Consulting firm to study career and technical education in Frederick County

Yahoo

22-02-2025

To examine Frederick County's future possibilities for career and technical education, a consulting firm will study the current state of programs and give recommendations on how the county can better train students to enter the workforce.
The county is paying BerryDunn, headquartered in Portland, Maine, $89,325 for the study, according to Daniel Lewis, the chief financial officer for the county.
County Executive Jessica Fitzwater hosted a Career and Technical Education (CTE) Master Plan Study kickoff event on Wednesday to introduce the firm and explain the process of the study.
About 35 visitors attended the event. Many of them work or own businesses in trade industries, such as the automotive sector.
Fitzwater said the study will involve Frederick County Public Schools, Frederick Community College, Frederick County Workforce Services and the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce.
The community and FCPS students also can give their input.
Fitzwater said the county's employers have a vested interest in supporting the employee pipeline.
'The BerryDunn team will help us examine the county's current CTE resources, programs and spaces while planning for future industry growth, population changes and workforce needs,' she said. 'The study will also consider the current requirements for the Blueprint for Maryland's Future.'
The Blueprint is a set of education policies signed into law beginning in 2018 and meant to be implemented over the course of a decade.
One goal of the Blueprint is that 45% of public high school graduates will have completed an apprenticeship program by the 2030-31 school year.
FCPS offers the Youth Apprenticeship program, run through a partnership between FCPS and the Maryland Department of Labor.
Students in 11th or 12th grade can take class in the morning and earn money through jobs — such as automotive repair shops, the county government or a restaurant — in the afternoon.
Michael Brown, a work-based learning teacher specialist for Career and Technical Education in FCPS, has said the program requires 450 hours of work and students are paid minimum wage.
FCPS also offers programs such as biomedical science, carpentry and culinary arts at the Career and Technology Center in Frederick.
GATHERING DATA
Tucker Cutter, principal with the BerryDunn management and IT consulting group, said on Wednesday that his team met with career and technical education students from Frederick and Walkersville high schools before the event.
He said the process of the study begins with reviewing documentation and meeting as many people as possible to understand the current state of career and technical education in Frederick County.
Cutter said the team will analyze the data and recommend options.
He added that some questions that the team will look into include what programs are needed in FCPS, what programs have waitlists and how to deliver equitable education in a large county.
Cutter said BerryDunn will gather data through March, develop the core of the report in April, and present findings and recommendations in May.
After Cutter's presentation, attendees could ask questions and talk about the study.
Laurel Caurvina, co-owner and executive manager of Churchill Auto Care in Frederick, asked if BerryDunn worked with a county similar to Frederick County on a comparable study and what the results were.
Cutter said the firm did similar work for Wake County in North Carolina, and some of the results are yet to be seen because they're meant to be implemented over a multi-year period.
'Some of these recommendations will require ... capital projects, which take time,' he said. 'Thinking about new buildings and such, so some of the recommendations around programs are easier to be implemented where a capital investment can take longer for us.'
Caurvina added that a majority of the automotive workforce will retire by 2030. A concern of the industry is how automotive training programs will keep up with an increasingly electric market.
Cutter emphasized that the study will consider the 'nuances of trends within the automotive program.'
Fitzwater said Frederick County school boards have held career and technical education as a priority, and the reality is 'there are dollars tied to probably a lot of what is going to be recommended.'
'It just will give more for us to grab onto than just the traditional feasibility study on one building, on one location that has to fight its way to fit in with all the other capital programs that are there,' she said.