MEDIA RELEASE
Brooksville - This morning, Governor DeSantis arrived at the Brooksville-Tampa Regional Airport and held a press conference announcing that the project to build a technical training complex in Hernando County has been awarded a $6.1 million grant through the Florida Job Growth Grant. The complex is a joint project between the Hernando School District, Pasco-Hernando State College and Hernando County Government. All three entities collaborated on the grant application.
The project was greenlighted when, earlier this summer, the school district learned it would receive $9.3million in appropriation funds to build a technical college, bringing additional and much-needed workforce training opportunities to Hernando. The new complex will be located on undeveloped county land, across from the airport property. The $6.1 million grant funds will be used to prepare the county's property and add the necessary infrastructure prior to the start of construction.
Funds from the Florida Job Growth Grant are designed to promote the advancement of technical programs. "Our building budget is already pretty modest. When the county presented the cost of preparing the site, there was no question that we had to find an additional funding source for that work," said Sophia Watson, Director of Adult & Technical Education for Hernando Schools.
"It's clear that, along with our state and local legislators, the technical college has the support of the community," Superintendent John Stratton said. "We all know that quality workforce training is too important to the economic health of our community to allow barriers to derail the plan."
