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Articles
Industry Worthy Facilities to Benefit Nevada County Students READ ARTICLE BELOW
News | November 26, 2020 | Submitted to The Union
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Career Education Program Adapts to Meet Needs of Students READ ARTICLE
News | June 4, 2020 | Walter Ford, The Union___________
Career Technical Education Programs Receive Over Half a Million Dollars in Grant Money READ ARTICLE
Education | March 15, 2020 | Sam Corey
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Industry-worthy Facilities to Benefit Nevada County Students
News| November 26, 2020 | Submitted to The Union
Powered by a mix of taxpayer-approved Measure B funds, state grants, and local matching dollars, facility upgrades are well underway for Career Technical Education (CTE) programs at Nevada Union, Bear River and Silver Springs high schools.
These projects will benefit the Building Construction Trades, Culinary Arts and Agriculture programs. The goal is for Nevada County teens to hone their work skills and pursue exciting, lucrative jobs outside the traditional college route. Officials estimate that improvements to Bear River and Nevada Union’s Ag facilities will be finished this winter. NU Culinary is slated to complete its modernization in summer of 2021, with the new Building Construction Trades program scheduled to finish shortly after.
According to Aurora Thompson, the Nevada Joint Union High School District’s Director of CTE and State/Federal Programs, recently approved Career Technical Education Facility Program grants totaling $3,846,351 will offset Measure B bond dollars.
“The process of choosing which facility projects to prioritize took place over years and was a balance of determining which facilities reflected the greatest need based on building and equipment age and safety factors,” she said. “Local industry demand also played a role.”
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Career Education Program Adapts to Meet Needs of Students
News | June 4, 2020 | Walter Ford [wford@theunion.com] at The Union
Career Technical Education is all about setting students up for success after high school.
“It really takes from those old (Regional Occupational Program) models, and it brings it into the 21st century,” said Aurora Westwood Thompson, director of career technical education and state and federal programs for the Nevada Joint Union High School District. “We always look at what are the industries in our community where we see future employment opportunities. We take those right off the workforce development plan. It gets away from the model of dividing out college-based careers, to kind of putting it all in one pot, careers in general in our region.”
A big part of CTE is getting students out into local industries to develop the skills necessary to succeed in their post-high school paths, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, the program has had to adapt.
“Internships and work-based learning is a huge component of CTE and something we’ve really made a focus over the past year,” said Thompson. “We have internship coordinators at both Nevada Union and Bear River. Their primary role and purpose is to place students out into industries either for job shadowing experience or various internships, paid or unpaid, and that is taking a different shape as we look at next year.
“At first we thought, ‘Well, we won’t have anybody out next year,’ but then we thought, ‘We could do better.’
“Internships and work-based learning is a huge component of CTE and something we’ve really made a focus over the past year,” said Thompson. “We have internship coordinators at both Nevada Union and Bear River. Their primary role and purpose is to place students out into industries either for job shadowing experience or various internships, paid or unpaid, and that is taking a different shape as we look at next year.
“At first we thought, ‘Well, we won’t have anybody out next year,’ but then we thought, ‘We could do better.’
“With that, we have found some really great virtual platforms, particularly in automotive, that we’re looking at piloting to try to get as much skills-based instruction into that virtual format. But there’s no replacement in some of those courses, and I want to stress ‘some,’ for the hands-on tasks that happen in a classroom or a shop.”
Last school year, more than 1,100 Bear River and Nevada Union students took part in CTE courses. Thompson said the program will be expanding and be offered to all high schools in the district next school year.
“We’re going back to those essential learning outcomes,” said Thompson. “We recognize that if we don’t have students in seats for 180 days, there are going to be some things that we’re going to have to do differently. There are safety components that can be taught online, and now leveraging those new platforms, making sure we’re touching on all those major objectives, making sure we’re not short changing students on what we think they should be getting out of those classes. And, I think we’ll be better for it in the end, because we really stayed down to what’s truly important.”
Thompson added, “we’re certainly hoping we have some class time to do the hands-on component.”
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Career Technical Education Programs Receive Over Half a Million Dollars in Grant Money
Education | March 15, 2020 | Sam Corey, The Union
Career Technical Education is a priority for the Nevada Joint Union High School District, as it’s consistently touted and emphasized by administrators.
At a district board meeting Wednesday night, district director of career technical education and state and federal programs Aurora Thompson demonstrated she’s continuing to support that theme.
This past year, Thompson helped the district accrue about a half million dollars in grant money for career technical education. A grant of $82,403 for this year was awarded to help the district organize career technical education pathways; a Strong Workforce grant gave the district $228,720 over three years to help with staffing costs and curriculum development; and another three-year Strong Workforce grant of $303,043 will help the district coordinate internships for the program.
Thompson has applied for another set of grants for culinary, agricultural and construction courses totaling almost $4 million. The director said she will know whether the program is awarded the money on April 6.
To be eligible for the $82,403 — part of a Career Technical Education Incentive Grant — career technical education courses need to get an aggregated average score of at least 27 out of 45, a ranking determined based on course enrollment numbers, whether students complete career technical education pathways and whether they enter jobs or programming similar to their pathway after completion.
During the 2018-19 school year, Nevada Joint Union High School district scored 28. In addition to strengthening all career technical education programs, Thompson has a particular focus on building programs that feed into jobs with the highest demand in the northern California region, namely public service, health care and construction sectors.
Some of the more robust district programs include agricultural courses, said Thompson, as it maintains strong relationships with local industry partners.
“So it really serves as a model for the other pathways,” she said.
One of the issues Thompson must navigate in her position is whether to encourage students to explore different pathways, since if they explore too much, they may not complete a pathway, thereby failing to give the district an opportunity to get more money for a particular course.
“I always try to be balanced in that it’s not all about the money,” said Thompson, “I would never discourage a student from exploring different options." Mostly, the career technical education director said she tries to balance student priorities and remain responsive to their needs.