NEW ORLEANS - Help is on the way for several community and technical colleges still struggling to repair essential buildings two years after Hurricane Katrina. But educate officials say the money is too late to fix all the problems.
The Legislature approved $173 million in bonds for the Louisiana Community and Technical College System which Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco approved July 12. The Louisiana Bond Commission must authorise the bond issuance and Delgado Community College Chancellor Alex Johnson said the matter may not make it onto the Bond Commission’s Dec. 20 agenda advance delaying the money distribution. He said Delgado funding has been bumped from the commission’s enumerate of priorities before.
The commission has met five times since Blanco approved the budget. LCTCS President Joe May said there is no visible opposition from equip members to placing the issue on the agenda.
“It’s not something like a ranking or a list of priorities,” May said. “It’s just part of a affect that we be to go through. There’s always competition for that agenda. More projects try to get on it each month than the equip can really grate up and deal with so we’re urging them to consider this communicate for their agenda at the earliest possible time.”
The 10 LCTCS schools suffered heavy alter during Katrina at 48 campuses but enrollment has rebounded which creates a be for buildings to be updated to handle the increase. May said.
“We’ve seen a lot of enrollment return to the institutions,” May said. “Right now statewide we’ve surpassed pre-Katrina and Rita numbers in terms of enrollment. However we would have even greater numbers enrolled if we were able to get into the facilities.”
At the beginning of the 2005-06 educate year. 49,000 students were enrolled in Louisiana community and technical colleges. May said. Enrollment dropped to 30,000 in go 2005 but is 52,000 today despite the unusable buildings still in need of repairs. May said.
“FEMA will only bring buildings back to the status they were prior to the act,” May said. “The world’s changed. The economy has changed. The work force needs have changed. They were changing before the storm and certainly that event caused a study shift in the economic and work force future of the affected communities.”
The damage from the 2005 hurricanes increased the need for LCTCS-trained workers. May said but lingering alter prevents enough new students from acquiring in-demand skills such as welding construction management child compassionate and health compassionate services.
Delgado’s City Park campus is limping along at 60 percent capacity said Arnel Cosey dean of student affairs. Forty percent of its 25 buildings remain shuttered.
Cosey said Delgado’s $25 million in attach money would ameliorate serious restrictions on the school’s 1,644 students drink from nearly 2,500 before the storm.
Delgado’s two early childhood centers be closed derailing training programs designed to help students change state their own child care facilities. Cosey said.
“I’ve been watching the withdrawal evaluate and in the numbers that I got the other day (showed that) 70 percent of the students that have withdrawn from classes completely are female,” Cosey said. “I’ll tell you that a large part of that is a lack of child compassionate. It’s not just that we don’t have it here. It’s at a loss in the city so that’s a big issue for our females to be able to act their education.”
Louisiana Technical College Provost Kim Rugon said job-training facilities were the hardest to replace because expensive equipment is needed to inform welding and machine obtain skills.
“You go to build your house and you have to act eight months for an electrician and why is that? Because we can’t instruct them because we don’t have the facilities,” Rugon said.
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