ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
Cisco coordinator Kevin Geaney talks about the program, which is expanding to the former electronics room at Lynn Tech.
BY DILLON DURST
LYNN — For years, the city’s high school graduates could count on a well-paying job at General Electric Co. and a comfortable life.
But times have changed.
Lynn English’s Cisco Networking Academy, an information technology (IT) program that has been taught at the school for nearly a decade, has provided students with skills required for a technology career.
Lynn Tech is transforming its former electronics room into a tech lab for Cisco. While the program has been taught as an introductory course for two years, advisor Kevin Geaney and Lynn Tech Principal Robert Buontempo Jr. said it will flourish in the new space.
The renovation is expected to cost up to $275,000 and the lab installation could take six weeks, pending enough startup money, according to Geaney. Once implemented, the program would cost about $75,000 annually.
Geaney said there’s a skills gap between the number of technology jobs and the available qualified candidates to fill them.
Through Cisco courses, students can take the technology industry’s recognized exam that, if passed, provides proof of IT skills.
“When they pass, they get a certification that they’ve proven they have the skills worthy of an interview,” Geaney said.
He compared the certificate students receive upon completion to a driver’s license, to prove they have the ability to operate a vehicle.
Lynn is the only place where students have access to Cisco courses.
Geaney also said Lynn Tech is the best location for the program because it fits perfectly with tech school scheduling. Buontempo said the school’s juniors and seniors spend up to about six hours on the program every other week while a Cisco student at English or Classical wouldn’t get nearly the same amount of time through public school scheduling.
There’s never been a better time for IT training. In the 1980s, General Electric Co. had 13,000 factory workers in Lynn. Today, there are about 3,000. The future is in technology jobs, not manufacturing.
Buontempo and Geaney agreed that there’s a high demand for technology jobs that isn’t going away anytime soon.
“Everybody needs IT people,” Buontempo said.
While he had hoped to implement Cisco last September, Buontempo said funding has proved elusive. However, he’s confident the school can secure enough funds through grants to launch the program.
“This could be a great economic resource,” Buontempo said.
Dillon Durst can be reached at [email protected].