The ability to prepare for this year’s SkillsUSA competition is in question due to a change in learning space and lack of a practical practice environment for the ITP class.

Ronald Suchy, the Information Technology and Programming teacher, thinks his old room above the Mayfield Pre-School was ideal for him and his 28 students, but his new room in the 9-10 Building has several large issues. Suchy said, “Excessive heat, bad environmental climate, no air circulation – it’s caused us a lot of hardware problems. Not a day goes by where I’m not opening up one or two computers to try and do some quick maintenance on them to get them up and running again.”

Suchy said his room reached a record temperature of 85.4 degrees in September.

He has been more than disappointed in this room switch. Suchy said, “Our students here have been disrespected – I really feel that way. Once again the school administration has shown that Excel TECC is an afterthought instead of a meaningful, significant piece of the school district.”

Despite the challenges of excessive heat and cramped unfitting working space, Suchy still has all the confidence in his students with how they’ll perform in their SkillsUSA competition. He said, “We may have a whole bunch of medals this year, which would be great, and we may not, which is also great. Everybody here will have a great learning experience through the proportion, though the journey because that’s the real learning experience, that’s the focus of this. Medals are nice but the experience is what lasts a lifetime.”

Ruz Zabarov, a senior in the ITP program, thinks the biggest problem with the new room is the warm temperature.
He said, “There’s little ventilation, [so] Mr. Suchy put up a lot of fans there, so it’s pretty loud as well. I sit in the front so it doesn’t affect me that much, but people in the back especially, they probably can’t hear anything.”

Due to the room switch, Suchy has students considering dropping out of the program. Suchy said, “My current junior students, when they were recruited to come here, they were recruited on the promise of the idea that we would be moving to the innovation center, to one of the larger rooms in the innovation center next year, that this would just be a one-year thing. And now, that they know that this is where we’re going to be forever.”

Despite the obstacles with the new smaller, warmer, and louder space, Zabarov feels confident about how they’ll compete in the SkillsUSA tournament. He said, “I hope I will do about the same (in SkillsUSA), maybe even better because I got that knowledge from last year and what’s it like, like just general knowledge on how the competition goes, and what to do and stuff like that, but also like the programming, my programming got better from last year”.

Dylan Gamber, a senior in the Fire/EMS Training Academy, has also seen firsthand the downgrade in-room quality for his learning space and how it’s affecting his SkillsUSA preparation. Gamber said, “The old classroom made it easier to participate and prepare for SkillsUSA because of the extra space for labs in which a lot of students split up into the labs or skills in the hallway area. You can’t really separate between the different rooms in the hallway (in the new room)”.

The new room for the Fire/EMS program has presented several issues in the learning process for the students. Gamber said, “The big problem is that there is less space for labs and hands-on activity. The activity is the only space. There is that in the front of the classroom not allowing people to be able to split up and do some groups. Instead, there is only one big discussion at the front of the room.”