ALPENA — Alcona Community Schools is in the process of partnering with Alpena Public Schools and the Career and Technical Education program for next school year.

During last week’s Alcona Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Dan O’Connor spoke to the board about the possibility of a partnership with the CTE program at Alpena High School.

“We’re going to be able to send students to be able to participate as part of a collaborative agreement with them,” O’Connor said. “That’s going to be an amazing thing for our students and I think really add another layer to our partnership between schools, which in rural Michigan is the way it has to be.”

O’Connor said Alcona students joining the CTE program will open up dynamic experiences for them that they weren’t be able to do at Alcona Schools.

“We met with Joyce McCoy, who is the director of CTE at Alpena, and we mapped out a time where we want to send students throughout the school day so we have that in place,” he said. “We’ll now begin to survey students and try to determine where the interest is and what that might look like.”

O’Connor said Alcona has to apply for a waiver to travel to and from Alpena because driving 40 minutes both ways is a lot of time traveling.

“We have to get the travel waiver, which will help soften some of the instruction time that’s lost in the travel, but I would say we’re safe in terms of getting the waiver and be OK on that front,” he said.

Alcona has strong agriscience and industrial arts programs, so students won’t be participating in those programs at Alpena.

“Health occupations, auto technology, or business management are win-wins for us to fill and be able to send students to,” O’Connor said. “We’re very excited about that potential partnership.”

O’Connor said throughout the decades Alcona has had agreements with Alpena to be able to share programs. He said around the state, public schools are not the ones running CTE programs because the programs are usually at an educational service district or an intermediate service district that is centrally located.

“It’s a little odd situation for us at this point to be partnering with a public school but it’s the same concept, so the board was thrilled to hear that it’s a possibility,” O’Connor said. “This will hopefully assist our programs at being filled to a certain level. We’ve all battled declining enrollment to be able to make it work so it should beef up the opportunities and programs that they’re able to offer.”

O’Connor said the school board was in support of students participating in Alpena’s CTE program.

“As a small district, it’s always a little challenging to not funnel kids through maybe one path and now you’ll just have a whole other opportunity of pathways that we’ll be able to work on,” O’Connor said.

Alpena Superintendent John VanWagoner said APS believed it was the right thing to do to offer open spots to Alcona students. He said the spots also are open to Hillman Community Schools and Atlanta Community Schools students if those schools decide to participate.

“They would provide the transportation and be able to willing pay a component of the costs but not the full allotment from the state because they do have the transportation costs and those elements,” VanWagoner said. “We would take any available spots that we have and let them know what those numbers are and give their kids the opportunity to fill those spots.”

VanWagoner said he offered all schools in the Alcona-Montmorency-Alpena Educational Service District the opportunity to be a part of the CTE program.

Julie Goldberg can be reached via email at jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5688.