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POSTED:
3:43 p.m., Jul. 24, 2009
LAST MODIFIED: 3:44 p.m., Jul. 24, 2009 |
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Nonprofit proposes agriculture education program at Michigan State Fairgrounds
By Sherri Begin Welch
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A citizens nonprofit formed in the mid-1990s to fight creation of an auto racetrack at the Michigan State Fairgrounds is calling for creation of an agricultural education program for high schoolers and a year-round farm on the site.
Inter-County Citizens Achieving Regional Excellence, which in 2003 lobbied unsuccessfully to make the fairgrounds into a metropark, believes an agriculture industry science institute would encourage more youth to enter agriculture-related industries, while producing the revenue needed to maintain the grounds and the Michigan State Fair.
“We’re interested in things that are compatible with existing uses at the fairgrounds,” said Ed Bullock, a retired middle school and high school mathematics teacher from Hazel Park and member of ICARE, a tri-county group.
In 1904, Joseph Hudson donated his farm on the fairgrounds for a permanent home for the state fair, he said.
“We think this clearly fits into the use of the fairgrounds for the state fair,” Bullock said.
As proposed by ICARE II, a nonprofit formed by the citizens group, the institute would enroll two interested junior, high school students from each of the roughly 140 districts in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties for half-day education at the now-shuttered Grayling Elementary school near the fairgrounds. That would mean 280 students for the first year of the program.
Those students could learn about the various direct and indirect industries tied to agriculture, Bullock said.
Assuming the students are enrolled in half-day courses at the institute, about half of their $7,100-per-student state appropriation would go to the state fairgrounds managers who would oversee the institute along with an institution such as Michigan State University, given a vested interest in agriculture, Bullock said.
That funding would equal just under $1 million the first year and nearly $2 million every subsequent year once the number of students expands in the two-year educational program, he said.
That funding could fund not only education, but a year-round farm at the fairgrounds, maintenance of the grounds and the continuation of the state fair, Bullock said.
ICARE II plans to present the proposal to the Michigan State Fair & Exposition Center Authority Board of Directors at an upcoming meeting , he said.
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