YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County commissioners on Thursday authorized giving $125,000 of its $42 million in federal American Rescue Plan funds to the Oh Wow! Children’s Center for Science and Technology and $218,000 to the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center for an electric-vehicle and sustainable resource center.

Marvin Logan, Oh Wow’s executive director, said the money from the commissioners will be used to make the facility more accessible to the public, improve safety measures, make the facility more efficient and “build some new spaces with new exhibits for the public so we are able to have more community education space for the entire Valley.”

Logan said the center will put lighting and fire suppression on the second floor of the building, plus “rebuild” space on the first floor and put more learning spaces on the second floor.

Meanwhile, the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center in Canfield will use the $218,000 to “continue to work on ways to contribute to the workforce.

“With the increase in electric vehicles and other types of technologies, we need to create workers who are capable of fixing those parts, installing those parts,” said Mara Banfield, MCCTC director and Valley STEM director. That program is housed at MCCTC and is for students in 9th and 10th grades.

“There’s a need in the workforce to create qualified workers,” Banfield said.

They hope to begin constructing the facility at MCCTC sometime this calendar year “where our current programming can be used to teach kids those additional skills,” she said.

Existing auto technology and electricity programs will utilize the equipment and facilities to make the students in those programs more valuable in the workforce, she said. The money from the commissioners will go toward the building and buying equipment.

“It’s a huge chunk towards it, and it’s very, very helpful because we serve kids from all over the Mahoning Valley, from inside and outside of Mahoning County,” she said of the commissioners funds. “Students all over the county will benefit.”

There are also other sources of funding for the new facilities and programs.

“We are heavily invested in this. We have multiple sources, multiple partners and we already have two electric vehicles on premises,” Banfield said.

“Our kids are really going to be exposed to evolving technologies, where there is a huge need to fill the workforce,” she said.

In addition to electric vehicles, the program is expected to include training in solar panels and wind turbines.

In the beginning, the students will be in one program teaching automotive and electrical vehicles, but that could change.

“As the market increases for this type of job, then we’ll have to see where that goes. But the idea is when they graduate, they fix cars in a traditional sense, but they are also exposed to this technology, so it’s just diversifying their skill set,” Banfield said.

Some of the coursework also will be extended into the STEM Academy, which is for students in ninth and 10th grade.

Banfield said MCCTC will be one of the first career and technical centers to start a program like this. “Some are implementing solar panels and that type of technology, but the electrical vehicle piece is new.”

She also believes the public safety and fire program at MCCTC will also benefit by learning how to put out fires involving electrical vehicles.