First up today, school is back in session in many area school districts. Next week, the Rogers School District will be welcoming students back. On August 13, the Rogers Public School District's Career Center will have something new for those students: a fire truck.
The truck, in running order but retired from service, will be available as part of coursework in the Medium Heavy Truck program for students from three Rogers high schools. Yesterday, Charles Lee, assistant superintendent for secondary education, and Tiana Young, Career and Technical Education director for Rogers Public Schools, took a few minutes to talk about the Career Center in general and its curriculum, as well as the fire truck specifically.
Charles Lee says that truck is the latest example of a longtime partnership between school and community.
Charles Lee: You know, we're blessed to live in Northwest Arkansas and have such community support. This was a gift donation from the City of Rogers. We've had a longstanding partnership with the city, and we actually donated a bus to them several years ago to use—for their fire department to use for training and for transportation to firefighters during the academy. So there's been a longstanding partnership there.
And Tiana was able to have some conversations with the people from the foundation and former foundation people, and there was a connection there. And I'll let Tiana explain how she came about getting the fire truck. But it was through just a conversation that—we were really just fortunate to have the opportunity to take it, and they graciously gave it to us.
Kyle Kellams: So take me through the machinations to get that here.
Tiana Young: Yes, of course. The Rogers Public Education Foundation is just, like Mr. Lee said, a long-term partner of ours. They've been great, instrumenting conversations, putting me with people that can help grow our Career and Technical Education programs.
And so I had lunch with them one day, kind of gave them a layout of our needs. And our diesel program is fairly new, and our students really just needed some kind of hands-on object or something to work and tinker with. And so after conversations and meetings and various things, here we are with our fire truck.
Kellams: You mentioned the diesel program. I think people who might not have been in high school for a while will go, “Wait a second, I didn’t have a diesel program.” What is the diesel program?
Young: Yes. So diesel is just one of the many Career and Technical Education programs we offer here at Rogers Public Schools. Here in our Career Center, we have automotive, manufacturing, welding, agriculture, and health sciences—and diesel.
And so diesel is where students really—after they—we teach them the standards from the state, but then our teacher was a mechanic at one point, came back to teach. And so he really gets them the ins and the outs of possibly running your own business one day, but also getting in the engine and really taking vehicles apart, putting them back together. Oil changes, brakes, all—anything that has to do with diesel, they do it in this class.
Kellams: So with a fire truck, you’ve got a unique opportunity. Now, I don’t know enough about auto mechanics to know if it is similar to other diesels or not, but this is like real-world experience that you can have.
Young: Absolutely real-world experience. It is the diesel engine itself. It’s my understanding—I’m not a mechanic either, Kyle—but it’s my understanding that the diesel engine is a diesel engine. And that’s what we see in large pieces of equipment like this and even the 18-wheelers on the road.
Just being able to take it apart and look at it and explain the workings of that engine, to have it in this type format is just incredible. For us to be able to have an opportunity like this for our students—it gives them that real-world experience.
Lee: So again, as Tiana said, this is just one of many programs that we have here. This is one that we're very proud of. We added this—we're actually in an area of the building right now that was added on specifically for this program.
And then we also added that construction trades program, which is next door, where—we just sold a mini or a tiny home. And they built it right here next door. So great programs going on in this building, but this is just one of many.
And again, it's through partnerships, and it's through Tiana's work with the foundation, with the Chamber of Commerce, with different people in the community—just reaching out and having conversations. And we're blessed to live, like I said, in Northwest Arkansas.
Kellams: This fire truck runs. I mean, this is not something that was mothballed.
Young: That is correct. We’re also excited to use it more than our high school kids. But we take our eighth graders through the entire Career Center along with their feeder patterns to see and showcase all of the CTE programs that we offer.
And so even eighth graders will get to see this and see high school students working on it and be like, “Oh wait, that could be me one day.” We bring fifth graders and we do things with them—trying to career exploration earlier, so they see more than just what mom and dad do at home, but what are the other options out there for jobs and careers in the future. And so we're excited to use it for more than just in the shop.
Kellams: You mentioned a tiny home that was built here.
Lee: We did. And Tiana can explain a lot too. We have construction trades—it was just, we kind of expanded the program and added a nice lab here next door to us. And the students, over the school year, built the tiny home from ground up. And it was really a beautiful tiny home. The work they did on it was incredible.
And we actually had an auction here a few weeks ago and auctioned it off, and they actually came and picked it up a week or two ago. And so I’m sure we’ll go back through that process again with Andy, who’s the teacher there, and do it again.
Kellams: So what’s it like? I mean, we’re about to get into the conventional school year again here in a couple of weeks. What’s it like in this building on a Monday through Friday during those months?
Young: I like to brag that I have the best job in the district because I get to support all of these programs. And so first week of school, there’s going to be a lot of training, just talking—maybe sitting and getting. All of our kids go through the OSHA programs before they even touch foot in shop, because safety first, right?
But after that, you’ll see kids working with their hands, up out of the seats. You’ll walk in Mr. McLane’s construction trades class—and maybe 10 to 15 minutes each day—but then the rest of the hour, half of class, they’re up and they’re working.
We had a kid that didn’t have a bed. They had a mattress at home but no bed. And so one of their personal projects for the year was to build—they built their own bed frame.
And so while some kids are working on the tiny home, we’ve got kids working on personal projects. And it’s just so cool to see the kids be innovative and come up with their different projects they want to do for the year.
Kellams: Why is this sort of curriculum important for public schools to provide?
Lee: You know, one of the things that we do—we talk about preparing students for a purpose-driven future. And that’s our vision now. We want to make sure that we are giving students opportunities when they graduate, whether it’s to be employed, enlist, or enroll in higher education—whatever that is.
You know, “college and career ready” was a very common term, but we just want to make sure that we’re giving our students opportunities to leave here with a skill where they’ll be able to either be employed, enlist in the military, or enroll in an institution of higher learning. So that’s the value of these programs.
You know, a student can graduate from this program right here and not have to go to higher education and provide for a good living—for him and a family or her and a family.
Kellams: You mentioned that a lot of this is, you know, done in partnership with community and businesses and Chamber of Commerce. What are those conversations like?
Because, as I alluded to at the beginning of my conversation, this sort of curriculum has really flourished and blossomed over the last decade or so.
Young: Partnerships are important. We are the pipeline. We’re giving them their future employees. And so it’s important that we have those conversations on what is it that they need. Do those students need to have a certain industry-recognized certification, whether it be OSHA or an ASE in the automotive department?
And I know I’m throwing educational jargon at you, but when it comes to those partnerships, we rely on industry to tell us what they need from our students so that our teachers can make sure those students are ready with those skills to move on.
Some of those skills are transferable skills—communication, how to work on a team, those sorts of things. And they’re going to get that in all of our programs, which is great, because if you do start in construction and you’re like, “Hey, this is not for me,” you still learn skills that you can take on to the next program.
But Career and Technical Education really makes sure that students are ready for whatever those next steps are after high school.
Kellams: It’s a big word on both sides of this building—“Launch.” What more should we know about that?
Young: Launch is really our branding for all of our Career and Technical Education programs within Rogers Public Schools. So whether you’re at Rogers High School, you’re at Rogers Heritage, or you’re at Rogers New Tech, or you’re here at the Career Center, you are taking courses under that Launch umbrella.
And so really, it’s how we set ourselves apart. We brand ourselves as, hey, if you’re in our Launch programs, then you are going to be ready for those next steps.
Lee: Again, you can walk through this entire building and see all these different programs that we have. We’re just now finishing up—right over here, back behind us to the left—our welding lab. We’ve changed that. We used to have an ag mechanics, ag metals class, and we actually went to a welding pathway.
And again, the thing that Tiana was talking about—Career and Technical Education has really been transformed in the last 8 to 10 years. Used to, it was, “those kids take those classes.” It’s not that way anymore.
We’re trying to prepare kids, and we want to make sure that we’re giving the message out that this is for anyone who’s looking for a career to explore and see what it is—maybe that it’s their niche, whatever it is that fits their needs. And all these programs in here have been outstanding.
Tiana has done a great job. She’s been on board with us now—she’s starting her third year, I believe, with us as our CTE director—been outstanding at forming those partnerships that you have to have.
Are they high-wage jobs? Are they high-demand jobs? That’s one of the things that she focuses on. And all these programs are. That we have here, that a student again can graduate high school from here, and if they don’t want to go to college—you know what? That’s okay. They’re prepared to go to work and have a good salary.
And fortunately, in Northwest Arkansas, it’s pretty high demand right now in a lot of these areas too.
Narrator: All right. So the fire truck comes through a partnership donation. Are there any other items that you’re looking for, or—even if not—but you’re looking for other partners? How do people do that?
Young: So people ask how they get involved all the time. And not everyone has something to donate. But even being a part of our advisory council, where we have meetings twice a year—we encourage our teachers to, and we’ll create those meetings where we invite people to the table and we have a conversation.
We’ll buy them lunch, and we’ll just talk about, again, what can we do to make sure our kids are ready for your career?
And then that next step is guest speakers. It’s crazy how we’ll tell a kid something, but as soon as we bring in a third party and they say the exact same thing, the kid’s eyes light up like, “Oh really?”—like they’ve never heard that before.
And so we love guest speakers and people to come—even if they want to bring in something for kids to tinker on, that’s great too. And then again, we’re always looking for vehicles. You only can take something apart so many times before the nuts and bolts start to not go together anymore, right?
So we’re always looking for those types of things. Our welding is going to start building trailers and constructing tiny homes, so even partnerships that help with that—plumbing supplies, electrical supplies, wood, anything, shingles, those sorts of things.
Really, just anybody that wants to get involved—we have a program and a place for you.
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