Month: February 2022

SkillsUSA has awarded a grant to the SkillsUSA chapter at the F. Donald Myers Education Center in Saratoga Springs, thanks to its longtime partnership with Lowe’s Home Improvement. 

SkillsUSA and Lowe’s have teamed up for 16 years to support career and technical education (CTE) classrooms across the nation. 

The new Lowe’s grants provide eligible SkillsUSA chapters with additional programming resources including tools and equipment and construction materials for students’ hands-on learning projects, officials said. The support can also be used for materials and supplies for local community service projects SkillsUSA chapters would like to conduct but need additional support to launch. 

Each eligible school applied for a grant up to $15,000. Schools are asked to focus on outcomes and the quantifiable impact data of their projects. The grants are intended for construction trades programs to prepare our future skilled workforce, as well as for lab improvements or community service. 

The grant obtained by the SkillsUSA chapter at the F. Donald Myers Education Center will be used to provide the HVAC lab with upgrades and state of the art industry equipment.

“This amazing opportunity through Lowe’s provides our SkillsUSA chapters with more resources to support CTE and hands-on learning. All SkillsUSA projects are student-led and center around the development of personal skills, workplace skills and technical skills grounded in academics through the SkillsUSA Framework, so every member has an opportunity for career success,” said SkillsUSA executive director Chelle Travis. “These grants remove financial barriers to excellence and ensure that SkillsUSA chapters have quality resources for the betterment of our CTE programs and projects.” 

By Paul Post

Only a week after opening, more than 75,000 tickets had already been sold to a major new winter attraction that officials hope can contrubute to transforming Lake George into true year-round tourist destination.

Visitors to Ice Castles—a 1.5-acre man-made sculpture with frozen 25-foot-high archways, tunnels and slides—are expected to spend more than $4 million for lodging, meals, fuel and similar services.

Located at Charles R. Wood Park’s Festival Commons, 17 West Brook Road, it coincides with this year’s 60th annual Lake George Winter Carnival, featuring a slate of fun activities each weekend in February.

“This is big, really big,” said long-time Mayor Robert Blais, who has worked  to promote winter tourism for many years. “All the businesses that have been open all these years, that have struggled through the winter and supported the Winter Carnival, I say thanks to them. Now you’re going to be rewarded. To the ones that don’t stay open and take advantage of it, I say, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing’.”

In addition to Utah, where Ice Castles is based, the company has similar attractions in Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Hampshire. This is its first time in upstate New York.