Indeed!

What it all boils down to Metarinka is this... All of the BOCES schools are based on the  model of being a full service vocational/technical high school that is designed for dual purpose education... What do I mean by this??? It simply means that any junior high school, or intermediate school students that has a BOCES within their own school region, or area which is usually a county, can opt out of a regular academically focused high school and instead, go to a BOCES for their publicly funded secondary education with the exception of students who are enrolled in the New York City public school system which have their own centralized vocational/technical high schools that are not called BOCES and are instead just given a name of a famous person followed by Vocational/Technical High School.

And with the exception of the rest of the public school system in the State of New York, both the BOCES and City Vo-Tech high schools were mostly designed in the Nineteen 30's, 40's and 50's with a very few designed in the late sixties and constructed in the seventies, yet largely based on the same architectural designs used in the earlier schools as well so, many of the same school features were incorporated from school to school much like the "cookie cutter' designs of many of the older public schools in general.

So most of the BOCES as well as the City Vo-Tech schools emphasize training in two processes which were dominant from those decades with the exception of GMAW and FCAW that are also taught in the schools as well, yet with less emphasis as well as less equipment in comparison to OAW and SMAW... So most, if not all of these Vo-Tech high schools were originally constructed this way, and the instructors in their respective metal trades departments all had manifolds and gas welding equipment readily available for them to use in teaching the processes... So all of the BOCES are standardized in each their skilled trades departmental design layouts.

There are have been some significant changes in the type of electric arc welding equipment as well as processes that are now offered in all of the BOCES and City Vo-tech high schools... While they still offer OAW, OAB and SMAW abundantly for each student, the schools have recently switched to multi-process power sources to teach the welding students GMAW & FCAW as well as GTAW, and allocating more time in training the students with these processes than previously given in the past, so they're slowly changing for the better in that more of the most commonly used processes used in industry are taught to the students and therefore increasing the chances of them being able to transition into the workforce which most of them do since only a minority do go on to further their education.

The other purpose of these schools is to train adults in the skilled trades which are offered to high school level students as well... The overall success of the adult workforce training programs have led to these school being infused with larger capital budgets which have enabled them to purchase more modern equipment such as new manifolds for shielding gas delivery to the welding booths, newer arc welding equipment, newer metal working equipment including CNC machining centers, auto body, auto mechanical equipment, computerized diagnostic equipment, frame straightening, alignment systems... Some with industrial robots... The Latest versions of CAD/CAM applications as well as periodical upgrades to their computers, etc, etc.

This means less time is given to the older more traditional skill sets such as for instance, OAW and OAB than in the previous decades yet nonetheless, it is the very first welding/Brazing process taught to each and every student enrolled in a BOCES or City Vo-Tech high school irrespective of al of the other processes offered as well. The reason why Acetylene is used as the fuel gas is primarily because of what is allowed by the municipal fire codes in each of the various regions/counties in NY State. I am unaware if any of the schools offer gas welding training with the use of another fuel gas besides Acetylene in NY, so I couldn't tell you whether or not other fuel gases are used as well in some area's.

Now this is not to say that the State Technical Colleges, or the associated community colleges are devoid of OAW/OAB equipment to train for instance students that did not come from the BOCES or Vo-Tech high schools of NYC... The only difference for the most part is that most of the post-secondary schools are not set up in the same manner as the BOCES, or City Vo-tech schools to offer gas welding training to large numbers of students simultaneously as they are in the specialized high schools...

So the "Non-traditional" students tend to get short changed in the quality and quantity with this welding process that "Traditional " students have already been trained to a decent proficiency level upon beginning their post secondary level of education, and this sometimes requires the instructor to spend more time training the non-traditional students how to manipulate the weld pool, or puddle when they are being trained to become proficient in the GTAW process.

I hope this answers you question. ;)

Respectfully,
Henry