A Southern Kentucky school district, announcing a big expansion in its Career and technical education department.

Bowling Green Independent Schools hosted a ribbon cutting this morning for a new building for those programs.

It's funded by more than $8 million allocated from the Better Kentucky Plan.

The Kentucky General Assembly signed off on it in 2022.

The school district is matching 10% of the grant for the construction.

The building will house three programs with space for a child care center, technology department, and industrial maintenance.

These facilities, these opportunities are going to make a generational difference.

They're going to make a difference for the students that are in these programs.

They're going to make a difference in potentially on their heritage, and they're certainly going to make a difference on the next generation, the children, those students that are going through these programs today as they can and truly marketable skills to put them in high demand positions in the workforce.

The average wage for incentivized jobs.

We've announced each of the last three years is $26 an hour, and you can earn that without a college degree.

And so if you're not going to go to college or you're not ready for college right now, there's a good job out there and we shouldn't lose one graduating senior from a high school right now.

We can get them in a good job.

We can get them in a good, solid position.

I mean, this is a chance to change so much that we've seen around our commonwealth.

With $26 an hour, we can really impact generational poverty just by making sure that all of these students have a pathway and we don't have to pick it for them.

We just have to empower them to be successful in that pathway.

The school district says its partnerships with local industries and employers are a major asset, as they hire many of their graduates.

Interest has grown from just a handful of students to 80, and the program instructors say offering these courses have also solved some behavioral issues.

It changes them because a lot of time, if you ask them how many write ups I have or a big problem, most of those they change when they get down there.

They're not stuck in a classroom where they've got to sit down, look ahead.

Right.

You can't do this.

And with this class, they get to get up and they start making those decisions.

We do a lot of problem solving and it allows them to get up and this becomes their program.

Today's event also included the announcement of a new pathway.

Bowling Green Schools will partner with Sky CTC to offer an Hvac program starting in August.