Groundbreaking held for new CTE buildings
Published 12:34 pm Monday, May 19, 2025
From left, School Board members Neta Muncy, Miranda Adams, Shane Bunch, CTE Director Daniel Satterfield, former Director of Schools Bob Oakes, Director of Schools Meredith Arnold, School Board member Dan Pearman, Claiborne High School Principal Craig Ivey, architect Brian Ewers and Levi Barber from contractor Skilled Services at Thursday’s ground breaking ceremony for the new CTE building at Claiborne High School. (Photo by Jay Compton)
From left: Cumberland Gap High School Assistant Principal Beth Beeler, Principal David Hamilton, School Board members Linda Fultz and Shane Bunch, Director of Schools Meredith Arnold, School Board member Dan Pearan, former Director of Schools Bob Oakes, CTE Director Daniel Satterfield, architect Brian Ewers and Levi Barber from contractor Skilled Services at Thursday’s ground breaking ceremony for the new CTE building at Cumberland Gap High School. (Photo by Jay Compton)
Officials ceremoniously throw the first shovels of dirt for the new CTE building at Cumberland Gap High School during Thursday’s groundbreaking. (Photo by Jay Compton)
Officials ceremoniously throw the first shovels of dirt for the new CTE building at Claiborne High School during Thursday’s groundbreaking. (Photo by Jay Compton)
Claiborne County Director of Schools Meredith Arnold speaks during the CTE building groundbreaking ceremony at Claiborne High School. (Photo by Jay Compton)
CTE Director Daniel Satterfield speaks during the CTE building groundbreaking ceremony at Cumberland Gap High School (Photo by Jay Compton)
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Claiborne County Schools held groundbreaking ceremonies on Thursday for the new career and technical education (CTE) buildings at both Claiborne and Cumberland Gap high schools.
“This is a momentous and great day for the students of Claiborne County,” Director of Schools Meredith Arnold said. “One of our goals has been to broaden our CTE program and through this expansion we will now be able to offer additional courses to our students. We are grateful and we want to say thank you to everyone who has played a part in making this possible.”
The groundbreaking ceremonies were organized by the district’s CTE Director Daniel Satterfield. He opened both ceremonies by welcoming everyone in attendance and thanking them for coming out.
“It’s a really exciting day for Claiborne County Schools, especially for CTE,” Satterfield said. “We’re very excited about the opportunities these buildings are going to bring to our students.”
Satterfield then introduced Arnold to speak at both ceremonies and thanked her for seeing the project through.
“We both started at the same time and she started sharing her vision and it was so easy to work with her. The things we can get done for our kids is because of her and her vision,” he said.
Arnold said the CTE project was a team effort.
“As anyone knows, the room is smarter and more capable than one individual and we have surrounded ourselves with a great team of people. It’s a great group of folks and we all share the same goal and that is to provide all the things for our children so they can be all the things,” she said. “We’re very blessed to be able to bring this additional opportunity to the students of Claiborne County. We believe that by providing students with opportunities and specific skill sets, that they will leave our school system equipped with the knowledge and experience they need to be successful in their careers.”
Arnold also thanked all of the school board members for their support of the project and the children of Claiborne County as well as Bob Oakes, who was serving as director of schools when the Innovative School Models (ISM) grant to fund the buildings was approved.
Though he has since retired, Oakes has stayed on as a consultant to see the project through. He said the current plans are for the buildings to be completed by the middle of November, weather permitting.
“They will be ready for sure by the end of December so our thoughts are that we’ll be able to use them for new programs in January when the second semester starts,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity, really kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity as far as career-wise for that type of grant to come available and we’ve tried to utilize it the best we could. We’ll be able to start two new career and technical programs at each school. We’ve already talked to TCAT in Morristown and Jacksboro and are getting MOUs lined up with them to get them on board and transitioning to those programs.”
Satterfield said the new programs will be able to start in the fall at both schools because the first course is a fundamentals of construction course that can be taught in any classroom.
“By the time we get into the building we’ll actually be into the second program and third course, which is more hands-on,” he said.
The buildings are being added to house the mechanical, plumbing and electrical programs as well as HVAC.
“This is a very broad program that we’re very excited about. When we talk about certification opportunities for our students, it’s not just HVAC, there are going to be multiple opportunities,” Satterfield said during the April Board of Education meeting. “Plumbing is going to be in there, electrical is going to be in there — it’s just a really cool program of study.”
Each of the new buildings are 3200 square feet with one side dedicated to housing the HVAC program and the other side housing other new CTE programs.
In attendance at the Cumberland Gap ground breaking were CGHS Principal David Hamilton, Assistant Principal Beth Beeler, school board members Linda Fultz, Shane Bunch and Dan Pearman, Arnold, Satterfield, Oakes, architect Brian Ewers from Dollar & Ewers Architecture and Levi Barber from contractor Skilled Services.
In attendance at the Claiborne High ground breaking were CHS Principal Craig Ivey, Arnold, Satterfield, Oakes, Ewers, Barber, Bunch, Pearman and fellow school board members Neta Muncy and Miranda Adams.
