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PRIEST RIVER — Two things push Emma Eisler to pursue bookkeeping as a career — the pay, and organization.
“Being organized is very needed nowadays since everybody just is all over the place,” said Eisler, 16.
She is learning about both as a student in Priest River Lamanna Junior/ Senior High School’s Career and Technical Education program.
Formerly known as vocational education, CTE allows students to earn licenses and industry certifications, postsecondary certificates and college credit for associate and bachelor’s degrees or higher while attending grade school.
“The core classes like English and math and history, that’s a good foundation. But it’s hard to find, for a lot of these students, careers in those areas,” said Jerry England, a CTE teacher at the junior/senior high school. “[CTE] gives them opportunities that they haven’t had before.”
The West Bonner County School District is not the only one with a CTE program; the Cusick, Selkirk and Newport School Districts each have one as well. All three require their students to take CTE courses before graduation.
Some students in CTE programs can qualify for full-time careers as soon as they graduate, many of which fill gaps in local, state or national economies. Bookkeeping is one of these gaps, England said.
“You have to have a reason why you’re teaching those classes,” said Stephen Bollinger, principal for grades six through 12 and CTE director of the Cusick School District. “And part of that is jobs that are available and are going to be available.”
‘Find out what their passion is’
At the Cusick School District, the lettuce in the cafeteria salad bars and the trophies for sports and competitions are made by students in its CTE program.
Most of the funding for the CTE program, received from the state, goes toward equipment such as hydroponics for the lettuce and lasers and wood for the trophies. It has also funded a fish tank students use to raise, then release fish.
“The kids are exposed to all the different stuff, find out what their passion is in life,” Bollinger said.
The district has a combined 10 CTE courses between its two CTE career pathways — agriculture, and skills and technical sciences. Bollinger said agriculture was added six years ago, but skills and technical sciences has been there since he joined the district 10 years ago.
Outside of class, students participate in Future Farmers of America or SkillsUSA, depending on their career pathway.
“The [Kalispel Tribe of Indians has] been a fantastic partner with getting these programs going, and having jobs for the students when they’re done,” Bollinger said.
The Cusick area has “a lot” of farms and ranches, Bollinger said, which agricultural students have gone on to work for after graduation. Skills and technical sciences students have done the same with the Kalispel Career Training Center, also in Cusick, and the Pend Oreille Public Utility District in Newport.
Construction students have also earned college credit with Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood in the south Puget Sound area.
Now, the district is working to get students apprenticeships through its CTE program.
“By the time they’re juniors and seniors, students typically have some room in their schedule to be able to go out and learn a skill,” Bollinger said. “And so, our goal, our hope is to line up apprenticeships.”
‘Be successful post-high school’
Students in the Selkirk School District take CTE courses as early as middle school.
The middle school has four CTE courses, and the high school has nine. Students may learn home economics and basic woodworking skills in middle school before moving on to career readiness and upper-level metal and woodwork in high school. The district also offers other CTE courses on technology, independent living and more.
“For being a very remote, smaller school, we try to do our very best to offer as many things as we can,” said Amanda Burnett, principal for grades six through 12.
Many of the CTE courses have been at the district for at least 15 years and are also mostly funded by the state. As part of their CTE coursework, students have gone out to identify trees and types of wood and tested samples of water from the Selkirk area.
Instead of FFA or SkillsUSA, students in the CTE program serve 40 hours of community service for the Cutter Theatre in Metaline Falls, the Lions Rail Riders in Ione or the American Legion.
“We’re thankful for the industries in our area and for our community that supports our CTE programs,” Burnett said. “They give our students opportunities to have real-life and hands-on experiences for many of these courses.”
Some CTE courses earn students college credit with Spokane Community College, as well as industry- recognized Microsoft and wastewater certifications.
After graduation, students in the CTE program have gone on to work for major industries such as forestry, welding, metal-cutting and water reclamation in Selkirk and other areas — wherever the jobs are, Burnett said.
“Career and technical education courses help students be successful post-high school,” Burnett said.
‘Work with their hands’
Like other schools, the CTE courses at Priest River Lamanna Junior/Senior High School are hands-on.
The junior/senior high school has four CTE career pathways — software and programming, business, industrial maintenance and forestry.
England teaches a software and programming class. Four to five students in his class use Adobe software programs to design the yearbook while the rest train in Microsoft, Intuit or other software programs. Eisler is one of the latter.
“Once they’ve learned the basics, then you provide a project for them to do where they can apply their skills and knowledge,” England said. “So it’s more hands-on in that way.”
The CTE program receives funding from the state and, unlike the Cusick and Selkirk School Districts, local bonds. The former has gone toward certification training and exams in Adobe, Microsoft and Intuit, as well as other expansions to the CTE program.
“Recognizing that there’s money available from the state of Idaho, the education department, … that motivated us to get started,” England said.
Most of the CTE courses were added this or last year.
The CTE program’s advisory board represents several local businesses, including a “big” forestry group, England said. Since welding is only about 5% of what welders at the forestry group do, it transitioned into industrial maintenance to fill a gap in the West Bonner forestry industry. The other CTE career pathways fill similar gaps.
“We do kind of focus on [forestry] as our primary preparation,” England said. “Because that is such an important local job.”
Eisler is staying in the CTE program through her junior and senior years, during which she may do one of the internships the junior/senior high school offers to students in those grades.
After she graduates, Eisler said she plans to attend college — ideally, University of Idaho. Though she is still figuring out what courses to take, Eisler is interested in bookkeeping and marine biology.
“I have three CTE classes at the beginning of the day, and they’re pretty helpful,” Eisler said. The classes are programming, business applications and fundamentals of information systems. “They make me focus a lot more.”
