Technical school honored with Blue Ribbon

WASILLA — Education officials said they were planning a celebration for students and faculty at Mat-Su Career and Technical High School after national recognition announced last week.

The US Department of Education awarded the recently expanded technical and vocational school one of three Blue Ribbon awards issued to Alaskan schools. The award doesn’t come with any money, apart from bragging rights and a recognition ceremony in Washington DC, which officials are working to figure out whether they can attend, according to principal Mark Okeson.

The school is both a full-service high school for 465 full-time students, as well as a touchstone school offering courses for about 170 part-time students who attend from other Valley high schools. On the average day, about 600 students attend the school.

Unlike other high schools, Career and Technical requires students to apply. The application focuses on grades, attendance, and a letter of recommendation from their previous school. Students must also participate in an interview, and write an essay about what they will study at the school and why, Okeson said.

“We boil it down to three things,” he said. “If you can be where you’re supposed to be on time, you’re nice, and you try, we got a place for you here.”

School officials try to mimic the real world as much as possible. Students choose one of eight pathways: business, building, fitness, tourism, health, natural resources, human services, and transportation, and take coursework focusing on those particular pathways, Okeson said.

“This model is working really well for us,” he said. “In this model, it’s not a place where kids go for just one thing. We have career and technical training, but it’s also a full-service high school. We have students graduating, meeting all their state requirements. When you have that, then you get a school climate. You get kid chemistry.”

The award caps months of work by school officials. State officials nominated the school earlier in the year. Then federal officials contacted the school to verify the statistics and performance in categories like test scores, attendance, graduation rates, performance by students in various subgroups (for example: special education students or English language learners). Schools may receive the blue ribbon as either an “exemplary high-performing school,” or an “exemplary achievement-gap-closing school.”

High-performing schools — like those honored in Alaska this year — must rank in the top 15 percent of state assessments for English and math, and in the top 40 percent for all student subgroups. High schools must also be in the top 15 percent of schools by graduation rates, according to the DOE website.

With the award, Career and Technical becomes the first high school in the valley honored with the national Blue Ribbon Award since the program’s inception in 1982. Past honorees in the Mat-Su Borough School system are Iditarod Elementary School in Wasilla, which won in 2004, and Ron Larson Elementary School, which won in 2009, according to the DOE website. More than 8,000 schools have been honored nationwide.

Faculty were excited about the award, Okeson said.

“We’re tickled pink,” he said. “We know we have a good school here, but you never know just how you stack up nationally.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.