Committee weighs Wayne Pike CTC membership offer as alternative to MCTI; financial, transportation and timing concerns dominate

The EPR committee spent the largest portion of the Nov. 6 meeting discussing a proposal to join the planned Wayne Pike Career & Technical Center (CTC), which would offer career programs not currently available to some district students.

Staff presented local enrollment data at MCTI (the Monroe County technical institute), including students on wait lists; staff said MCTI has roughly 286 East Stroudsburg students currently enrolled and a substantive wait list across county districts. The Wayne Pike proposal would create a local CTC for Pike and Wayne counties and offer programs such as aviation and other trades that proponents said are hard to access because of travel distance to existing centers.

The committee was shown a proposed membership model the presenter described as a "worst‑case" example: a 20% stake tied to a $10.4 million upfront commitment and an estimated $660,000 annual cost for inclusion at the 20% ownership level. The presentation also contrasted membership with a tuition model (presenter showed a tuition figure cited as about $10,000 per student); staff noted the district currently pays roughly $2.2 million per year to MCTI (about $7,400 per participating student) and that joining Wayne Pike would change the district's capital and operating exposure.

Members and staff discussed key operational impacts: duplicated program offerings would require routing students to different campuses and add three daily career‑tech bus runs, increasing transportation runs, drivers and bus mileage across the district's 214 square miles. Board members also raised legal and fiscal implications: the presenter said membership commitments would be long term and cited case law suggesting membership can be effectively permanent; members noted the district is already budgeting a multi‑million dollar deficit and recently refinanced bonds, and said taking additional long‑term debt would affect credit and limit future bond capacity.

Several board members said the proposal needs more study and that the district should complete its existing feasibility study (including possible repurposing or renovation of JM Hill) before making a binding commitment. Committee members discussed alternatives such as working with MCTI to expand capacity or using district facilities to host programs. No binding commitment was made; the committee urged further analysis, recommended folding this option into the feasibility study and did not provide the proposer a formal yes by the Jan. 1 answer request.