Having high-tech equipment available for students is very nice. But for some school districts, such equipment is too expensive and/or impractical to make it available in every high school. So educators are using ingenuity and cooperation to make sure their students have equal opportunity in applied technology fields.
For example, Richmond-Burton High School District 157 has only 350 students and just 48 students enrolled in applied technology, said Supt. Ron Erdmann.
So while the school district is in McHenry County, they own an equity in the Lake County technical center, with students traveling there by school bus and taking classes paid for by their district, Erdmann said.
“This provides our students with 19 programs of instruction,” he said, “something we alone could not provide.”
Richmond is also working on developing a cooperative program with business and industry where students would get technical training at job sites, he said.
Similar cooperative programs are under way throughout the northwest suburbs. For example, Harper College in Palatine also offers courses for high school students that individual schools could not offer because there would not be a large enough enrollment, according to Pam Block, executive director of Career Cooperative for Harper, which serves 12 high schools.
The most popular courses are fire science technology, health orientation, nurses assistant training and introduction to law enforcement, Block said, all courses that are taught by people in those particular industries.
Another cooperative program is under way at Elgin Community College which offers classes in 15 areas to high school students from the St. Charles, Elgin and Carpentersville-Dundee school districts, according to Lloyd Cundiff, tech prep coordinator for Elgin Community College.
“Students are so pleased that they can pursue something in a field that they want,” Cundiff said.
The college provides training for tech prep students in which students come to the campus for college-credit courses half days during their senior year. The college also has a partnership with the school districts to provide standard technology courses, such as automotive tech and computer-aided design, at the high school level, Cundiff said.
