High school students build America’s future

WASILLA — Eighty million people are added to the 7.3 billion people living on this planet every year. They will all eventually need to find a job. White Collar jobs aren’t for everyone, and not everyone can have a White Collar job.

Chris Arnda wrote for NPR and compared college education vs. education in a trade.

“On average it costs $40,000 per year to attend college, when going to a trade school is $2,400 per year,” he said.

The long-standing Construction Trades program, offered through the Mat-Su School District, works toward providing the trades-educated workers that the future job market is hungry for now.

Construction Trades has taught high school students how to build houses since 1974. The program began in what is now Wasilla Middle School, which used to be Wasilla High School. Six years ago the program left WHS and moved to the Mat-Su Career Tech High School.

Construction Trades is a program for high school students to learn the construction trade by building residential one-family homes to sell. The program is completely self-sufficient because the profit from the sale of one home is used to build a new house.

All of the homes are built on borough land, or on donated land from corporations, that defers the school district’s property tax until the house is completed and sold.

The Construction Trades program runs hand-in-hand with the interior design class taught by Wasilla High School’s Raymond Jensen. In Jensen’s course the students learn about interior design and computer aided drafting. They design the houses to be built by the student carpenters.

Typically, one of the students will design the next home for the Construction Trades program to build. Usually, there are two houses being built simultaneously. One house is framed in when the weather is nice, and when it turns cold outside then the students turn their attention to the other house, which is already framed and isn’t freezing cold.

Typically, a house can be completed in two years. Each house built is made with mid-grade materials and usually sell for $250,000 to $270,000.

Alan Johnson is a carpenter by trade and now teaches the Construction Trades program at Career and Tech High School. He went to college to become certified to teach the Construction Trades course. He also took special courses so he can teach the National Center for Construction Education and Research program that is offered to students.

The house currently being built by the program is in its final stages and should be completed within a month. This house took longer than planned due to additional projects that the vocational director had the students also build, including the Tech Cafe and portables for the ever-expanding schools in the Mat-Su Valley.

Blake Smith is a Career Tech student enrolled in the Construction Trades program. His family does concrete work for a living.

“I really like doing construction and this class has taught me a lot about finish work,” he said.

Construction Trades is a district-wide course; but it isn’t open to everyone. There is a class size cap of seven students per instructor and the class requires longer period blocks. The class needs two class periods per day for the students at Tech and three for students from other schools. The third hour is a travel period so the students can drive back to their home school.

Chance Lincoln is a student at Colony High School that takes the morning construction trades class.

“I love having the extra period after class so I can go home and take a nap,” he said.

Lincoln needs to take advantage of his naps because he is one of the last off-campus CTHS juniors able to take this course because next year the new credit requirements catch up with students. A third hour travel period is no longer feasible after this year.

The additional credit requirements for students are making it difficult for students from other school to participate in the Construction Trades. The program is also threatened because there are usually two teachers for the course, but this year there is only Johnson.

To add more stress for the program, the vocational director for the Mat Su Borough School District is having a rough time finding a lot for the next house. Johnson said without a lot ready for construction he is not sure what the program will look like “I don’t know what we are going to do for the rest of the semester. We have a couple of odds and ends to do around the school but other than that it looks like we will be doing bookwork.”

The bookwork for Construction Trades is not required for the course. NCCER is a nationally recognized course for basic construction safety. It takes a certain amount of instruction time to complete, time that is normally is not available. However, this year there is more than enough time to complete NCCER because there is no house to build once the current house is completed

Completing NCCER proves to employers that students have the skills they need to perform basic construction tasks, which gives them an edge on being hired for a job.

Brian Palmer is a Senior at Wasilla High School. He is taking Construction Trades and plans to be a carpenter.