Students use imitation buildings to learn how to install insulation, weatherstripping and other heat-saving products.
James Neveau, left, Director of the MassGreen Initiative at Springfield Technical Community College, gives a tour of the school's weatherization training program area to Jeffrey Simon, Director of the Massachusetts Recovery and Reinvestment office, right. Most of the building material around them was purchased for training using federal stimulus dollars. SPRINGFIELD – Administrators behind a weatherproofing course at Springfield Technical Community College expect a full class of 12 students when classes resume this summer.
And plans for a second-level course, focusing this time on taking weatherization skills and starting a contacting business with them, is also in the works for fall, said James F. Neveu, director of STCC's MassGreen Institute.
It all sounded good to Jeffrey A. Simon, director of the Massachusetts Recovery and Reinvestment Office. Simon toured the Institute’s collection of full-size wall, window and attic mockups at STCC on Wednesday morning. Students use the fake buildings to learn how to install insulation, weatherstripping and other heat-saving products.
Simon’s office is in charge of monitoring the $7 billion in federal stimulus money Massachusetts has either received thus far, or will receive soon. It’s money that is running out, so stimulus programs must now move toward a greater degree of self-sufficiency.
“This is what the stimulus has done, it has created jobs in ones and twos,” Simon said. “In the long run, I think that will be a much more sustainable model. you just don’t get those thousands of jobs in one shot.”
The federal $787 billion stimulus program began in 2009 and funded immediate federal tax cuts and incentives, an expansion of unemployment benefits and other social entitlement programs. In addition, 28 federal agencies received recovery funds to finance contracts, grants, and loans around the country, according the to the government’s recovery.gov website.
Massachusetts has spent about $6 billion of the $7 billion it is expected to receive, Simon said. More than 71,000 people received a stimulus-funded paycheck between Feb. 17, 2009 and Dec. 31.
The MassGreen Institute received $1 million in stimulus money in 2010 to follow up a $1.87 million state grant it received in 2009. So far, it’s graduated 46 students from STCC, Greenfield Community College, Bristol Community College in Fall River and North Shore Community College in Beverly.
Workers are building a weatherization classroom this week at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, Neveu said. Qunsigamond, in Worcester, and Roxbury community colleges are also planning classrooms that will likely be built in the summer or fall, he said.
Stimulus funding is running out, Simon said. But the classrooms and programs will remain. He expects demand for the classes and to hire graduates to rise along with winter heating costs.
Simon later went to Springfield Police Headquarters at 130 Pearl St. Springfield police received more than $850,000 in stimulus money in November 2009 to hire five police officers.