PSD Future Ready Center at Foothills focuses on helping students graduate with options

Teenagers were pulling apart cabinets and shelves with crowbars and hammers, punching holes in drywall to access electrical connections and pulling apart plumbing fixtures on Halloween.

And no, they weren’t up to no good.

They were learning about construction through deconstruction of hospital rooms in the former maternity ward at UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital — where several of the participating students were born — for a geometry class at Poudre High School.

“Today, we’re learning about how we can make stuff and make it so that it lasts while taking stuff apart,” freshman Royce Dawdy said. “We’re learning how to build things by taking things apart. It’s super cool.”

Dawdy, whose father is a plumber, said he’s always been interested in construction and the trades, so he worked extra hard last year to complete the algebra class students must pass before taking the geometry in construction course.

That class is just one example, Poudre School district officials said, of the wide range of career and technical education options available to its middle and high school students as part of its emphasis on providing graduates with options.

There are at least 18 different pathways PSD students can choose from as they work toward graduation, said Tanya Alcaraz, the district’s director of career and innovation. There are dozens of career and technical education courses available at each of PSD’s traditional high schools in Fort Collins and the new middle-high schools in Timnath and Wellington; additional courses offered at the Futures Lab at Poudre High; work-based learning opportunities that allow students to earn money and course credit simultaneously; and concurrent enrollment programs that offer tuition-free college credit and the opportunity to earn a two-year associate degree through Front Range or Aims community colleges.

PSD schools had 9,669 high school students last year, according to Colorado Department of Education enrollment data. More than 3,300 of those earned college credit and more than 1,000 earned work-based learning credit, Alcaraz said in a news release. Yet many students, parents and others in the community remain unaware of the district’s career and college readiness options.

To spread the word and highlight those opportunities, the district, in partnership with Foothills mall owner McWhinney Inc., opened a new Future Ready Center just inside the mall’s west entrance last month.

More: PSD sees growth in its career pathways programs: Students learn trades, earn cash and credit

During a grand opening celebration Wednesday, students in two of those programs and a representative of one of the district’s business partners spoke of the importance of these programs and need to increase public awareness of them.

Ella Maroni, a senior who won’t graduate from Fossil Ridge High School until May, has already earned one associate degree from Front Range Community College and will earn another next month.

Ella Esteves, a senior at Poudre High, is in the district’s new Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program. She's graduating in December with 13 college credits to put toward the technical engineering degree she hopes to earn after enlisting in the U.S. Navy. She’ll be back at the Future Ready Center at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14, to participate in an informational session with representatives of all branches of service on career options in the military.

Other informational programs, weekly meetings of students involved in multiple organizations and other events are quickly filling up the Future Ready Center calendar, which is available on the PSD website at psdfutureready.org.

Students in PSD’s Architecture, Construction and Engineering program have been involved in the architectural design of Concourse C renovations at Denver International Airport, landscape design of the city of Fort Collins’ new Dovetail Park in the Bucking Horse neighborhood and interior design of a new elementary school in Johnstown.

“All three of those scenarios, our students got to explore from the visioning of that project all the way through,” said Candice Hartley, the business development and marketing group leader for Lamp Rynearson and Associates’ Fort Collins office. “Those are three different projects in the last five years that our students have gotten to engage in with mentors in those professions. It’s an incredible program.

“We’ve had this partnership for about six years, and the ACE program partnership here is the only program across the nation that offers five work-based learning credits for students. No other program in the nation can do this.”

The Future Ready Center also serves as a welcome center for people new to the community to learn about all of the district’s educational programs and options. It will be staffed from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays, with occasional closures for events and staff development meetings, PSD officials said. The city of Fort Collins will have a digital literacy liaison available at the center to help families who speak a language other than English access services through PSD and other local service providers.

The center will also play a role in the district’s integrated services programs, providing a meeting space for PSD’s 3,000 students with special needs to meet and work with businesses and other community partners, said Aaron Vogt, an assistant director of integrated services with the district.

Businesses and other community partners have an increasing role in the district’s work-based learning programs, providing internships, apprenticeships, job-shadow opportunities and other important touch points, Alcaraz said.

Two of those partners, the Fort Collins-based National Center for Craftmanship and the Beck Group, worked together to get those Poudre High students on the job site for the recent deconstruction work at Poudre Valley Hospital. Students took the rooms apart, salvaged as much as possible for reuse in other projects or recycling, and got the opportunity to use the geometry skills and theories they were learning in the classroom on a job site.

“I like working with my hands, and I was tired just sitting in the regular math classroom having to take notes every day,” freshman Mary Smith said as they were wrapping up their work. “I like building, and I’ve been in advanced math since sixth grade, so this was just another option, and it seemed more exciting than regular geometry.”

More: School choice: What you need to know about options within Poudre School District

As they pulled out the drywall, took apart the counters and cabinets, and removed the plumbing fixtures, the students got a good look at how all of those components had been put together. That knowledge will come in handy, teachers Steve Sayers and Chris Boone said, for two houses they're building in the Poudre High parking lot for Habitat for Humanity.

“We only frame out the houses, so we’re working with wood, we’re working with studs, we’re working just two-by-fours and two-by-sixes,” Boone said. “Here, they’re seeing drywall, they’re seeing HVAC, they’re seeing electrical. They’re seeing everything that runs through the building, and when we’re taking it down, they’re much more aware of the processes that put it in.

“Just showing the different faces of construction. That’s what’s important for the students to see.”

That’s really the point of the district’s emphasis on graduating with options, Alcaraz said: For students to sample careers that might interest them and dismiss those that don’t or take a deeper dive into those that do while setting themselves up for success with credits toward college degrees, professional certificates or professional internships or apprenticeships.

“In order us to be relevant into the future and meet the emerging demands of the workforce and higher education, we have to be adaptive,” PSD Superintendent Brian Kingsley said Wednesday. The Future Ready Center, he said, “centers on our future forward facing environment for our students and young adults to reskill, upskill and partner with our community in meaningful ways to have more ownership and authenticity in their learning experience.

“That’s the significance of this place.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: New PSD Future Ready Center highlights graduate with options programs