Construction set to begin on JVCTC's child care center – Jamestown Sun

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JAMESTOWN — Construction on the renovation of the James Valley Career and Technology Center’s existing child care center could begin within a month while other projects are still in the design phase, according to Adam Gehlhar, director of the Career and Technology Center.
Gehlhar said the renovation of the child care center at the Career and Technology Center could be complete by August 2025 for the 2025-26 school year.
Construction on the Career and Technology Center’s planned addition could begin in spring 2025, he said. He said the goal is to have the expansion completed for fall 2025.
The Career and Technology Center and The Arts Center in Jamestown also plan to enter into a partnership to provide a culinary arts facility. The Jamestown Public School Board recently approved a memorandum of understanding for that partnership to provide the facility at The Arts Center’s new building that formerly housed the Wonder Bar.
Gehlhar is hopeful the culinary arts facility — for students and the community — will be open in fall 2025.
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He said the planned addition for the Career and Technology Center is in the design process.
“Some of our other bigger projects, we’re still selecting architects for that,” he said. “There’s several parts to this capital project grant.”
A holdup on the release of federal funds delayed a planned project of the James Valley Career and Technology Center that targets workforce needs. The Career and Technology Center was eventually awarded an $800,000 grant in June from the Career and Technical Education Capital Projects Funds which is matched by a combination of funds from the Jamestown Public School District’s contribution from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, Jamestown/Stutsman Development Corp., James Valley Career and Technology Center and the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006.
“Some of the partnerships that developed … over the last year and a half, essentially, I think that those were just natural things that we had learned about from our needs assessment,” Gehlhar said. “So a child care opportunity, Arts Center opportunity, those were things that came up and it just makes sense to look at those partnerships in a community our size to be able to offer more benefits to our kids and at the same time expand opportunities in the community.”
Gehlhar said the capital projects grant addresses several areas of the Career and Technology Center including health careers, building trades, agriculture, culinary arts, aviation and child care.
The Jamestown Public School District plans to construct an addition at the James Valley Career and Technology Center that would be used by the building trades program to build lake cabins and to house ambulances for training students and providing public service in northeast Jamestown.
Gehlhar said the budget for the Career and Technology Center’s capital projects is about $1.9 million and the renovation too the child care center will cost about $500,000, which is being paid for by a grant through the Regional Workforce Impact Program.
The Jamestown Public School District’s child care program will serve existing staff during the school year for regular and drop-in child care services. Jointly with an expanded family and consumer science program, the James Valley Career and Technology Center will operate the child care facility for district staff.
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The budget includes remodeling five classrooms, playground equipment, safety needs, infrastructure supplies, architectural design costs, equipment/supplies and travel.
The program would be open during the school year only and include capacity for eight infants, 15 toddlers and 20 prekindergarten students.
Gehlhar said the goal of the child care program is to potentially create more child care openings in Jamestown.
“We also see it as an opportunity within our schools to just expand benefits to staff and accessibility to child care so that they can seek other employment opportunities,” he said.
Students will have an opportunity to work with more children in different age ranges, said Heidi Eckart, assistant director of the Career and Technology Center.
“The play school right now is preschool age where we don’t have toddler or infant,” she said.
The Career and Technology Center staff also completed a comprehensive needs assessment that found all of its programming was validated, Gehlhar said.
“There’s a strong demand for students to have those skills in the occupation areas,” he said.
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He said additional areas the Career and Technology Center will look at include obtaining commercial driver’s licenses, the energy sector, heavy-equipment operators, public safety and technology and engineering.
“There’s some discussion of how that fits in with CTE (career and technical education),” Gehlhar said. “ … That’s in our five-year vision.”
He added that there could be a lot of interest in students obtaining a commercial driver’s license because it impacts transportation, logistics, agriculture and school districts with getting bus drivers.
“It impacts a lot of different industries for sure,” Gejlhar said. “Any of those areas that we’d like to expand in, we’re always seeking out, looking for opportunities to engage with people who might want to partner because we don’t anticipate being able to start a program and employ somebody full time to do something like that. If we want to start and build a program, and we had a partnership where somebody was interested in being able to help with education or defray some of the costs of starting a program up, we would definitely be interested in looking at partnerships for that.”
Eckart said the Career and Technology Center’s staff tries to get students the type of skills they need that can help the community in areas with the highest need. She said there’s been a big change where there are different career pathways than just getting a four-year college degree.
“It can be directly out of high school going into the workforce and pay scales for those are just as much as looking at someone that’s gone for a four-year degree,” she said.
Gehlhar said the Career and Technology Center expects to have about 550 enrollments in its programs this fall. He said the number of students enrolling in career and technical education programs has steadily increased over the last few years.

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