Ryan Schoch’s father is a mechanic. His grandfather was a mechanic and his great-grandfather was a mechanic. His godfather is a mechanic, too.

He has always pictured himself joining them.

As Schoch completes his second year of automotive technology at the Concord Regional Technical Center (CRTC), he is wrapping up an internship at Banks Autos, where three generations of Schochs before him have worked. If he gets a job there, they’d sponsor his continuing automotive studies through Lakes Region Community College, he said.

Schoch, of Hopkinton Middle High School, is one of 732 students taking classes at CRTC and among the 11,000 or so enrolled in career and technical education programs at 26 regional centers around New Hampshire.

The Hopkinton School District, though, is weighing whether it can afford to pay for every student like Schoch who wants to pursue trade programs.

Last year, the state paid for 42% of career and technical education tuition, according to data from multiple school districts. It’s legally supposed to cover 75% of the cost, per state law.

This squeeze on local districts comes as career and technical education is lauded across New Hampshire as a key to battling workforce shortages and continuing the state’s economic development. In the capital region, CRTC students gain experience in nursing homes, fire and police departments, restaurants and school classrooms. Even as other education issues are among the most divisive in state politics, career and technical education maintains strong bipartisan support.

Despite verbal support for expanding access to these programs, Governor Kelly Ayotte’s proposed budget would flat-fund the amount of money paying for students to attend them. The proposal by Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut was the same.

As a result, state spending per student on career and technical education tuition has declined in the last decade, a Monitor analysis found. The state fund for districts stays the same even as local costs rise each year to provide that training and to bus kids to regional schools, leaving less to go around. 

At the local level, any costs not covered by the state must be paid by the sending districts. For example, on top of its initial tuition bill for the 30 students it sent to CRTC last year, Hopkinton got hit with an unbudgeted expense this winter – an $80,000 bill to make up for the 2024 state shortfall.

“We live and die by single thousands of dollars,” Hopkinton School Board Chair Dulcie Lipoma said in an interview. “We would like to be able to send more students than we can, but we have a limit of what we’re able to afford as a result of this.”

The automotive program is among CRTC’s most in demand. Schoch not only had to earn a spot within the auto program, he was up against his classmates for a limited number of seats on the bus to Concord every day.

If he weren’t at CRTC, Schoch said over the din inside the school’s eight-bay garage, he didn’t know if he would have been able to pursue his goals.

“I don’t think I would have gone this way if I hadn’t gotten into this,” he said. “I honestly have no idea.”

Less per student every year

New Hampshire high school students interested in careers such as construction, culinary arts, cosmetology, criminal justice and computer engineering can begin their pursuit by enrolling at the tech center in their region, usually in the largest town or city. That host district funds the staff, equipment and other operating costs, and in turn charges the sending districts a tuition rate. Home districts do not get additional state support to send their own students to these programs.

Tuition is based on the cost-per-student of the receiving high school — which in Concord is slightly below the state average. CRTC’s per student tuition was just over $8,100 for the 2023-2024 school year, according to Concord School District data.

If it met the 75% payment laid out in New Hampshire law, the state would have paid nearly $6,100 per student. Yet it only provided about $3,400.

The rest, more than a $1.2 million balance, was billed back to the taxpayers of CRTC’s nine sending districts, which cover 30 towns.

Funding to cover tuition is shared from a state budget line item that also reimburses sending districts for some of what it costs to transport students to career and tech centers. Transportation is paid for first, and as those costs escalate, it leaves less in the fund each year for tuition.

The state does not have a history of meeting its full 75% obligation. Hopkinton, for example, sets aside money in its budget in anticipation of the shortfall. But 2024 was the largest in a decade. The money Hopkinton set aside will only cover a fraction of what they now owe.

As costs to provide career and technical education rise, the state has paid less per student every year since 2020, and the per-student state payment was lower in 2024 than it was nearly a decade ago in 2015, according to the Monitor analysis.

‘Building the workforceof tomorrow’

With the cost of four-year college rising exponentially, state leaders on both sides of the aisle are increasingly advocating for opening doors to careers in the trades and alternative secondary education options like community college and work-study certifications.

In her budget address, Ayotte said that her proposal would fund “expansions for career and technical education.”

She went further this week.

“Career and technical education plays a pivotal role in building the workforce of tomorrow in our state,” the governor said in a press release. “I was proud to announce new investments in our community colleges, workforce credentialing programs, and career and technical education in my proposed budget last week. From the trades to health care, New Hampshire will continue to lead the way in creating good-paying careers for our students and developing a talent pipeline for our businesses.”

Ayotte declined to participate in an interview for this story, providing a written statement that echoed her earlier comments.

Her staff added in an email response that the proposed budget boosts overall and per-student public education spending; includes money for capital projects at career and technical schools; and increases student adequacy aid.

“School districts are free to use this increased adequacy funding on CTE programs if they choose to do so,” spokesperson Caroline Hakes wrote.

The state allocated $9 million for transportation and tuition reimbursement of career and technical programs each year of the current budget. Ayotte has proposed holding that figure steady. The result, as tuition and transportation costs both rise, will be a continued decline in the state’s per-student career and technical education support, costs that will be downshifted to local districts.

Amid debates about educational freedom, public career and technical education remains popular with students who are opting out of other forms of public school.

Students who are home-schooled or who attend charter or private schools can and do still attend regional tech centers, with their tuition paid for by the school district where they live. Currently, 39 such students attend CRTC — five years ago, there were none.

Career and programs have also been cheered by Edelblut, who has been a driving force behind the state’s increased support for alternatives to public school.

‘I love it so much’

Career and technical education has also grown in popularity among students.

Despite falling high school populations, the enrollment at career and tech centers statewide has grown by around 1,500 in the last five years. More than a quarter of all eleventh and twelvth-grade students in the capital region are enrolled at CRTC this year, per Concord district data.

When Jocelyn Ives found out she was accepted to CRTC’s construction trades program, she went first to her dad so they could celebrate together.

“My dad’s my biggest idol,” the Bow student said. “He’s a really hard-working man, so I always wanted to do what he was going to do.”

Because of the competitive process to get into the construction trades program — demand is high — Ives worried she wouldn’t get a spot. If that had happened, she said, she would have put together an ELO — extended learning opportunity — to work alongside her dad at Bow Plumbing and Heating.

That was an option, she said. But it wouldn’t have been the same.

“I’ve learned so much here — seriously,” Ives said. “The opportunities are crazy, and I love it so much.”

‘Forced to makehard choices’

Despite the popularity of these programs with students and politicians alike, CRTC Principal Anne Fowler is predicting a 5% drop in enrollment next year, she told the Concord School Board in a recent budget workshop. It’s not for a lack of interest.

Fowler visits sending schools to recruit every winter ahead of February applications. This year, the recent bills principals received from Concord to cover the state tuition shortfall were a topic of conversation.

“They’re concerned,” Fowler said of her peers in other districts. “They’re feeling the stress about the volume of students that are being sent to CRTC.”

The state Department of Education has previously noted disparities in access to career and technical education. A 2021 study noted that only 29% of students at career and technical education centers were from outside the home district.

To address that, some surrounding districts have made a concerted effort in recent years to send more students to CRTC. In 2022, John Stark nearly doubled its enrollment from 41 to 71 kids. Now, that could change.

“The only way to cut it is to send less kids,” John Stark High School Principal Gary Dempsey said of the cost in a January school board meeting. “The only way to reduce it, really, is to reduce the numbers.”

Merrimack Valley has more students at CRTC, roughly 100, than any other sending district. Last year, the state shortfall meant an added $254,000 in tuition it had to cover. Like Hopkinton, finding that amount of money in its existing budget will be a challenge. Like its peers in Weare, Henniker and Hopkinton, Merrimack Valley is weighing how many students it can afford to send.

“Merrimack Valley has always had an open policy as far as sending students who qualify to CRTC,” Superintendent Randy Wormald said in an email Thursday. “It would be a travesty if student numbers were capped, but as budgets become more and more difficult to navigate, the district may be forced to make hard choices.”

As districts draft budgets, and prepare to face town meeting voters, they’re trying to find ways to scale back costs. They’re wondering, for example, if they should send one bus of students to CRTC instead of two, Fowler said.

“Nobody wants to say we can only send one bus. It’s about helping kids, and everybody wants to help these kids have access,” Fowler said. “We’re all in this together.”

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com. You can subscribe to her Concord newsletter The City Beat at concordmonitor.com.