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Greene County Career Center officials participated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday, July 8, at the newly completed hangar at the Lewis A. Jackson Regional Airport, where the career center's new aviation maintenance program will be housed. (Screen shot from career center video)
Career center’s aviation maintenance training program ready for first class
- Published: July 11, 2020
A ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday, July 8, celebrated the completion of a hangar at the Lewis A. Jackson Regional Airport that will house the Greene County Career Center’s new aviation maintenance program.
Seventeen career center students are set to enter the program designed to prepare them for Federal Aviation Administration certification as airframe maintenance technicians. The program also will provide hours toward powerplant mechanic certification that can be completed though Clark State or Sinclair Community colleges, if students want to pursue additional training after high school graduation.
The program’s first class is scheduled to begin with the start of the career center’s 2020–21 school year, currently planned Aug. 25.
The new 7,500-foot hangar includes an open bay for aircraft and engine maintenance, an area for sheet metal fabrication and rooms for classes, meetings and offices.
The building’s construction was secured with a $850,000 capital grant from the state, according to career center Superintendent David Deskins in an interview last year with the regional promotional publication Discover Dayton.
Career center administrators and board members were on hand for the July 8 ribbon-cutting event, which was recorded and posted on YouTube.
The program’s launch is also in sync with the planned opening of the career center’s newly constructed main campus near the juncture of U.S. 68 and U.S. 35, just south of Xenia.
County voters approved a 1.03-mill, 20-year bond levy in November 2018 to raise $62 million toward the $80 million project. Although slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, construction of the 272,000-square-foot facility is complete and will be ready for the new school year.
Yellow Springs is one of seven districts in the county with students at the career center, which had an enrollment of about 650 at the main campus for the 2018–19 school year.
Yellow Springs school board member Steve McQueen, who also serves on the career center board, reported at the most recent YS board meeting Thursday, July 9, that the new building was ready for students, but operational logistics amid the current pandemic were raising multiple issues, including reconciling different mask-wearing and other related policies of the affiliated districts. Maintaining safe distances among students and staff will also be difficult, as most of the programs are lab based, McQueen said.
Despite the challenges, students are scheduled to start classes Aug, 25, and an official ribbon-cutting and public tours of the facility are tentatively anticipated in September.
Cutting the ribbon Wednesday, July 8, at the Greene County Career Center’s new aviation maintenance program hangar at the Lewis A. Jackson Regional Airport were career center Treasurer Eva Anderson; board members Mary Frantz, Gene Taylor, Gail Martindale, Pam Callahan, Angela Reagan and Mike Uecker; and Superintendent Dave Deskins. (Screen shot from career center video)
3 Responses to “Career center’s aviation maintenance training program ready for first class”
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More skilled trades!
More skilled trades!
This is great! Now if they can supplement the hanger and in-person classes with some alternate online virtual mechanics for airplane maintenance we’ll be all set for the future! And, I am not kidding because this is where we’re at. It should be as doable as virtual simulation programs for learning to fly. Welcome to the hi-tech meets pandemica — if our learning academies can’t keep up, what does that say about higher learning, really? If there aren’t teaching programs currently available to assist skilled trades distant learning — then, get on it because our education system has fallen behind! Because there should be. Pandemics have happened before, they’ll happen again; “that’s life” as Sinatra would say.