February is CTE Month! This has been a banner school year for Providence Public School’s Office of Career & Technical Education (CTE).  Career & Technical Education programs provide rigorous, focused and hands-on programming to prepare students for postsecondary success.  There are 29 programs across 11 industry clusters and work based learning/internship opportunities.  Since 2020, there has been a 40% increase in the number of CTE programs and a 54% increase in student enrollment. 

 

One of CTE’s goals for SY25 is to develop industry partnerships that create pipelines to careers.  PPSD’s K-12 partnership with Electric Boat that includes programming in advanced manufacturing for 4/5th graders; mobile manufacturing classrooms and underwater robot builds at middle schools; program support for marine trades in high school; and a recruiting pipeline for graduating seniors.  New this year are partnerships with Providence Water and Johnson Controls at PCTA; the new RI Life Science HUB at JSEC; CCRI’s Workforce Development Healthcare Department at Alvarez; and CCRI’s Advanced Manufacturing department at Mount Pleasant.  One of the fall highlights was a luncheon with RI Women in Trades at PCTA that brought together female industry powerhouses with junior and senior girls enrolled in construction programs at PCTA during National Apprenticeship month. 

 

Recently, Alvarez will kick off a partnership with the Rhode Island Nursing Education Center (RINEC), bringing Healthcare juniors to the facility for five days to learn in a state of the art facility with simulation labs and lecture halls to learn new nursing skills. Looking forward, the CTE Office is partnering  with RI Dental, Delta Dental, CCRI and Colgate Palmolive to launch a Dental Assisting program at JSEC next fall.