Greene CTC votes to end LPN program
Current students may need to transfer elsewhere
The Greene County Career & Technology Center’s licensed practical nurse program could end in the middle of the current students’ program.
The CTC Joint Operating Committee voted Wednesday night to authorize Executive Director Mark Krupa and Superintendent of Record Brandon Robinson to take all actions necessary to close the program by June 26.
The 12-month training program for adult students puts them through three levels of training, at the end of which they take the National Council Licensure Examination to become licensed. By June 26, the students will have completed the second level.
Another motion ratified a teach-out agreement between the Greene County CTC and the Fayette County Career and Technical Institute that would allow students to continue the program there. Krupa said Greene CTC was also working with two other programs in the area to allow for transfers.
Both votes were 3-2, with Janet Pennington and Betty Jo Black voting against the move.
Administrators said they are also seeking outside funding to extend the program through October to allow the current class of four students to finish their program at Greene.
Krupa said it would cost slightly more than $100,000 to cover the shortfall and continue the program through October. People interested in donating can contact the Greene County CTC at 724-627-3106.
“That’s our biggest concern of all, is those four people,” Krupa said after Wednesday’s meeting. “So I definitely want to make that happen.”
Krupa said the CTC has discussed closing the program for the past two years due to continued low enrollment. Graduating classes were as high as 28 as recently as 2014, then fell into the teens and single digits. The October 2025 class had 13 students, according to CTC data.
Funding comes from student tuition, rather than from local districts, Krupa said.
“If you don’t have the students, you don’t have the tuition,” he said.
At the same time, operating costs from wages, health insurance and pensions have also gone up significantly, making keeping the program no longer feasible, Krupa said.
He said the board could revisit the LPN program in the future.
The four students were joined at the meeting by about 20 people who came to support them.
Instructor Kimberly Bates said a similar LPN program had given her financial independence and a career.
The students had committed a year of their lives to the program under the promise that “if you hang in there and you’re with us, we’re going to be with you,” Bates said. Reneging on that would be an injustice, she said.
“Each and every one of you, somebody gave you an opportunity,” she said. “Somebody gave me an opportunity, and I fear that if we take this away from them, they won’t have that opportunity.”
Four students remain from the original cohort of 10 who entered last fall. They are currently six months through the year-long program.
Transferring to another program would mean additional travel time and several months delay, with a planned graduation of March, they said.
Breanna Stockdale commutes to the classes from Midway in Washington County. She said she’d joined the program because it offered a chance to better herself. Had she known there was a chance it would fold, she said, she would have chosen one closer to home.
She said she
had delayed having surgery so she could complete the program and become certified.
“If I would have ended in October, I could have gotten surgery, then started a new job after I healed and been on my new career,” she said. “Now that’s not an option.”
Katelyn Hixon of Carmichaels said going to Fayette would mean an additional hour for a one-way trip to classes. She said she’d wanted to join Greene’s program because of its good reputation.
“I was born and raised in Greene County,” she said. “I don’t want to go out of the county if I don’t have to. I’d rather support somebody that’s in Greene County.”
Students said they had only learned of the potential closure in the past month. Some said they had only received their formal notification in the mail Wednesday.
Tammi Allison, the Greene CTC’s practical nursing coordinator, said she had not known about the program’s financial difficulties when she was hired in September. With those problems already evident, she shouldn’t have been hired, and the fall students shouldn’t have been admitted, she told the board Wednesday.
Allison said the board should do right by the class of four, who she called “very good students.”
She said the CTC should have done more to promote the program. She had run a similar one at the then-Laurel Business Institute in Fayette County, which regularly had a waiting list of students.
And the facilities at Greene CTC are even better, she said.
She suggested introducing the community to the facility through car shows and blood drives.
“Unfortunately, the hole in the debt here has brought us to this point,” she said. “If that somehow was fixed with the right leadership and budget oversight, this could be a viable program.”