continue through ninth and tenth grade before they need to decide on coming to the trade school. The goal, he said, is to inform them about the option.

During these conversations, he said, he warns students that they may face people who try to persuade them not to go down the path of a trade career. 

“When I was talking to all the eighth grade girls, I said ‘you’re going to see predominantly males in a lot of these areas, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s just the way it’s falling and we want you here,’” Kinsey said. “Some of the best we’ve seen have been female students in these areas. We want those students. 

“Non-traditional, kids of ethnicity… they don’t see anybody like themselves in these areas and I want to, by having these conversations with them younger, help get that understanding through to them more efficiently than just walking through these programs.”

Another part of increasing participation, which Kinsey said he’s discussed with Dowdy, is conversations with eighth grade parents.

Meetings are in the works, he said, to have similar conversations with these parents while they’re helping their students prepare for the options available in high school. 

“When we’re there, talking to students and parents, we’re dispelling myths about what career education is,” he said. “It’s OK. It’s OK to be a plumber. It’s OK to be an electrician. It’s a fantastic career field.”

Kinsey said he sees a lot of parents agreeing that there should be more plumbers and electricians, but still have the response of “but not my kid.” However, he sees tides changing as parents realize the money that’s available in trade fields.

This isn’t only a challenge in Southeast Missouri.

Nationwide industries expressed concerns over not having anybody to hire due to lack of training.

Potential TCC growth

The new Dexter students will probably impact the programs. Students from Westwood Baptist Academy started attending TCC this year. Now 10 schools send students there.

Kinsey said the increase of students from this may help with his goal to expand the number of programs being offered through TCC. 

With the additional students and tuition, Kinsey said he hopes to add a teacher. While he doesn’t expect to be able to for this coming school year, it is still something on his radar.

One struggle with that expansion is identifying what program he could successfully add. He’s planning to take a poll of eighth and ninth graders to see what they’re interested in. 

A few years ago, he did this. The top response was childcare. That wasn’t the direction TCC went because of concerns over job prospects. However, he did also receive responses talking about drones, criminal justice and coding. The result was adding the Project Lead the Way program, which started this year, and focuses on computer programming and coding. 

“That’s why we’re going to do it again,” he said. “I’ll have these new numbers, this new money and the new demand. I’ll say ‘Hey, the kids are coming up with this new program we should start,’ and that’s the process I start with administration.”

He looks into job statistics and prospects along with local demand for the industries with the top student responses. If the R-I board agrees to starting a program, it needs approval from the state board.

“It’s a little bit of a process, but well worth it in the long haul,” he said. 

A new partnership

School districts rarely make this kind of change, Kinsey said, with only a couple across the state doing so each year. To do so, the district must submit a letter to the state board of education, approved by the school board and signed by the superintendent. It is also expected to provide the rationale for the change.

Poplar Bluff R-I also submitted a letter to the board of education to encourage the approval.

Kinsey said in these situations, he likes to provide as much information to the school in question about tuition rates and programs available.

“If a school is planning to come to our school, I don’t want them to make a snap decision and then a year later switch back,” he said. “I want it to be a long-term (relationship). You’re not just going to be here for one year or one administrator.”

This kind of agreement is a relationship, Kinsey said, with districts trusting TCC to take over part of their career education.

“Basically, they’re trusting the host school, Poplar Bluff and the Technical Career Center, to take over a portion of their career technical training,” he said. “We’re cost sharing. That’s the way the state designed it.”

In this agreement, PBTCC will receive Carl Perkins Grant money — which is federal funding passed through the state to improve technical career education — for the Dexter students and put it to use for equipment or supplies for the programs being taught.

Participating schools, including Dexter, pay a tuition bill, but Kinsey said TCC discounts that bill if the school gets their paperwork done for their end of the grant money or adding new students.

“They met the number of people they’re supposed to send, they did all the paperwork they were supposed to, on our side, because that affects our funding here,” he said. “It’s a partnership.”

Kinsey said TCC hasn’t raised tuition in several years because of this process and he understands that a tuition change may cause an extra burden on the districts sending students.

They have to walk a thin line to keep the balance of affordability and benefit to the other districts without having R-I subsidize for the other districts.

“We have a good balance right now,” he said. “We’re right at 50-50. I think it’s equitable across all the students we get. I don’t think anybody’s paying more than they want. We help the schools do their testing requirements. I mean the testing requirements for their CT programs like agriculture or business that they have. We’ll help them if we can. They may not have the ability to do that. Anything and everything we can do to help the school be better.”