Richmond City Councilman Douglas G. Conner Jr. said he’s tired of retraining students from the Richmond Technical Center when they’re hired to work at his auto-body shop. He said his experiences—combined with Richmond Public Schools’ 66 percent graduation rate—show the need to overhaul career and technical education. He’s pursuing ideas for an overhaul through a set of city-sponsored trips, traveling last month to Pittsburgh and next month to Lexington, Mass., to tour their successful tech centers.

Courtney Bagby and Nicole Smith, students at the Richmond Technical Center, placed fifth in the structural engineering competition at this year’s National Technology Student Association Conference, June 28-July 2 in Denver. Bagby and Smith, also students at Richmond Community High School, earned fifth-place honors for their model of a roof truss system that demonstrated their knowledge of residential design and construction concepts. The duo captured top honors in the same event at the 2009 Virginia TSA Conference held in May in Fairfax.

As the economy dives, high school students across Virginia are increasingly turning to career and technical-education programs so they can go directly into the work force after graduation.