Learning the ropes
Career and Technical Education students from Hays and Lehman high schools honed their skills on Saturday at Kyle Fire Station #2.
“Get up there, cut the hole, get down without getting dead.”
That’s a gross simplification of instructions Career and Technical Education (CTE) students from Hays and Lehman high schools got Saturday morning from a Kyle firefighter, but it contains all the basics.
The students spent their day at Kyle Fire Station 2 learning not only the skills required of professional firefighters, but also the essential component of keeping safe in hazardous circumstances.
The exercise involved horizontal ventilation – using a ladder to climb onto a training “roof,” then cutting a hole in the roof with a chainsaw to allow smoke to escape a burning building.
Like everything else in firefighting, it involves teamwork. And like everything the CTE program provides for students in the Hays CISD, it prepares them for a soft entry into the workforce upon graduation from high school.
That’s exactly what Lehman junior Jason Iwabuchi and Coleman Sanchez, a junior at Hays, were looking for, they told the Hays Free Press.
Both said they intend to stick with the program through their senior year, when they will be able to take an exam that will allow them to pursue employment as a professional firefighter.
In all, the district provides CTE in 19 different disciplines ranging from Animal Science to Teaching & Training, culinary arts and cosmetology – just to name a few. Of those, 18 programs offer some sort of certification at the end, said Marco Pizano, internship coordinator for the CTE program.
One of those is in accounting and finances, where students can be certified in Quickbooks and Microsoft – required by some businesses, Pizano said.
“Another is Animal Science. They can get their veterinary assistant certification, which takes about 500 hours to actually acquire.
Pizano coordinates internships through Rural Capital Area Workforce Solutions, which encompasses 13 Central Texas counties.
“We have an advisory committee meeting with local employers who come out and talk about what they need,” PIzano said. “It’s a living program because, with the needs of the community, we try to doctor it to what the businesses are wanting.”
A highlight of the program is Senior Hiring Day, held each April, at which businesses needing students and students wanting a job after graduation get to interact one-on-one. The event gives participating students “options to see that there are businesses where the skills they are learning in school can be put to work.”
Though it’s traditionally held at the district’s Performing Arts Cener, this year’s Senior Hiring Day will be at San Marcos High School because of a scheduling conflict. It will return to the PAC in Kyle for the 2020-2021 school year.
Programs are available at Hays, Lehman and Johnson high schools except for Aerospace. That is held at Johnson only but open to students from the other two, Pizano said.
CTE Director Suzi Mitchell said the programs are geared to the times in which we live – times that are different than 20 years ago, the age of “No Child Left Behind.”
Back then it was assumed that “every child was going to go to college, which didn’t exactly work out the way they had planned.”
Instead, she said, the majority of high school students are not bound for a four-year degree. That, coupled with the fact that many skilled laborers are now retiring, means “we can’t fill those jobs.”
“The pendulum has swung back,” Mitchell said. “We needed to start putting money into careers and technology.”
Professional Kyle firefighter Jason Schultz said he appreciates working with the high school students in the CTE program.
“They’re good kids and all local guys. It’s fun getting to help mold the next generation,” he said during a break in the Saturday exercises. “They’re a little green but they are excited to learn, which is good. You can’t teach that.”
Schultz said he wishes CTE had been available when he was still in high school. “It would have been a game changer,” he said. “These guys have got two years on me, for sure.”
