ROANOKE (WSLS 10) -  The Roanoke Valley could be home to a new Governor's School. The Virginia General Assembly approved $100,000 to begin the study. Delegate Chris Head has been working with Virginia Western who could be the hub for the school. He says making it a Governor's School enables it to be prestigious.
"The problem we run into with career and technical training in general is the stigma that goes along with it. When I was in high school, shop class was what you got class sent to you if you got caught smoking and that sort of is the perception still," said Head who added Fall 2018 is the earliest something could happen. "What were really trying to do is break a mindset."
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By partnering with Virginia Western, students could graduate from high school with an Associates Degree along with the skills and certifications to get a job out of high school. It's in the planning stages. They will look at housing a school at the Community College or sending students to specific school districts based on what is already in place. Head says with Virginia Western's Mechatronics program, advanced welding classes in Botetourt County and the auto mechanics classes in Roanoke County there are already some programs in place.
"All of our localities have invested very heavily and very successfully in their career and technical programs and we ought to be able to take that and rather than trying to compete with it, we need to leverage that," said Head. "We need to do everything we can economically to compete. We've had some great announcements recently economically but that comes on the heels of several years of more jobs leaving then were coming in. If we're going to stay competitive and continue to attract new business we've got to have a workforce to be able to do that."
Virginia Western President Dr. Robert Sandel is meeting with school districts to find out who would be interested in a pilot program. The community college would not build immediately, instead the new CTE school would be based in an existing building. There is a new STEM building groundbreaking in the fall.