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Photo by Cleon RIckel/The Ottawa Herald
Troy Ifland, West Franklin High School building trades teacher, builds the forms for a concrete floor for a greenhouse at the school’s new vo-ag building in Pomona Thursday. Students were to help pour the concrete when a series of storms clear the area.
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Students get more tech choices
By CLEON RICKEL, Herald Senior Writer
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POMONA — In the future, West Franklin High School graduates may reach for a hammer or stethoscope after they grab their diploma.
West Franklin High School has agreed to share vocational and training classes with school districts in Osage County as a way to offer more vocational and technical training instead of a college track.
In recent years, students have been pushed to go to college, Troy Ifland, West Franklin building trades instructor, said.
The partnership will expand opportunities for those students who aren’t interested in college, he said.
In the past, it was easier for all kinds of students to take vocational classes, Ifland said.
“We’ve had students who were going to college to become doctors or lawyers who took these classes,” Ifland said. “At some time in their lives, they’ll build a house or remodel one and they would know how.
“These classes teach lifetime skills.”
However, the academic requirements have been racheted up which prevents students from taking such courses unless they plan to make careers in the trades, he said.
“There’s more advanced math classes being added, more language skills; if you’re going to college, it’s tough to take these classes,” he said of his building trades classes.
Under the partnership, students from other schools would be able to take West Franklin’s building trade class and West Franklin students could go elsewhere for other classes, West Franklin USD 287 superintendent Dotson Bradbury said.
Details are still being worked out, and it hasn’t been decided whether classes will be shared by participating schools or at a central location, he said.
Allen County Community College, which has satellite classes at the Osage County schools, may also be involved in the partnership, he said.
A handful of classes may be offered in the fall but in later years, students will have more choices for technical classes, including nursing, welding and carpentry, he said.
“I think it’s cool,” Aaron Steinkuhler, who will be a senior at West Franklin High School, said. He will be in his third year in the building trades program.
“I want to go to college but I won’t have the money to go,” Steinkuhler said.
Instead, he expects to go directly into construction after he graduates.
As part of the class, he’s helped build houses, and helped with wiring, plumbing and maintenance. His classes will help him pick up a hammer and start to work, he said.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, he said.
“I like working with my hands,” he said. “I like to put things together.”
The same things that make a carpentry student successful will make graduates successful in college and in life, he said.
The building trade classes teach the value of self-discipline and hard work, he said.
“In these classes, you learn that you don’t quit until it’s done right,” Ifland said.
Devin Wray, who will begin his third year in Ifland’s classes, said the classes will be useful to him.
Wray won’t go to college. He said he’ll start farming when he graduates.
His father also farms, he said.
“It seemed like the wisest thing for me,” Wray said.
The partnership will be a good idea, he said.
“It will give students more choices,” he said.
The schools have taken a closer look at teaching technical skills because pay for many of the technical trades has boomed in recent years, Bradbury said.
“Students can come out of school with basic entry-level skills in those areas and immediately go to work,” Bradbury said. “Many of those occupations are paying as much as or more than those with a four-year degree.
“My daughter graduated from a school of nursing.
“Her salary is above what we’re able to offer our entry-level teachers.”
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