Jal Schools to Partner with Eunice to Expand CTE Classes
By John Earp
At the December 15th meeting of the Jal School Board, Superintendent Brian Snider informed the board members present of a new approach to vocational education, in which resources from both Jal and Eunice School Districts will be pooled and coordinated so that students at both schools will have more options for vocational training. Snider said he had begun talking to the Superintendent of Eunice Schools about ways both schools may benefit through a vocational educational partnership. Presently, Snider said Jal Schools is “way ahead of” Eunice with regard to vocational or certified technician (CTECH) training, with Shop, Automotive, Oil & Gas, and Culinary, with Eunice wanting to expand its vocational training into more fields. Snider said that Jal Junior High Principal, Mr. Nathan Richard, will be working with both Eunice and Jal to coordinate both districts’ vocational training offerings. Snider said this is a new approach for small districts, which he thinks will rival the CTECH training offered in larger districts such as Hobbs. Snider said, “Basically, if we have four things to offer, Eunice will have four things to offer,” with students at both campuses being able to choose between a total of eight different types of vocational training. He said if students went into internships, for instance, with a restaurant, the students could sign a waiver and drive themselves to their places of internship. Snider further said he was looking at even expanding the training programs offered down to even junior high.
Snider said concerning Mr. Richard’s involvement, “I’m so excited about this because he’s like the perfect person to do this. He knows people in both districts. He’s going to work with them to the point of being hired by them as well. So, Mr. Richard would be split between Jal and Eunice to run all CTE. He would run all of it in both places. He would have administrative authority in both towns. So that way he can get into their schedule, he can get into their offerings, and we’re not duplicating services. There’s no reason to have FFA in both towns. They have a great FFA we don’t have. Wouldn’t that be cool if our kids could go to an FFA program in the other town. I mean, that would be great. And if we had something for freshmen that don’t drive yet, for instance, that’s when we could have a transportation block, where the Hobbs bus drops them off for two or three hours and comes back and picks them back up. We’re thinking about things like how to make that work with our existing transportation infrastructure as far as transportation. Then, when they do internships, they just scatter to the four winds, because you may have one student doing an internship with an oil & gas company and one at a restaurant and then a third one with an electrician and then a fourth one with Lasco Construction. Lasco has wanted to take some in for summer jobs and internships if they want to be in construction trades. You’re going to see a mind-blowing thing over the next few years, with our school district just kind of blowing up into not just college but just a lot of different career pathways. And so it’s pathways versus electives. An elective is like, ‘I love that Rocket program.’ It’s just a two-year program, not a pathway into anything, but it’s a great thing to learn math and skills and wonderful as far as kids still needing to do things that interest them. But then they also need to think about things that maybe they want to go into a career. Even if they don’t go into that career, they could go into something close to it. Say, welding. Well, that could be other things they could do in the oilfield, not just welding. There are different things that will help them.”
Snider continued by saying they were planning on copying the current Oil & Gas Program, that was put together with industry partners who can tell the schools what they want students to know. He said, “We’re just barely scratching the surface of what we can do. Since CTE is so new, I was talking to Eunice, we’re thinking we could probably get away with a lot more because it’s so new, there’s not a lot of shackles put on it yet. You know how the state, they love to get involved and screw everything up? We’ll this is like us, we’re going to be able…no one else is doing this or that involved where there’s like eight different career paths for two small towns. It’s kind of unheard of. We want to go above what they’re doing in Hobbs, because what they’re doing—and nothing against them—but that career high school in Hobbs [CTECH] is kind of pigeonholing themselves into different trades. Like they’ve got this huge setup for electricians. Well, we’re kind of thinking of going more broad in skills, like AI. So, AI is another thing. It kind of blows your mind, but the artificial intelligence aspect will change every job that’s already out there. So how do we get the kids on board with that and how to use AI by the time they graduate? AI will even help them do a resume; it will help them with their job every day. It’s just mind-blowing for us, and it’s hard to even wrap your mind around it, there’s so much changing in the world.”