Chattanooga City Councilman Larry Grohn, a candidate vying for the mayor's seat, said on Tuesday his administration would reinstitute Kirkman Technical High School as part of a workforce development program.
The program would be aimed at creating more living wage jobs for Chattanoogans living in the inner-city, according to a news release.
Kirkman Technical High School, which trained high school students for industrial and trade jobs since 1928, closed in 1991.
"Kirkman Technical High took the immense potential of our city's youth and turned them into the business owners and highly-skilled workers of today," Grohn wrote.
"When youth graduated from Kirkman, they had the tools and skills needed to obtain a living wage job, tools ready to enter the workforce. They started families and became productive members of our community, leaders in our community."
The Grohn administration would set a goal of "establishing a new technical high school in the innter-city within four years," according to the release.
The school would offer students a free curriculum in trades-based education, as well as STEAM - science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics - training.
"Vocational education and workforce development is a very clear demand from our inner-city residents. This demand has been routinely ignored and underfunded. As mayor, I will work to ensure that every child has access to great vocational education no matter their race, income or background," Grohn wrote.
"When we moved technical training out of the inner-city, we took tools out of the hands of our youth and replaced them with guns. A living wage is the best crime safety plan there is, and the surest way to get a living wage job is education in the trades while building our workforce."
The release did not go into detail about how Grohn hoped to establish the school or how costly the project would be.
Tyler Yount, a spokesman for the campaign of current Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke responded to the release saying workforce development had been a priority of Berke's for years.
"Mayor Berke has a proven track record of working cooperatively with the State and the County to make workforce development opportunities available to Chattanoogans through new initiatives and partnerships," he said. "It will remain a major priority for him and his administration over the next four years."