New leader, focus energize institute

WTI's new director starts by asking the business community to lend a helping hand.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 30, 2000

INVERNESS -- On the job barely a week and Steven Hand was already trying something new.

The new director of the Withlacoochee Technical Institute invited Dave Hutchins, owner of Bay Area Air Conditioning, to participate in the interview of a candidate to teach the school's new air conditioning program.

The move made sense to Hand. He wanted to get the people who knew the air conditioning business to help him identify the person who could best prepare future workers in the industry.

That kind of hands-on involvement between the business community and the institute is going to be key as Hand begins to shape the future of the beleaguered school.

WTI has been mired in controversy and criticism right up through Superintendent Pete Kelly's decision to remove 15-year director Steve Kinard from the job at the end of June.

Kinard still works at WTI. Before he stepped down from the director's job, he recommended himself for the job of school recruiter. He even applied for the open assistant director job at the school, but last week withdrew his name from consideration.

Twice over the past several years, the Citrus Times has investigated activities at the school and found policy and rule violations.

Those findings were upheld by district inquiries and after the second set of violations, Kelly suspended Kinard for 20 days without pay.

Kinard had also bucked Kelly on several projects in recent months. When Kelly wanted to move the Renaissance Center to permanent quarters at WTI, Kinard opposed the move publicly prompting strong opposition from staff and students at the school. The plan ultimately failed.

He was also opposed to Kelly's pet project of turning the school into a charter technical center and spoke out against the idea before the School Board. The board finally rejected the concept.

Into that turbulent history stepped Hand, who came to the job with a career's worth of experience in technical centers and adult education programs around the state. Hand said he's aware of the troubles at WTI, but declined to talk about the specifics of the instances.

Instead, Hand is looking at a new slate and is working to get the WTI staff to focus on what's ahead rather than dwelling on problems the school has had in the past.

Hand, 55, has worked for the Lake County School District since 1995, serving as campus administrator for the AP Lee Adult Education Center and countywide extension adult education programs. Before that, he spent three years as director of the Lake County Area Vocational-Technical Center. Prior to that, he was director of the St. Augustine Technical Center.

"My life's work has been in the area of vocational and technical centers," he said. That was why the WTI job looked so intriguing to him -- a new challenge doing what he enjoys best.

Hand's resume also includes a variety of other education-related activities including work on a statewide community college and Department of Education committee to develop coordination plans between vocational centers and community colleges. And he has been actively involved in pushing legislative issues concerning technical and vocational education, something his new boss, Kelly, has already given him the go-ahead to continue to pursue at WTI.

His staff can expect plenty of energy from their leader if his first days of learning about the school and visiting in the community are any indication.

Within days of his arrival, Hand began to make the rounds of business meetings, visiting Chamber of Commerce luncheons and meeting business leaders and officials from the Economic Development Council and Central Florida Community College. Those people are going to be critical to the success of the school, and Hand said he plans to be visible and involved in the community.

He wants his instructors to get to know the people in the business community, too, and he wants them involved in the professional organizations related to their fields. One change the faculty will face when they return to work is that Hand will give each one a set of guidelines on how to choose and operate with an industry advisory board familiar with each discipline the school teaches, from nursing to law enforcement to culinary arts.

Some, but not all, of the school's disciplines have used those advisory boards before.

"The advisory committees are going to be intimately involved in the operation," he said.

They will help guide instructors in determining what equipment and curriculum are needed to properly teach up-to-date skills. They can assist in preparing a long-term plan for what each program needs and they can provide information about what kinds of training can be provided from private sources.

Once those committees are chosen, Hand plans to get them approved by the School Board so that everyone knows that the school is committed to involving the community businesses, which he hopes will someday employ WTI graduates.

Hand is also eager to be involved in both the work of the EDC, as it tries to locate new business and industry in the area, and the Workforce Development Board, which makes decisions about state job-training funds and programs.

Hand sees the big challenge as getting everyone from students to high school guidance counselors to think of WTI in a different way.

"We have got to deal with the perception problem with a technical education," he said. The majority of the jobs of the future will require specialized, technical training rather than a traditional college education. But at the high schools in Citrus and throughout the nation, he said, the people who help guide students into making decisions about their future are college graduates who encourage students to go to college.

Hand said there is even a place for college-bound students to fit in at the technical center. Why not have them take a few technical courses as electives and, when the time comes to work their way through college, they can work at a job that pays twice the minimum wage and more, he said.

The other students who are bound for the technical school must also come prepared. "A student can't make it in auto mechanics or electronics with a fourth- or fifth-grade reading level," Hand said. "We have to change the perception at the high school level."

Getting that message out will require lots of one-on-one discussions with high school principals, teachers and anyone else who might guide students toward the best educational options.

Hand has another major goal. He wants to push in Citrus the completion of coordinated programs between WTI and Central Florida Community College. That work began here several years ago but stalled. Hand has worked with such articulated programs in other places where he has worked.

The coordination comes in when the community college provides the academic training for various disciplines and WTI provides the technical training. By this time next year, Hand said he has high hopes.

"We ought to be articulating programs between WTI and CFCC so that students aren't seeing a difference" between the two institutions, he said.

Hand said he does not feel territorial about his school's role in connection to a partnership with CFCC. Working together just makes good sense.

"The students are winners, the community college is a winner and our institution is a winner," Hand said. "And it's certainly a much wiser spending of taxpayers' funds."

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