Roanoke County Public Schools and Carilion Clinic have announced the next step in their long-standing partnership to promote regional workforce development. Carilion Clinic will be investing $1.25 million over the next five years into the Campaign for Excellence, a capital campaign aimed at supporting local graduates pursuing careers in high-demand industries.
The first $80 million of these funds has been spent on the construction of a 123,000 square foot state-of-the-art instructional space dubbed the Roanoke County Career and Technology Center – RCCTC for short. Construction began in September of 2024, and officials say the center is set to open in early 2027.
Jason Suhr, Director of Career and Technical Education for Roanoke County Public Schools, says the new center will replace the Burton Center for Arts and Technology, “The career and technical education programming at Burton Center is all moving to the new center. In addition, we’ll be adding a minimum of three, if not five or six more programs for our students.”
Suhr says that CTE centers, like the Burton Center, and the upcoming RCCTC, are crucial for showing students – especially those who don’t already know what they want to do – what their options are, “[We’re] Making sure that our students know that these opportunities exist, and getting them as efficiently to their future career as possible. And when I say as efficiently as possible, you know, we’re talking money and time.”
He adds that Roanoke County students will not be the only ones benefiting from this new center. Eventually, he says the RCCTC will add evening courses for adult workforce development training.
LISTEN TO THIS STORY BELOW:
The post RCPS and Carilion Clinic announce new multi-million dollar CTE center set to replace The Burton Center first appeared on News/Talk 960-AM & FM-107.3 WFIR.
