WACO — The students training to go into construction can feel the classroom floor dip under their steel-toed shoes. The carpet sits on an incline — it has been stretched thin over a metal drain pipe, a relic from when the facility had a different life.

Next door, about a dozen plumbing students are digging out tough soil to practice installing a sewage system. The pipe materials they will use are housed outside because they’ve run out of room for storage. The unlucky ones may find a lone snake or a few rodents.

This Texas State Technical College campus was once retrofitted out of a former U.S. Air Force base. About 60 years later, the school is still operating some classes in a hangar. Because of chronic underfunding, Texas State Technical College and its 11 campuses have struggled to

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