Amanda Gulley goes over patient care with her students who are in the Certified Nursing Assistant program at Prosser. News and Tribune file
NEW ALBANY — Prosser Career Education Center is seeking expansion to accommodate demand for its programs.
Prosser officials presented a proposal for facility updates and additions at Monday’s New Albany-Floyd County Schools board work session.
The proposal calls for construction projects in three phases to allow for the expansion of programming in areas such as health, electrical and construction at the New Albany school.
No action was taken on Monday, but the projects will be considered at future board meetings.
Kyle Lanoue, director of career and technical education programs at Prosser, said “more and more students” want to attend Prosser, describing it as the “envy of the state.”
He said the changes will allow the school to “adapt to the needs.”
“This is about that adaptation,” he said. “It’s coming out of COVID. It’s coming into the new generation and the new graduation pathways, and this sets us up for the next however many years.”
Lanoue said the school currently has 28 programs for high school students, and it will add a plumbing and pipe-fitting program next school year.
The first phase of the project would involve a new plumbing and pipe-fitting lab for the new program. It would also include an expanded electrical lab, an expanded manufacturing lab, additional classrooms and a new conference room.
The school would also revamp the design lab and IT labs. The project would total $2.1 million, and the goal is to begin construction in March of 2025 and finish before next school year.
Another part of the first phase would include a $1 million project to build a 12,000-square-foot storage facility at the Prosser campus, which would accommodate auctions, allow for permanent storage and provide space for projects such as Build-a-Bed.
The goal is to complete the project by June of 2025.
The second phase would involve two new construction classrooms, one heavy equipment classroom and one additional classroom for the potential expansion of the landscaping program.
Prosser would add a structure between the heavy equipment facility and the main school to house these additions, Lanoue said.
While the first phase involves standalone projects, he said the second phase would be required to move into the third phase.
This phase would cost $6.5 million, and the goal would be to complete the project by July 2026.
The third phase involves the expansion and improvements of Prosser’s east wing, including the addition of classrooms for health careers.
“So phase three would be removing construction trades, removing heavy equipment, and then open the door to comprehensively rework those spaces for more extensive labs and more opportunities in health careers,” Lanoue said.
The old construction lab would be remodeled into new medical training labs, and the school would add a multipurpose room and expand sections of the dental program.
The school would also add a classroom to Prosser’s Pre-K facility for 2-year-old children.
The school is currently offering child care for children ages 3 and 4. The third phase would cost $3.1 million, and the goal would be to complete construction in August 2026.
Health careers are “by far the largest needed workforce in Southern Indiana” to meet the needs of the aging population, Lanoue said.
Needs include certified nursing assistants, certified clinical medical assistants and pharmacy technicians.
School officials will work with business partners who could potentially assist with funding the projects, according to Lanoue. The additions would help the school accommodate programs that do not have enough capacity to meet the demands of students who want to attend.
Prosser serves students in Floyd, Clark, Crawford, Harrison, Scott and Washington counties.
Lanoue said of the 6,300 juniors and seniors who attend the sending high schools in the six-county area, Prosser serves about 23%.
“On average, we turn away between 200 to 300 students a year, meaning they want to come to Prosser, and we don’t have a seat available to them,” he said.
Prosser Principal Nancy Campbell said the programs are competitive to get into, and she feels “uneasy” when more than 200 kids cannot study the elective of their choice due to Prosser not being able to meet the high demand.
“So that’s where the challenge is — to meet those demands and those needs of those students and to ensure that we’re offering a seat at the table,” she said.
Indiana’s new graduation requirement s emphasize work-based learning, a change that Lanoue believes “sets us up really well” at Prosser.
“The new graduation requirements put us in the driver’s seat, so to speak, and Prosser was already primed for growth,” he said. “It’s been growing. The graduation requirements, we think, will set us up even nicer.”
Lanoue said Prosser is also looking into the need for aviation maintenance programming, noting the demand in the Louisville area with the UPS Worldport and Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.
“It’s something that we desperately need to find a way to work into our programming,” he said.
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