Seattle Central College is trying to close the only public wood tech college in the state of Washington, which is one of if not the only avenue into woodworking trades for people who usually aren't hired to be trained on-site: queer, trans, neurodivergent and disabled students, and women. Which is exactly what most of the students in the program are.
The reason according to the college is that they want to sell the building to fix the school's budget; they also claim the wood tech college has a severe budget deficit, but they've failed to follow through on any promises to try to fix that (including hiring a permanent dean, so the school has someone to advocate for them... which they haven't had in at least a decade).
The reason according to some students & staff is that Seattle College's VP has a grudge against the lead carpentry instructor & has been trying to get her program shut down for years to get rid of her.
Students are trying to make some noise about it, in hopes that the college backs down and they can work towards the long-term fixes Seattle College keeps failing to follow through on.
The future is unclear for one of the Puget Sound region’s only comprehensive training programs for carpentry and boatbuilding.
If you can sign this little petition & share this around, it'd help the school out a ton!
It shows the school they're going to get pushback, which has changed their mind about this in the past.
Save Wood Technology Center's 90 year Legacy
It would be really cool if we could help get this to 1k!
There are less than 200 students at the wood tech college, so makes a really big impact when anyone else signs and shows that people outside of just students really care about this.
There were like 230 signatures when I first posted this- I'm really grateful to everyone who's already helped out. It means a lot!
Hi everyone. If you signed this, you're in the news!!
More than 2,000 people have signed a petition calling on Seattle Colleges not to put the 23rd Ave Wood Technology Center on the chopping blo
They even link to it later in the article.
This really is one of those cases where every little bit of effort has a HUGE impact. This program is tiny, and Seattle Colleges is expecting it to disappear quietly. Every signature makes it more obvious that isn't going to happen, and that makes it harder for them to follow through on closing & selling the school.
These numbers have also been a huge surprise to the students working to fight this-- they didn't expect this many signatures at all, and it's incredibly encouraging to see so much support for their efforts from the wider community.
Thank you so much for signing! (and please keep going!!)
This is almost at 4k signatures- which is a lot more than anyone expected it to get! Thanks to everyone for signing & spreading this, it's one of the most successful tools the WTC has in this fight right now.
If folks can keep spreading this around & adding signatures, it would mean a lot!!
