The congress of the United States passed the Vocational Education Act of 1963. Its purpose was to provide an adequate vocational education opportunity for youths and adults. With the passing of this legislation into law, vocational education would become a reality in the State of Ohio.

Basic information concerning the studies of employment and the needs of the Trumbull County communities had been made by the Ohio State Employment Service, the Bureau of Unemployment Compensation, student and business surveys. The results of the surveys were clear. Twelve percent of our job market requires a college education. Consequently, schools must prepare youths to enter the other 88% of the job market upon graduation from high school.

Several school districts in Trumbull County could be joined together in a joint vocational education program for area high school youth, out-of-school youth and adults. The programs to be offered at this facility were to include such areas as agriculture, business education, distributive education, home economic education, and trade and industrial education.

If this joint vocational facility was to go into operation, it had to have a sponsoring board of education. The first sponsoring board of education was Niles City Schools: it was followed by Hubbard Exempted Village School District. Each school system that wanted to belong to the joint vocational school district had to send a letter of intent to join the district. Those letters of intent were turned over to the State Board of Education. On August 17, 1966, the first board of education was organized for the Trumbull County Joint Vocational School District.

On April 7, 1974 the Joint Vocational Board was dissolved after five levy failures. On August 4, 1974 the JVS Board was reorganized. On August 21, 1975 a plan for the TCJVS was submitted to the Ohio State Department of Education for seven districts: Bloomfield, Champion, Farmington, Hubbard, Mathews, Newton Falls, and Southington. On March 18, 1976 a 2.9 mill combined tax issue was passed by these districts. The school districts of Bristol, Brookfield, Girard, Joseph Badger, LaBrae, Lakeview, Liberty, and Maplewood also joined the Trumbull County Joint Vocational School District. These fifteen school districts would be under the guidance of Leo Difford, who was the Trumbull County Director of Vocational Education for the Trumbull County Joint Vocational School District and who later became the first superintendent of the district on October 1, 1975.