Jal and Eunice to Partner with Innovative CTE Programs
By John Earp
At the January 26th meeting of the Jal Board of Education, Superintendent Brian Snider asked Mr. Nathan Richard, newly appointed CTE (Career and Technical Education) Director for both Jal and Eunice School Districts, to explain to the board about innovative, new developments in the expansion of vocational and technical courses that will be available to students in both districts. Mr. Richard began by noting that at present, Jal’s program is about at its limits as far as its capacity for scheduling more classes and obtaining more instructors for new fields.
He said, “Just before Christmas, when we went to the CTE conference in Nashville, [Mr. Snider] was visiting with the superintendent of Eunice, and they realized that we could kind of maximize student opportunity and expand each district’s capacity if we collaborated on our CTE programs. And so they asked me to direct CTE for both districts. I started that in January—actually started working on it over Christmas break, and very quickly realized that doing that outside of the office allowed me to really focus in on CTE programs and get a lot done. So one of the things, one of the first steps that I took was to kind of inventory programs and kind of evaluate what stage of development they were. Of course, I already have really good idea about what we have here. So I spent a lot of time in Eunice trying to evaluate those to see where those programs were and trying to learn systems there. And ultimately, I spoke with students in both buildings, and we sent out student surveys. And one of the interesting things about the students that I realized through this and visiting with counselors from both districts, is that especially sophomore students tend to think that they’re going to go to college. They believe that they’re going to go to college, that’s their goal. As they move into their junior, senior year, for whatever reason, that kind of fizzles out. And as a matter of fact, in our district here, over the last three years, there’s been an average of about 6.5%, give or take, students that have actually gone to college.”
He continued, “And the last, the same 3 years, right around 3%, staying in college were finished. So I think that that kind of attests to the fact that students are getting off into the workforce, and we are sure that as the entity that prepares them for life in adulthood that we’re doing a good job for that. So, for the student surveys, I was really focused on programs that were already being investigated.”
Richard noted that the highest student interest was in nursing, or medical training, the second highest was business. Other areas of student interests noted were criminology and cosmetology. He said the interest in business surprised him, saying, “A lot of them are really interested in business with finance or stock market and all sorts of things, which was really cool, honestly. There’s a lot of interest in things like cosmetology and welding, and oil and gas engineering.” Other interests students have is in art, theatre, culinary, teaching, and FFA, which Eunice has a strong FFA program presently, which, he said, is “actually is a really difficult program to start. It takes a lot of different things to get going. It takes a really knowledgeable person to make it happen. And this partnership, I think, is going to allow those students that are interested to participate without us having to do all the labor that they’ve already done. So this has a very strong FFA program, which Richard says can be difficult to start, as it takes a very knowledgeable person to start and head it up. About the Eunice FFA program, he said, “They’ve got a good teacher, and they’ve been competing for the last 3 years. Currently, they do judging and leadership and horticulture.”
Mr. Snider and Mr. Richard recently met with colleagues at New Mexico Junior College in the hopes of coordinating the high school and junior college programs to make them all work together effectively and efficiently.
Mr. Snider interjected, saying, “So within a few years, I expect Mr. Richard will have our programs advanced as much or more than the junior college is. Would I want a junior college that has programs behind ours? So, we go to the junior college in step with our programs that are actually next level, whether it’s raising that level, that’s what our goal is, to make it more hours, or at least as comprehensive, as good as the junior college programs. And then from there, they can take it to help us with a certificate or whatever it was, we’ll be able to give students to do. And that was exactly what I communicated to the junior college in that meeting, was that I wanted as many of our staff at both districts certified to teach dual credit if possible. And us work together to make that more effective.”
One advantage to the students which was noted was that, if Jal and Eunice School Districts can work together to provide CTE training that is presently primarily offered at the junior college level, students who normally travel over two hours each school day to Hobbs for training will have more time in the classroom, since they would not be required to ride the bus to Hobbs every day.
Richard continued, “We’re intentionally looking at curriculum and trying to find the perfect one, looking at setting up an advisory board, to sit on that, to kind of guide us in preparing kids for them, right? Industry partners. And speaking of which, oil and gas advisory is Thursday. One of the things that Miss Parsons and I have been looking into for that is a company that’s paired with Coterra, one of our industry partners, is piloting a virtual reality headset software that they use to train people on how to do different things around batteries or compressor stations. And so this pilot program, they’re going to provide the VR headsets. We’re looking to get rolling on that as soon as possible. Richard says that he anticipates in the next couple of months we should have headsets.
Superintendent Snider mentioned that Mr. Richard’s “job is the liaison work with the principals. So, he does have to work with them. You know, that way you guys understand the structure.” Richard’s salary will be split between the two districts, with each district paying half, under a memorandum of understanding between Eunice and Jal School Districts. An issue that will have to be hashed out is the scheduling, as well as the transportation of students back and forth between campuses.
Board Secretary Jaime Earp asked if we are anticipating any issues with the rivalry between the two districts. Mr. Richard and Mr. Little both said that since the entire CTE program was a privilege, they would not allow the rivalry (which is mainly just in sports) to affect the CTE program.
Richard added that he will soon possibly be traveling to Arkansas and Wisconsin to see how they put CTE programs in place with multiple districts involved.