Montoursville Area School Board is mulling its role in financially contributing to the Lycoming Career and Technology Center, which offers career training — in some ways what traditionally was known as vocational-technical training — to students in much of Lycoming County.

We have no intention of declaring what the Montoursville Area School Board should decide — we trust the board members understand the specific nuances of their district’s circumstances and their district’s relationship with the Lycoming Career and Technology Center.

But we do wish to reiterate that the CTC has been an important and valuable part of the educational landscape of our region.

Vocational programs unfortunately went through a too-long stretch of marginalization. That has led to alarming shortages of qualified professionals in a number of fields — fields on which our families and our economy rely to achieve broader successes. Those shortages lead to higher costs — for plumbing, for electrical work, for HVAC maintenance, for many important services — for both consumers and for businesses — which then in turn must pass the costs on to their own consumers.

It does not take many lines, frankly, to connect the dots between the worker shortages in the wake of this period of marginalization to the inflation that has bedeviled our communities.

We appreciate that the proverbial tide on that attitude seems to be turning. We hope, regardless of this specific decision in Montoursville, that all of our region’s school districts can offer avenues for students to pursue these types of career training.

The diversity in educational experiences they offer are a critically important part of meeting our educational needs and the needs of all of our communities across the region and America into the future.