This article is part of a series looking at key warrant articles leading up to the Town Meeting on May 6.
At Town Meeting on May 6, voters will decide an appropriation to Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School for fiscal year 2025 of $468,057, down about $700 from last year. Twenty-five Marblehead students attend Essex Tech currently. Ten will graduate this spring. Another 30 have applied for next year and will learn before April vacation if they’ve been admitted.
“We are the vocational school for the town of Marblehead,” said Mark Strout, Essex Tech’s representative for Marblehead, who is also the chair of the School Committee there. “Every family can either send their kid to Marblehead High School, or they can send their kid to their vocational/technical/agricultural school.”
Strout added, “Our mission is to make sure students are prepared for an ever-changing, more collaborative workforce.”
Essex Tech is located in Danvers in 2014 and serves 17 member communities, including Marblehead. The school offers 24 career technical and agricultural programs, including animal sciences, carpentry, engineering and automation technology, automotive collision repair and refinishing, cosmetology, culinary arts and more.
Students spend more than half of their school time learning in their program to prepare for the workforce or post-secondary education related to their program. Students are also enrolled in academic and elective courses.
“It absolutely prepares for them an occupation and/or if they want to go to college,” Strout said.
Students also participate in co-op programs. In Marblehead, Essex Tech students worked recently at Marblehead Animal Hospital and Smile Design and Family Dentistry.
“The best part of Essex Tech is the amount of hands-on work that they do,” said Xhazzie Kindle of Marblehead, whose son, Tristan, is a junior at the school.
For example, students in the veterinary program work in a vet clinic on the school property, she said. Teens in the culinary arts program work in a professional kitchen on campus.
“I like it because I get to focus more on what I’ll be using when I’m out of school,” said Tristan Kindle, who is in the engineering program. “I’m hoping to go into the Coast Guard Academy when I graduate.”
Tristan explained that at Essex Tech, students spend five days on traditional topics (math, science, English, history) and the next five days learning a trade or specialty.
Kindle’s other child, also a junior, attends Marblehead High School.
About the Tech, Kindle says, “It’s not better; it’s just different. But it’s better for some kids. What the Tech could offer (Tristan), it wasn’t better than the high school, but it was better for him.”
Kindle pointed out that anyone in the community (not just students and their families) can take advantage of Essex Tech’s services, including veterinary care, pet grooming, automotive and collision repair, a bistro and more.
Learn more at essexnorthshore.org.
Editor Leigh Blander is an experienced TV, radio and print journalist.
