Serena Cho photo
Career Pathways grads show off pipes from their plumbing project.
The city has landed a $125,000 state grant that will keep the doors open for the sixth year running for an after-school vocational training program designed specifically for at-risk youth.
At Tuesday night’s bimonthly full Board of Alders meeting in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall, the alders voted unanimously in support of a resolution authorizing the city to accept the $125,000 grant from the Connecticut Department of Education.
That grant will fund the current semester of the Career Pathways after-school program at the Eli Whitney Technical High School on Whitney Avenue just over the New Haven border in Hamden.
Sherry Haller, the executive director of the West Hartford-based Justice Education Center, which runs the after-school program, told the Independent by phone Tuesday afternoon that the state grant will pay for over 100 hours of classroom and hands-on training in fields such as plumbing, carpentry, culinary arts, and manufacturing for up to 45 New Haven high school students.
Thoams Breen Photo
Tuesday night’s Board of Alders meeting.
The after-school program, which was founded six years ago as an outgrowth of the city’s YouthStat program, is open to 16 to 24-year-old New Haven youth and young adults who attend any of the city’s traditional or alternative public high schools, including adult education. Haller said the target population are students who are “over-age and under-credited” and who are uniquely vulnerable to dropping out of school or being impacted by the criminal justice system.
Attendees can earn credit towards high school graduation as well as certifications in OSHA 10, First Aid/CPR, and Serv-Save Allergen.
“It’s such a realistic opportunity for kids,” Haller said about the value of providing practical, skilled trade education for young people in New Haven. “It’s not a pie-in-the-sky opportunity.”
Click here and here to read about past graduation ceremonies for the Career Pathways after-school program. Click here to read about some of the other after-school and in-school Career Pathways programs that the Justice Education Center runs in New Haven.
