Clarion County Career Center Practical Nursing Taking a One Year Break: No Decisions Made about Future of Program

Ron Wilshire

Ron Wilshire

Published August 19, 2019 4:35 am
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Practical NursingSHIPPENVILLE, Pa. (EYT) — The Practical Nursing Program at the Clarion Career Center is not accepting any student enrollments for the 2019-2020 school year.

The Joint Operating Committee, comprised of two representatives from each of the seven school districts in Clarion County, has not made any decision about the future of the program.

“There are a few reasons why it will not be offered this year,” Doug Mays, Interim Director of the Career Center, explained to exploreClarion.com.

“In June, the director of the program resigned, and it left a sort of a void at that time. Accompanying that is we are due for accreditation of the program, and at this point in time, we weren’t quite ready for that. 

“The other issue is they were on a provisional license here. Graduation rates the last three years had not met the state requirements of an 80 percent pass rate for first-time testers on the state boards that all of the graduates take.

“If you’re a graduate when you’re a first-time tester, the state says 80 percent of those students have to pass in the first year after graduation.  They had not successfully done that for three years. Last year the state did grant a provisional license to operate this year.”

The program is designed to train students to be a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN), providing they pass state board exams. The Practical Nursing Program is fully accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN) and is provisionally approved by the Pennsylvania State Board of Nursing.

“There are two parts of the program, a full-time program that takes roughly a year, and they started in August last year and graduating in August this year,” Mays said. “There’s a part-time program that runs for two years, and the second year of that program is finishing up in October.

“We were not sure we were going to be able to get our accreditation, and with the provisional license hanging over the program, and in June we did not have a lot of numbers in enrollment. Taking all of those three factors together, the JOC decided to sort of hold up for a year, and they could take time to reevaluate the direction of the program.”

There are now 14 students in the full-time program and 16 students in the part-time program.

Practical nursing is funded through a couple of areas, according to Mays.

Students receive Perkins grant funding through the federal government, and the students pay tuition, and many of them do qualify for financial aid through PHEA.

Program options for consideration

“There are a couple of things the board could look at,” said Mays. “We would have to get the program accredited, but we would also have to meet the state requirement for graduates to lift that provisional license to operate.

“They could look at bringing in a director to try to accomplish the necessary changes, but they just won’t have a class here at that time, or they could look to satellite the program by another school that has the accreditation, or they could close the program. None of those decisions have been made.

“I think everybody here — the board and administration — realizes there is a need in the local area for such a program, and I think they’re going to work hard to see that a program can continue to exist here, but how that will look has not been determined yet.”

The final results of last year’s graduates do not come out until October.

If the board would decide to reopen the school and they hire someone to come in and put an accreditation together, it could appeal to the state through an action plan and plead its case, or the state could grant another provisional license, according to Mays.

“The state could say ‘No,’” said Mays.  “If we were to start a program this year and we were not granted accreditation or if we did not get the provisional license renewed, we would have to take every student that was currently enrolled, and we would have to find them a new program to go into. I can’t guarantee that we would be able to do that.  For all people interested in this coming year, it was easier to direct them to other programs. They’re starting somewhere clean, and they know they’re going to get through the year.”

Mays said there is a handful of programs locally, but none in Clarion County.

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