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SALINEVILLE -- The Utica Shale Academy will highlight the new Williams Collaboration Center during an open house for students this Thursday, May 9.
The site, which is located at 10 E. Main St. in Salineville, formerly housed Williams Energy's district office but will now be utilized as an educational facility for seventh- and eighth-grade students. Superintendent Bill Watson said the facility will be showcased to from 3-6 p.m. to any prospective pupil, their families and area educators from so they can learn what it has to offer.
"We're going to show the campus to interested students as well as 20-30 educators from the area. We invited people from Carroll, Columbiana and Jefferson counties," said Watson. "We will also showcase provided agencies, such as certified health workers, vaping and drug resistance and therapists for behavioral support, and we're going to demonstrate the career tech learning opportunities."
He added that enrollment was currently underway for grades 7-8 and more than a dozen have signed up thus far, but registration will continue throughout the summer.
"We will have a new tailored curriculum from the Virtual Learning Academy (VLA, which provided by the Jefferson County Educational Service Center) on the science of reading. The courses use explicit intervention to help students meet their goals," Watson added. "[The junior high] will do career exploration with welding, heavy equipment, industrial maintenance, horticulture, electrical and robotics. We have been getting inquiries from principals and guidance counselors and I think we're starting to get the word out."
The building was acquired late last year from Williams Energy, which relocated to Canton and donated the four-story space for classrooms, administrative offices and more programming in partnership with Youngstown State University. Plans are to expand the community school and provide junior high school students with exposure to career-tech opportunities. The program currently includes 190 pupils in grades 9-12 who take part in a blended learning format with hands-on and online training and the expansion could triple enrollment to about 350 pupils. USA offers a wide range of programs, including megatronics, hydraulics, pneumatics, AC/DC electric, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC's), diesel mechanics and horticulture to train both students and adults.
The collaboration center previously served as the Citizen's Bank national headquarters and then as the energy company's district office. It underwent renovations in 2018 with general maintenance performed in more recent years and is centrally located near the rest of the Utica Shale Academy's campus, which includes the Energy Training Center, Hutson Building, an outdoor welding lab and Utica Shale Academy Community Center at the former Destiny House Church on Church Street, the latter which includes a gym and community services. Plans also remain on the drawing board for a two-story building next to the welding lab for classrooms, machinery, virtual welding equipment, lockers and restrooms for students working with heavy equipment operation and CNC plasma cutting.
Now in its 10th year, USA is a dropout recovery-and-retention school focusing on career-tech education for at-risk students who have obtained more than 1,100 certifications since 2021. Further plans include providing potential recovery-to-work efforts to help recovering drug addicts, people with chronic health issues or facing legal challenges and adult education classes would be open to residents within the four-county region to help them find new opportunities in the workforce. It has also partnered with the Mahoning County Pathways HUB to hire community health workers, or CHW's, who use evidence-based strategies to obtain health services for students and their families. The Connecting Communities through Workforce Training project is a transformational change that will reduce regional poverty and improve the regional standard of living.
For information, contact 330-932-9997 or go online to www.uticashaleschool.com.