Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Diman Regional Vo-Tech High School
This school offers practical solutions to challenges facing Fall River and Southeast Massachusetts while providing students with lifetime skills.

I love vocational schools that give students the satisfaction of both learning new skills and applying them to community service. Where I live, for example, there’s a nonprofit called Second Chance Cars that taps the auto-mechanic programs of two vo-tech schools to reburbish vehicles that are then resold to ex-service members and approved ex-offenders at a subsidized price.

And in Fall River, Mass., the regional school tackles serious work like building homes and improving city infrastructure. In this story, students from several disciplines worked on a flood-control sluice gate that the city needed repaired.

Jo C. Goode reports at Fall River’s Herald News, “A group of Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School students saw the fruits of their labors materialized in a dramatic way [in July] when a project they had worked on for a year — replacing vital sluice gates that help control the flow of water from the Quequechan River — became an integral part of the city’s infrastructure for decades to come.

“Students, their educators and staff from the city’s water and sewer departments met at what is called #7 Iron Works, located behind a group of mills on Pocasset Street where the river flows underground to a sluice that directs the water to the Battleship Cove area and Firestone Mill Pond.

“They watched as a crane lifted large gates into a black metal sleeve, where crews will open and close the gates with a giant iron wrench to control the flow of water from South Watuppa Pond. …

“Within about 15 minutes after the dam was opened at South Watuppa, a torrent flowed from the underground Quequechan River through as workers tweaked the placement of the new sluice gates.

” ‘About a year ago we knew the sluice gate needed to be repaired,” said Paul Ferland, the city’s director of community utilities, who said the pre-existing gates were easily over 100 years old. ‘We’ve worked with Diman on other projects in the past … Their work is top notch.’

“Working with the vocational-technical high school also saved the city money, said Ferland. If the department hired an outside firm, the project could have easily cost the city $60,000.

“Maria Torres, assistant principal for technical affairs at Diman, said … ‘We’re always looking to partner with the community, number one. And number two, we always want to take on projects that challenge our students, so that was the biggest thing.’ …

“Torres said the project incorporated a range of the school’s areas of studies from drafting, machine tool technology, carpentry, welding and metal works.

The dental assisting program even pitched in and took impressions of the old gate gears.

“Machine tool technology student Evan Thro, who recently graduated from Diman and is attending University of Massachusetts Dartmouth as a mechanical engineering student, [said,] ‘There was constant communication,’ said Thro. ‘It was measure twice and cut once, because you only had one shot and make sure you do it right.’ ”

Read more at the Herald News, here.