WESTFIELD — Mayor Michael A. McCabe and School Superintendent Stefan Czaporowski welcomed Gov. Charlie Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Secretary of Education James Peyser to the Westfield Technical Academy on Sept. 27, along with representatives of vocational technical schools across the state. The occasion was the announcement of the latest round of Skills Capital grants.
Addressing the audience at Tiger’s Pride, Czaporowski said the Baker-Polito administration’s Workforce Skills Cabinet established the Skills Capital Grant program in 2015. He said the grants have given the schools upgrades for equipment and intentionally aligned them with regional workforce priorities.
Czaporowski said the program has been rigorous and relevant, and before the current round had given out 477 grants totaling $129 million to 194 different schools across Massachusetts.
“I’ve been in your seat waiting for the announcement,” Czaporowski said to the school representatives. He said WTA has received grants for its culinary arts, allied health, electrical engineering, manufacturing and aviation programs.
“Thank you for your dedication to keeping career technical education relevant. This program has truly made a difference,” Czaporowski said, before introducing Baker.
“We need a lot more of these kinds of people with these kinds of skills,” Baker said.
He said when he and Polito first started the program, it was an experiment, and now it is built into the economic bill. He said with the announcement on Tuesday, they have now given out $153 million to the schools.
Polito said the administration has also changed the perception of what it means to graduate from a career-oriented technical education program.
“Thank you for helping us to perfect this program,” she said, adding, “It’s been an honor and a privilege.”
Peyser said this round of funding, the second this year, became available through American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, and there will be another $150 million that has already been adopted to give out this year. He then announced 14 grants of $24 million for the schools represented at the Westfield event.
Westfield Technical Academy received $1.014 million: $900,000 to manufacturing tech and the rest to the electrical engineering shop, according to WTA Principal Joseph Langone.
The money will be used to open and outfit a new classroom, for new computer numerical control (CNC) machines, to upgrade the sophomore computer lab in manufacturing tech, and to purchase new equipment to meet state curriculum frameworks in the electrical engineering classroom. Langone said the school would not have been able to make the upgrades without the grant.
“It was fantastic being a host site, having been a guest at a few of these events, and nice he was coming with good news about being a grant recipient again,” Langone said, adding that the governor’s staff told him that it had been great working on the arrangements for the visit with the school.
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