Excitement is growing about the proposed regional high school and worker training center in Syracuse now that Governor Cuomo has included it as one of his state of the state priorities. He gave his address Wednesday afternoon.
The STEAM school (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) and SUNY Empire State College apprenticeship program would be housed in the long-vacant former Central High School building on South Warren Street. County Executive Ryan McMahon says it’s essentially a shared service.
"Instead of all these suburban districts trying to compete for state dollars to build out their own STEM curriculum and their own physical space in many cases, they will have the opportunity to send their students to a county-wide STEAM school in our downtown, which will have the best curriculum and many partners in higher education."
Senator Rachel May spearheaded the project and repeatedly lobbied the governor’s office to get his support. She says he noticed the collaboration.
"How many times have you seen the city and the county and all the school districts actually all rowing in the same direction. It's really a great sign for the future of our community."
She’s hopeful it will satisfy two essential needs for the area’s economy.
"Everywhere I go, I hear from employers who are desperate for skilled workers. This is a great opportunity to train people right in the city for those jobs so that it hits populations that have been frozen out of the job growth."
May says it's a chance to break some of the racial segregation that has held the area back by having kids from the city and suburbs studying together and seeing themselves as one community.
Both May and McMahon also say it’s an opportunity to reduce poverty by increasing participation in the workforce. McMahon says the school and training center are critical to maintaining the area’s economic momentum and investment. He knows some big local companies are certainly interested.
"This is really a workforce laboratory that our employers are demanding that we have here in the county. When you look at some of the economic clusters that we're exploding in, whether it's unmanned air systems (UAS), the defense and aerospace industries with Lockheed Martin, SRC, and Saab Sensis, when we're competing for investment from these companies, we need to show them first that we have the workforce here or that we can attract the talent to move here."
Mayor Ben Walsh praised Cuomo's commitment to the STEAM school as part of the Syracuse Surge initiative to revialize the neighborhoods just south of downtown. In a statement, Walsh calls the governor's support "a monumental step forward for the Syracuse Surge. It'll be the centerpiece of the Southside Campus for the New Economy in Syracuse and a key part of our streategy to prepare people for the tech job demand already growing in Syracuse."
Onondaga County would need to front the $72 million needed to renovate the school, which McMahon says lawmakers could take up next month. The state would reimburse the county if the funding was approved as part of the state budget.
