Fair. Trusted. Reporting in Rappahannock County and across Virginia’s Piedmont.

Donate

In partnership with the

Rapp leaders tour Laurel Ridge trade center Learn about growing enrollment, funding challenges

by | Oct 14, 2026

Workforce Solutions and Continuing Education program manager and Jackson Supervisor Donna Comer speaks to the tour group in the welding classroom on Tuesday.
Jeanine Clark shows John Croft, CEO of Croft Communications in Culpeper, a core curriculum textbook in the HVAC classroom.
Dave Bailey, vice chair of the Headwaters Foundation, reads a handout during Tuesday’s tour of the Skills Trade Center at Laurel Ridge Community College in Warrenton.

Learn about growing enrollment, funding challenges

Over a dozen community, business and nonprofit leaders from Rappahannock County toured the Skills Trade Center at Laurel Ridge Community College in Warrenton, where demand for trade and workforce training continues to rise, but funding for those programs is at an all-time low. 

“As of Monday, our enrollments are up 57% over this time last year; we are at capacity,” said Jeanian Clark, vice president of workforce solutions and continuing education at Laurel Ridge. “Workforce programs receive no state funding at all … so everything in workforce we do, we have to raise the funding.”

During the tour of the facility, visitors also watched students in the Trades Academy — high school students from Rappahannock and Fauquier counties interested in trades — practice surveying on campus. 

The Headwaters Foundation and the Rappahannock Lions Club together funded nearly all of the tuition for seven Rappahannock County students in the Trades Academy this semester. Due to a state funding cut two years ago, high school students no longer qualify for reduced tuition rates and must pay full price for academy classes. 

 “We try to help all the kids in Rappahannock, and we feel like this is a really good use of money because the kids end up with a credential,”  said Headwaters board chair Priscilla Goodwin. “We’re trying to help all the kids, whatever their interests are.”

Jeanine Clark shows John Croft, CEO of Croft Communications in Culpeper, a core curriculum textbook in the HVAC classroom.

Dave Bailey, vice chair of the Headwaters Foundation, reads a handout during Tuesday’s tour of the Skills Trade Center at Laurel Ridge Community College in Warrenton.

Author

  • Ireland Hayes

    Ireland joined Foothills Forum as a full-time reporter in 2023 after graduating from the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication with a degree in journalism and minor in music. As a student, she gained valuable experience in reporter and editor positions at The Red & Black, an award-winning student newspaper, and contributed to Grady Newsource and the Athens Banner-Herald. She spent three years as an editorial assistant at Georgia Magazine, UGA’s quarterly alumni publication, and interned with The Bitter Southerner.
    Growing up in a small town in Southeast Georgia, Ireland developed a deep appreciation for rural communities and the unique stories they have to tell. She completed undergraduate research on news deserts, ghost papers and the ways rural communities in Georgia are being forced to adapt to a lack of local news. This research further sparked her interest in a career contributing to the preservation of local and rural news.
Republish License

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.

By Ireland Hayes

Read more articles by Ireland Hayes
Ireland joined Foothills Forum as a full-time reporter in 2023 after graduating from the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication with a degree in journalism and minor in music. As a student, she gained valuable experience in reporter and editor positions at The Red & Black, an award-winning student newspaper, and contributed to Grady Newsource and the Athens Banner-Herald. She spent three years as an editorial assistant at Georgia Magazine, UGA’s quarterly alumni publication, and interned with The Bitter Southerner. Growing up in a small town in Southeast Georgia, Ireland developed a deep appreciation for rural communities and the unique stories they have to tell. She completed undergraduate research on news deserts, ghost papers and the ways rural communities in Georgia are being forced to adapt to a lack of local news. This research further sparked her interest in a career contributing to the preservation of local and rural news.