Beecher to Fund $32,000 for Kankakee Area Career Center Roof Amid Severe CTE Teacher Shortages

Beecher Board of Education Meeting | April 15, 2026

Article Summary: Beecher School District 200U will contribute approximately $32,000 toward a $1 million roofing project at the Kankakee Area Career Center (KACC). The board also discussed the severe challenges the career center faces in recruiting qualified trade instructors.

KACC Partnership Key Points:

• The KACC is undertaking a $1 million roof replacement project that will be heavily subsidized by grants.

• Beecher’s member share of the remaining balance is 5.9%, costing the district roughly $32,000 in the upcoming July budget.

• KACC is struggling to hire trade instructors—specifically for automotive and EMT-B courses—because private-sector wages vastly outpace teaching salaries.

The Beecher Board of Education on Wednesday, April 15, 2026, received an update on significant financial and staffing developments at the Kankakee Area Career Center (KACC), a regional cooperative that provides vocational training to high school students, including those from Beecher.

Superintendent Dr. Jack Gaham, who recently volunteered to serve on the KACC finance committee, reported that the center is moving forward with a major facility upgrade. The KACC board is expected to approve a $1 million roofing project, which includes a 10% contingency budget.

To fund the roof replacement, KACC has secured a $100,000 grant and a $50,000 maintenance grant. An additional portion will be drawn directly from the career center’s financial reserves. The remaining balance will be divided among the member school districts based on their enrollment shares.

“Our portion is 5.9% of it, which is about $32,000,” Gaham told the board. “This upcoming budget, I’m going to ask everything we can to make sure it gets pushed into July. So that’ll be part of your budget for next year—a $30,000 and some change cost to the KACC program to cover that roof.”

Beyond facility repairs, board members discussed the severe staffing shortages plaguing the career center’s highly sought-after trade programs. Board members noted that while student interest in fields like nursing, automotive, and emergency medical services is skyrocketing, KACC cannot find enough professionals willing to take the pay cut required to teach.

“The hard problem is a lot of the programs that people have interest in, it’s hard to keep the teachers for like the EMT and the mechanic,” a board member stated during committee updates. “It’s hard to find people that are willing, because they can make so much money in their field, to take that pay cut to teach. We can’t find an automotive teacher. You can make $75 an hour working on cars or you can come make $50,000 and teach kids.”

The staffing shortage has forced KACC to occasionally reduce sections of popular courses like welding and certified nursing assistant (CNA) programs, leaving some students unable to secure their first-choice vocational electives.