Roanoke City Public Schools new technical education facility won’t debut later this year as planned, but there will be no delay to the start of programs being offered there.
The Roanoke Technical Education Center, which will be located at the former William Ruffner Middle School, was projected to open in August. However, supply chain issues, inflation and labor shortages will delay the renovated building’s opening until the first of next year, school officials said this week.
Untill then, programs and classes planned for the new space will be split among three locations: nearby William Fleming High School, Lucy Addison Middle School and the current technical education center at Patrick Henry High School.
According to Chris Perkins, city schools’ chief operating officer, Addison already has capacity for technical education courses. Additionally, the building’s layout will allows high school students to be present without disrupting middle school students.
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“A lot of people might worry that the high schoolers are going back to middle school,” Perkins said. “That won’t be the case. It will be a completely separate wing.”
Instructors for the new technical education space are also already hired, and will be teaching in August. According to Kathy Duncan, technical education director for Roanoke schools, 19 instructors have been hired since the new school was announced, with 10 fully certified and nine provisionally certified.
“When you think of where we were this time last year, in terms of staffing, we’ve come a long way,” Duncan said.
School officials also disclosed new schedules for renovating and occupying other buildings, which have been affected by the new technical education facility’s delay.
“Our priority is to complete the new ROTEC as soon as possible,” the school division said in a news release. That priority will push the projected opening of the division’s new administrative offices in the former Roanoke Times building on Campbell Avenue until the beginning of the 2024-25 school year.
Also, the school division plans to renovate its current administrative building on Douglass Avenue into what it calls the Center for Community Empowerment and Education and open that facility by mid-2025.
Offered there, according to the school division, will be resources for students and families who have a home language other than English, adult education and a “university” for parent and guardians.
