There are 52 students in the manufacturing technology program at Westfield Vocational Technical High School.
Jordan Kornacki, right , of Blanford, a junior in the Westfield Vocational -Technical High School machine technology department explains what he is working on to Massachusetts Secretary of Education S. Paul Reville, during a tour of the school Tuesday.WESTFIELD – When David A. Amanti, vice president of Advance Manufacturing in Westfield, hires a graduate of Westfield Vocational Technical High School he knows he is getting someone trained to step in to his shop and get to work.
After all, Amanti and the people who run other area precision manufacturers had a hand in designing the program at Westfield Vocational Technical in a partnership state Education Secretary S. Paul Reville said Tuesday should be a model for the entire state.
“Not just at the vocational schools,” Reville said following a tour of the Westfield program. “I would like to get employers more involved in the comprehensive schools as well. There are so many students at our high schools who are bright, but they aren’t engaged. They don’t see a connection between what they are learning and a career.”
Richard T. Lanier is an adviser to the program who is recently retired from Hamilton Sundstrand in Windsor Locks and worried about the impact of standardized testing on vocational training. Lanier said he doesn’t want classes designed to get students to pass the MCAS crowding out technical courses.
Reville said he understands the concern, but he believes technical courses are a good way to teach skills measured by the tests. For example, algebra makes more sense to students who use the skill in shop.
Reville said vocational education is a big part of the Gov. Deval L. Patrick’s Gateway Cities Agenda, a plan for helping the economies of older manufacturing cities that have fallen on hard times in recent decades.
There are about 500 students at Westfield Vocational Technical High School and 52 in the manufacturing technology program, said Clement D. Fucci, manufacturing technology teacher. Each year the senior class has jobs in hand before they graduate. Fucci said starting salaries run in the $40,000 to $50,000 a year with benefits.
Many of the workers on those shop floors now are nearing retirement age, said David M. Cruise, director of business and employer services at the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County. Through a survey, the Regional Employment Board estimates that the 330-or-so machine shops in the Pioneer Valley and northern Connecticut will have 1,500 to 1,600 job opening s in just the next three years.
Amanti said Advance has about 200 employees and he’s very busy machining parts for the aircraft, space and defense industries.
But for student Jordan T. Kornacki, a 16-year-old junior from Blandford, said the challenge of working on tolerances as small as millionths of an inch is what get him into the program.
“If I didn’t enjoy what I was doing, I wouldn’t do it,” said Jordan T. Kornacki, a 16-year-old junior from Blandford.
Kornaki showed Reville how he uses a computerized coordinate measuring machine to check the dimensions of a machined part.