By Lane A. Glenn, Maureen Lynch and John LaVoie
NOTE: A version of this article originally appeared in the April 5, 2026 edition of CommonWealth Beacon and the April 4, 2026 edition of the Eagle Tribune.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking
we used when we created them.”
–Albert Einstein
Massachusetts should be rightly proud of being named the nation’s top state for public education, healthcare affordability and access, innovation, overall economy, and, to top it all off, the best state to live in.
However, we are facing some daunting threats to our preeminent position, especially in the areas of education, innovation and the workforce that drives our thriving economy.
Persistent shortages of skilled trades workers are an increasing drag on housing and manufacturing production, while a recent brief from MassINC, “Sizing Up Massachusetts’ Looming Skilled Worker Shortage,” reveals that the state is on track to be nearly 200,000 college-educated workers short by 2030.
Not everyone should have to attend college to earn a living in a meaningful career field, but in our innovative Massachusetts knowledge economy, getting even more competitive in the age of AI, nearly all good-paying jobs today require at least some kind of education and training, like an apprenticeship, certificate, or associate degree, beyond high school.
The state has taken some steps meant to improve access to high school Career and Technical Education (CTE), like updating facilities and equipment through additional Skills Capital Grants, and expanding Innovation Career Pathways in high-demand fields.
And recent investments in MassReconnect and MassEducate, which offer students free tuition at the state’s fifteen community colleges, are driving significant enrollment increases, which will help address the shortage, but unlike most of the rest of the country, Massachusetts does not provide funding for vocational training at community colleges.
Instead, the state’s 36 CTE high schools have developed an outstanding reputation for preparing young graduates and adult learners getting retrained to go right into the workforce or to continue their education on a college campus.
But with all their success, and despite the state’s recent efforts, they are facing considerable challenges:
- Massachusetts CTE high schools serve around 36,000 students annually, but because of space limitations, around 40% of applicants each year—6,000 students—are denied seats and placed on waitlists. As a result, the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education recently voted to require oversubscribed CTE programs to implement a lottery system.
- Many CTE high schools were constructed during the 1960’s and 1970’s. They are now more than half a century old and in need of significant renovation or, increasingly, complete replacement.
- Because of specialized laboratory space for highly technical programs like HVAC, metal fabrication, automotive technology, and advanced manufacturing that require features like reinforced floors, high ceilings, and specialized equipment, the cost of constructing vocational high schools is significantly higher than standard classroom buildings (and only increasing with inflation and additional tariffs on imported materials).
- While the state provides some funding for new vocational school construction through the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), those dollars only go so far, and district member communities must come up with the rest—typically about half the project cost. That’s a big ask, particularly for smaller cities and towns already struggling to pay for rising healthcare costs and aging infrastructure with property tax caps and limited state aid.
A few examples of recently proposed CTE high school construction projects illustrate these challenging trends:
- The new Waltham High School opened its doors in 2024, becoming the most expensive public school ever built in the state. Its $374 million price tag was originally approved in 2019.
- Five years later, voters in ten out of eleven Whittier Technical Regional High School District communities rejected a $445 million new school project, citing insufficient state reimbursement and an unmanageable cost to member communities.
- Last year, the Boston Public Schools District announced that the cost of either renovating or rebuilding the city’s only CTE high school, Madison Park, would top $700 million—the most expensive capital project in Boston’s history.
If nothing changes, then nothing changes, and one day soon, likely within the next three years, the proposed cost of building a new CTE high school in Massachusetts will top a billion dollars, no community will be able to afford it, and access to the state’s desperately needed CTE programs will become even more challenging.
It is time for a new vision for career and technical education in Massachusetts, one that:
- Combines the best features of career and technical education high schools with the best features of community colleges.
- Shares land, buildings, staffing, and operational expenses in a way that reduces the cost to the state, local communities and, most importantly, to students and families.
- Is future-forward and creates flexible, responsive systems for developing and offering expanded access to education and training for in-demand, high-skill, high-wage careers.
A potential model for this new vision is emerging in the Merrimack Valley, where Northern Essex Community College is exploring a shared campus with Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School (WT) and a special Early College Health Careers Institute with Greater Lawrence Technical School (GLTS).
Soon after voters rejected Whittier’s proposed new construction project, with the encouragement of the Healey-Driscoll administration and support of the schools’ legislative delegation and municipal leaders, we began exploring how we might not only build a new school for Whittier students on NECC’s campus, but go even farther, sharing facilities, expanding access to skilled trades and other CTE programs as well as to Early College classes and degrees, all while reducing costs and better preparing our regional workforce.
We formed a planning group of visionary thinkers to help us reimagine how we prepare a career ready workforce, people like Nancy Hoffman from Jobs for the Future, Bob Schwartz from the Harvard Project on Workforce Development, and Ben Forman from the MassINC Policy Center.
We partnered with the UMass Donahue Institute to engage in community interviews and focus group sessions, conduct an environmental scan, and prepare an initial report and recommendations for how we might create a new shared campus.
And we formed a Municipal Leaders Working Group consisting of mayors, town managers, city councilors and select board members of all eleven member cities and towns of the Whittier Regional Vocational Technical School District, who spent several months developing a new common vision for the project.
What a difference a year makes.
Less than twelve months after the first project failed at the ballot box, municipal leaders came together in unanimous support and the Massachusetts School Building Authority is working with us to conduct a new feasibility study of the shared campus model and its potential to save money while expanding access to CTE education.
Meanwhile, Greater Lawrence Technical School (GLTS), like nearly every CTE high school in the state, has far more applicants than space available in its classrooms, with particularly strong interest in health career fields.
The school had been looking for nearby property to purchase and convert into additional classroom spaces, and was contemplating building an addition onto its current campus, when instead, we pivoted to explore moving 150 students and all of GLTS’ healthcare programs into the state-of-the-art Health and Technology Center on NECC’s Lawrence campus—a move that, if all goes as planned, will free up space for additional enrollment on the high school’s existing campus.
Opportunities like these two collaborations are dependent on many local factors, including available land or classroom space and municipal and school leaders willing to think differently about how to offer valuable career and technical education.
But the current models aren’t working, a new vision is needed, and there is potential for similar collaborations between CTE high schools and community colleges across the Commonwealth.
In the months and years ahead for this project, and for others that might follow, this new vision for career readiness for Massachusetts is going to need support from:
The State:
A new model of collaboration between K-12 schools and college campuses requires flexibility in how we approach planning processes with state agencies like the Mass School Building Authority and the Department of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance; how we designate and design Early College programs with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Department of Higher Education; and how we fund CTE through the legislature.
It also requires support for creative funding initiatives like the $2.5 billion Fair Share Amendment funded BRIGHT Act, which can allow enterprising collaborations like ours to combine K-12 and higher education funding sources and make all those dollars go even farther.
Communities:
We know municipal leaders have to be focused on the bottom line, especially at a time when city and town budgets are stretched more than ever. If everyone else is doing their part toward this collaborative vision, your costs are going to go down. Beyond that, we need you to know and be clear about how we can best help prepare your community’s workforce next year, five years, and ten years from now. It is why we exist.
Employers:
Employers are at the heart of the state’s Reimagining High School initiative and central to community colleges’ efforts to expand career and technical education. We need you on our CTE advisory boards to guide new curriculum development; we need you to provide work-based learning opportunities for our students through apprenticeships and cooperative education experiences, and to hire them when they graduate. Engage with us and help shape this for your needs.
Philanthropy:
Visionary philanthropy often leads the way where more traditional, establishment sources may fear to tread. The Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation, for example, has helped fuel the state’s expansion of Early College Programs for the past several years, and more recently has led the way toward developing apprenticeship degrees at a number of colleges. We need similar organizations to fund us, yes, and to be a part of our work. Help inform what we are doing with research and connections to best practice leaders.
Massachusetts stands near the top of some impressive lists of “bests,” and we should be rightly proud of our Commonwealth.
But times are changing, and to remain competitive, our education and workforce systems need a new vision for career and technical education that combines the best of what our CTE high schools and community colleges have to offer.
Dr. Lane A. Glenn is the President of Northern Essex Community College, Maureen Lynch is the Superintendent of Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School, and John LaVoie is Superintendent of Greater Lawrence Technical School.
