Sandpoint High School students will have new opportunities in culinary arts and automotive work after a more than 12,000-square-foot Career Technical Education Center was completed this summer.
Lake Pend Oreille School District officials and community members gathered Tuesday to celebrate the new CTEC building.
A $3.5 million Idaho Career Ready Students grant, along with support from community partners, helped fund the more than $5 million project. Students can access the building through hallways connecting the expansion to Sandpoint High.
“We believe deeply that there is no single pathway to success after high school,” Superintendent Becky Meyer said. “Our responsibility is to help every student discover their strengths, explore their interests and leave high school prepared to take their next step with confidence.”
The expansion gives students more course sections in agriculture and natural resources, health professions and public safety, and engineering and technology, along with more advanced offerings.
The facility also allows the district to add a culinary arts and hospitality pathway this spring and an automotive pathway in the fall of 2027.
‘A sense of belonging’
When he was in high school, Alex Gray found belonging in his automotive class.
He took all the automotive classes he could, not just because he wanted to work on his pickup but because he liked his teacher, Dave Jordan. Ahead of graduation, Gray felt unsure of which colleges to apply to and what to study. He asked Jordan for advice.
“It was that kind of a rapport that I felt like I could call him up like after I graduated, and I think I did a few times,” Gray said.
Now Gray, career technical education director at CTEC, hopes to provide that same sense of belonging and mentorship to students.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s nursing or welding; they just find a sense of belonging,” Gray said of CTE students. “They find something they’re excited to talk about the dinner table, something to be passionate about.”
Gray teaches information technology with a focus on cybersecurity. Students in his program are responsible for maintaining the district’s Chromebooks.
They use a ticketing system for issues, similar to most professional IT departments. His old classroom was tucked above the welding shop, next to the school’s gym. Gray now has a specialized classroom with storage for Chromebook parts and a work area where he can observe working students while teaching.
Gray isn’t alone in seeing significant upgrades. Nursing assistant and sports medicine students now have space for patient beds to get hands-on practice. Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) students are now in the high school, instead of behind the middle school in a former driver’s ed building. Carpentry students now have an industry-standard shop.
An automotive teacher hasn’t been hired yet, but CTEC has lifts and a state-of-the-art facility ready to go. Construction work continues on the culinary arts classroom, which will feature a faux restaurant to give students experience in everything from running a restaurant-grade dishwasher to serving a fine dining meal. The new classroom is near the cafeteria next to the welding shop.
“Bringing CTEC to life has taken years of planning, persistence and partnership,” Meyer said. “The Idaho Career Ready Students Grant provided the major investment that allowed us to move this vision forward, and we have also received tremendous support from local businesses, organizations and community partners who recognize the importance of investing in our students and our regional workforce.”
Those community partners include:
- Panhandle Alliance for Education
- Idaho Forest Group
- Litehouse
- Kiwanis
- Rotary
- Gription Tire
Courses at the facility are also open to homeschool, private school and part-time students.
“What excites me most now is seeing students take advantage of these opportunities. Seeing them work with their hands, solve problems, learn from skilled educators and industry partners, and discover abilities or interests they may not have known they had is what this project has always been about,” Meyer said. “Ultimately, CTEC is about giving students more ways to find what they’re good at, explore where it could take them and begin preparing for their future.”
