Garland ISD will open its state of the art Gilbreath-Reed Career and Technical Education Center in August and Dr. Phil Gilbreath, along with several other speakers, provided an update on the status at the Jan. 10 meeting.
The center will require 34 teachers. Nine will be new and 25 will transfer from other high school campuses. An administrative support staff consisting of a principal, assistant principal and counselor will be needed, along with a support staff of three secretaries, one receptionist, one data clerk, one bookkeeper and one office aide.
A school resource officer will also be required as well as a nurse and campus technology specialist.
In all, 46 staff members are needed. Twenty of them will be new staff and 26 will transfer from other campuses.
The facility’s capacity is 850 students. There will be four time blocks during which 850 kids could be attending classes at the CTE. Students will continue to be enrolled in one of the seven GISD high schools and will be enrolled in specific courses at the tech center.
The center will add the need for 14 new bus routes. The district will purchase 14 new buses and a driver will be needed for each new route.
The United States has identified, and the state of Texas has adopted, 16 clusters of career choices and GISD’s CTE will offer all of them. There will also be three endorsement areas: business and industry; public tech services; and STEM. Clusters inside each of those areas are listed below:
Business and industry:
Agriculture, food and natural resources
Architecture and construction
Arts, AV technology and communications
Business management and administration
Finance
Hospitality and tourism
Information technology
Manufacturing
Marketing
Transportation, distribution and logistics.
Some of the categories in each of these clusters are already offered by GISD and will be moved to the center from other schools. A few of these include architectural design, interior design, hospitality, Microsoft office specialist and advanced accounting.
New ones will include: advanced veterinary medical application; printing and imaging; advanced fashion design; business management; medical coding and billing; financing trading and investment; culinary arts; computer maintenance; network administration and cyber security; web design; software and game development; machining and fabrication; manufacturing engineering; fashion design and marketing; logistics technology; and outdoor power.
A few of the categories in the public services cluster that are already offered include certified nurse assisting, emergency medical technician and pharmacy technician. New ones will include dental assisting and fire fighter.
In the STEM cluster, advanced engineering and advanced robotics and automation will be relocating from other campuses.
The center will also include a program called Junior Achievement Biz Town for younger students. This will allow students to “practice” things like banking skills, economic development, ethics, teamwork, decision making and problem solving.
Some of the business sponsors for this program are American Airlines, Atmos Energy, Toyota, AT&T and Wells Fargo. GISD sixth-graders will visit the centers for a 4 ½ hour class during the school year.
The original bond estimate for the career technical education center was $32 million. It then increased to $34.4 and it is currently at approximately $36 million.