Some graduates upset by the end of the fashion design store at GNB Voc-Tech – News – southcoasttoday.com

Superintendent says program had low enrollment

NEW BEDFORD – Ashley Clark seemed destined to enter the fashion industry. She started sewing at the age of eight, watched Project Runway, and wanted to use clothing as a form of self-expression. This brought her to the fashion design workshop of the Greater New Bedford Regional Voc-Tech High School.

“I’m ahead of most of my classmates,” said Clark, a first-year student at Lasell University specializing in fashion design and production with a minor in media and fashion marketing. As she finishes her college courses online, she thinks she would be hard pressed to fall behind without the knowledge acquired at Voc-Tech.

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Clark said she was confident that she could have gone directly to work in the field after graduation, but hopes to start her own business or clothing line and wants to strengthen her portfolio and gain more knowledge and connections.

“It’s such an important program that has changed us and helped us a lot,” said Clark. She learned how to set up a fashion show and production behind the scenes and how to build a garment using different seams and hems. With a peer, she even opened a fashion club at school.

The opportunity she had at Voc-Tech will soon disappear because the school will phase out the fashion design program which, according to Superintendent James O’Brien, is “due to very low enrollment.” In addition to the low sign-up rate at the store, it was difficult to attract student interest and few students followed a cooperative or internship program, he said.

O’Brien said the school, like other districts in the state and across the country, “allocates its resources appropriately to meet student demand. In these difficult times, as the economy changes, new vocational training programs will open while others will close. “

The school has eliminated two professorships: one in fashion design and another in advanced manufacturing; the latter program is not being phased out, but rather streamlined, said O’Brien. The fashion design boutique will not admit juniors in the fall and will end when rising seniors graduate next year. The school is starting a new marine technology program and an aeronautical technology program.

Sue Chouinard, chair of the school’s design advisory council and owner of Dartmouth Tailoring Studio, sent a press release to the Standard-Times that says recent graduates and Save Our Shops activists are asking school administrators to reverse the course of the fashion design boutique.

Press release says store prepares students “for a dynamic and growing field with strong roots in the Southcoast area”, adding that local manufacturers have mobilized to produce personal protective equipment during the pandemic of coronavirus and that Voc-Tech teachers produced a video explaining how people can make masks at home. He also reports that UMass Dartmouth launched a bachelor’s degree in fashion design (which appears to have started welcoming students from Mount Ida in 2018.)

“The fashion design program is not only excellent for preparing students for future scholarships and jobs, but it is a popular program for women and students of color,” said Chouinard in the release. “It would be discriminatory to restrict the offer of the school and, in turn, change the diversity of the composition of the student body of the GNBRVT.”

She continued to argue that the program “has been a viable route for many talented students whose abilities might not otherwise be recognized because they are socially or economically disadvantaged”.

GNB Voc-Tech, like other voc-tech high schools in the state, lacks diversity and the state has asked it and six other schools to increase it.

In response to Chouinard’s comments, O’Brien said, “The 27 professional programs offer all students a traditional and non-traditional opportunity once accepted into the various professional programs.”

“Every culture and every gender is open to all opportunities at Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech,” said O’Brien.

Diana Matos credits the Greater New Bedford Regional Voc-Tech High School with most of her knowledge of the fashion industry.

A graduate of the school’s fashion design store in 2018, Matos went to Johnson and Wales University to study merchandising and fashion design for a year and a quarter before the financial burden became too heavy. She works as a stylist at the Alexandra boutique in Fall River, helping young women find their dream dress for prom while saving money to start her own business in the field.

“I can’t say I was surprised,” said Matos of the store’s elimination, adding that the year she graduated, the store was transformed into a two-year program at instead of a four-year program. “I also knew I wanted to fight him as best I could.”

Like Clark, Abigail Rego, 23, a 2014 graduate, said she was “well, well advanced” as a first year at the Art Institute of New York where she specialized in fashion design.

After returning to New Bedford, she began producing and selling her own women’s clothing online and sometimes in a pop-up store at a local hair salon. She is currently saving money to open her own store. She didn’t get a business degree from university, but said she was able to start her own small business based on what she learned in the store.

The high school curriculum, said Rego, “made me a well-rounded student.” She learned not only to build a garment, but also to own a small business and to market and contribute to school fashion shows, bringing an idea of ​​a design to something that could adapt to a model.

Chouinard, who has served on the advisory board for more than 10 years and has been chairman for two years, said the store has been popular over time and believes bringing it back to two years has created “a kind of impossible path for this program to continue. . “

Clark, as well as Matos and Rego wrote testimonials to send to members of the school committee.

“I just hope the school will take into account what everyone in the community is saying about the need for the store,” she said.

Follow Aimee Chiavaroli on Twitter @AimeeC_SCT