Next steps include meeting with financial consultants to schedule the sale of bonds for the project and working with the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission to secure key stakeholders. School officials said once they have an architect and team in place, they will design that “CTC of tomorrow” and set a timeline from beginning to end.

Voters approved the bond issue, with 56.5% for the levy and 43.5% against it, according to final, unofficial results from the Clark County Board of Elections. In previous votes, Clark County residents had rejected the plan twice, once by over 10% and once by 7%.

“The students of Clark County deserve a safe and accessible learning environment that helps them be successful in school and after graduation,” Patrick said.

The Career Tech Center has roughly a 60-year-old campus, among the oldest CTC facilities in the state, according to school officials. The seven existing buildings at 1901 Selma Road — just northeast of Clark State’s main campus on Leffel Lane — will be replaced with a single, up-to-date facility that will include additional classroom facilities, equipment and furnishings needed for additional enrollment.

The new facility will be built immediately south of the current administrative building. School officials said it will be far enough away from the existing structures that it won’t interrupt school while it is being built.

The goal is to break ground in the late summer/early fall of 2025, Patrick said, and the project could take about 30 months to complete.

The current campus is a little more than 182,000 square feet, and the new facility will be 29,000 square feet larger. The school currently has 791 students, but had to turn away more than 700 students over a 10-year span from 2013-23 and another 200 students for the 2024-25 year due to the lack of space. Patrick said the goal is to not have to turn away qualified students.

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“If we had this building now, we would not have turned away any student in the past two years. In addition to much larger classroom and lab spaces, this building could provide us with spaces we’ve never had, like a large, multi-use common space and a media-center/fabrication lab,” she said. “Putting a capacity on the number of students based merely on classroom and lab spaces omits the possibility of using these other common spaces more flexibly and fluidly.”

The total project cost of $89.5 million includes three parts — the state OFCC contribution of about $38.7 million, and CTC’s share of about $24.5 million for the base cost plus the additional $26.2 million from the CTC for items they identified as a need that are not state-fundable.

These items include larger classrooms, larger lab spaces, food service space built to accommodate the number of students, accessibility for all, updated equipment, technology and infrastructure, and safety and security considerations.

The 1.4-mill bond and permanent improvement levy had two components — a 0.94-mill bond issuance with a 37-year duration, and a permanent tax levy at 0.46 mills for “permanent improvements” or facility upkeep.

The taxes will generate an estimated total of $4.5 million annually to pay off the long-term bonds, according to the Clark County Auditor’s Office. The cost to a homeowner will be about $49 annually per $100,000 of property value.

To work on addressing the demand for certain career programs, school leaders meet regularly with stakeholder teams to analyze current performance and look toward what’s coming to the area labor market, Patrick said, which helps them forecast and plan for future programming. Advisory committees help them keep a “pulse” on local businesses and industry needs.

“Given that we are planning a facility today for the workforce of tomorrow, we will be forming focus groups to help plan space and equipment for additional programming needed based on labor market demand,” she said.

Leaders have also talked with other CTCs and visited them to learn from their building and facilities projects, learning that “student, staff and community input is integral to this project.” Greene County built a new CTC school that opened in 2020, and the Miami Valley CTC near Dayton just did a massive renovation and expansion.

Patrick said staff visited sites and explored spaces related to what they teach and do at CTC, and brought back their dreams and wish lists.

“We sat down with our pre-bond architect to look at all of the possibilities and then, in teams of teachers and support staff, we created a bank of desired outcomes. While this was pre-bond and we will have to revisit this, we believe front-loading this work could be helpful now that we know we’ll have the ability to return to the conversations,” she said.

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To decide what programs to add or expand on in the new facility, Patrick said they’ve been using the region’s labor market shortage data and projections to “dream about the possibilities” for the new building. They include:

For more information on the project, visit www.scctc.org/facility-project.

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What the CTC currently teaches

The Springfield-Clark Career Technology Center currently has 791 students in 27 CTC programs. Here is the breakdown:

Automotive total (70) — auto body collision repair (30), automotive tech and motorcycle maintenance (24), automotive services (16)

Health occupations (52)

Carpentry (46)

Cosmetology (45)

Welding and fabrication (44)

Culinary arts (43)

Veterinary science (43)

Electrical trades (39)

Education exploration (38)

Engineering and architectural design (35)

Forestry and park management (34)

Heating and air technology (34)

Dental assisting (33)

Applied engineering and manufacturing (32)

Computer graphic arts (29)

Digital media design (26)

Cybersecurity (25)

Criminal justice (22)

Jaguar Academy (22)

Medical assisting (19)

Software programming technologies (16)

Emergency medical technician (14)

Job training (12)

Nurse assisting (10)

Project search (8)