By Alyssa Schnugg
News editor
alyssa.schnugg@hottytoddy.com
File photo
While the Mississippi Department of Education Career and Technical Education Office has approved a request to dissolve a consortium between Oxford and Lafayette schools in regard to the School of Applied Technology the two districts have expressed an interest to keep all CTE classes at The Tech available for all city and county students.
However, an agreement to work all that out has yet to be reached by the two districts.
In June 2019, the OSD notified the LCSD of its intent to withdraw from the consortium that allows the districts to receive reimbursements from the state for teacher salaries. The OSD wants its own Career Technology Education program so it can receive funding from the state for its program and teachers’ salaries.
On Monday, the Lafayette County School Board approved a completely new agreement from the most recent version that has gone back and forth between the two districts for months.
In the previous version, the agreement focused on how many shop spaces and classes each district would manage. Lafayette wanted three of the four shops but Oxford wanted two of the four shops.
The contract approved Monday by Lafayette board members has The Tech shared “equally” by the two districts.
MDE is not going to divide the property since it belongs to both school districts.
“It’s up to us to decide how they will be used,” said Lafayette Superintendent Adam Pugh.
The current consortium will end on June 30.
“What I recommend we do is continue to offer the courses we’re offering out there and share the space equally because it is a joint space that we share,” Pugh said. “Whatever courses are offered, we have equal access to those courses.”
One sticking point in the past has been that Oxford and Lafayette are on different schedules, making it difficult for Oxford students to take the courses Lafayette officers and vice versa. On Monday, Pugh said the LCSD will extend its teachers hours later in the day to accommodate the Oxford students.
“And we are asking that Oxford teachers start at 8 a.m. to accommodate our students,” he said.
On Friday, during a special-called meeting, the Oxford School District Board of Trustees voted to re-approve its version of an agreement to co-manage the Tech with the Lafayette County School Board; however, adding verbiage that if the LCSD does not sign the agreement by the end of day on Friday, authorization is given to Superintendent Brian Harvey to send a letter to the Mississippi Department of Education Office of Career and Technical Education requesting the dissolution of the Oxford and Lafayette County consortium with the programs being allocated to each district based on student population.
The new version of the agreement was being sent to the OSD board early this week to review.
Last week, OSD Superintendent Brian Harvey send a letter parents addressing the ongoing negotiations between the two-school district.
“Our district has a clear vision in these negotiations: to serve OSD students with career-technical courses with adequate instruction time and to offer courses that prepare them for the 21st-century workforce,” he wrote. “We have no intention of eliminating the courses that our students are currently taking: automotive services, carpentry, welding, teacher academy, health sciences, and computer programming. Nor is it our intent to remove access for any Lafayette County student from any program at the TECH. We strongly desire that students from both districts be able to participate in any program at the TECH without regard to which district actually runs the program.”
After Monday’s meeting, Pugh said Lafayette’s desire is also to make sure students at both school districts have equal access to all the programs taught out at The Tech.
“We’re not wanting to eliminate Oxford from anything,” Pugh said. “That has never been our desire. Our desire has always been to have equal access to everything that’s out there. We don’t want to give up our kids having access to things out there, nor do we want to exclude Oxford from having access. That’s what that building was built for.”
The OSD will review the new proposed agreement during its Feb. 24 meeting.
