Severance High School breaks ground on new Career and Technical Education center – Greeley Tribune
Colorado data shows just one year of taking a Career and Technical Education Center course can increase graduation rates, becoming a new, stable option for today’s K-12 students who don’t plan to attend a traditional college.
The Weld RE-4 School District hosted a groundbreaking ceremony of the Severance High School addition and Career & Technical Education Center on Wednesday afternoon.
Severance High School’s CTE center will provide students with space for in-demand, hands-on technical education classes. Severance Mayor Matthew Fries believes the new CTE center will innovate how the school prepares youth to enter the workforce.
His only criticism about the project — it’s not big enough, he joked on Wednesday. Fries foresees the addition of a CTE center at Severance High will result in an increased demand for this type of learning and a spike in young people’s success after high school.
Weld RE-4 has already seen student success thanks to its CTE program, Superintendent Michelle Scallon said. During her time as a CTE teacher at Windsor High School, she saw a passion for welding grow in a student who hated going to school.
“He would come to school because he loved it,” Scallon said.
CTE opportunities such as welding offered the former student and many more the chance to become successful in their community while giving back to the community. Trade jobs, which provide secure career paths and good pay for families, have 40,000 openings across the nation, according to Severance High School Principal Waren Morrow.
Students used to fall back on the military as a postsecondary option instead of pursuing college, Morrow said, but now only 25% of 18-24 year olds are eligible to join the military. He called the CTE pathways the new “fallback” among students who can’t or don’t want to attend college.
Although these pathways have touched the lives of hundreds of students Scallon said Weld RE-4 is adding the CTE center “for our future.”
The CTE center will cover a wide variety of career paths from culinary arts and fashion to business and welding, according to Morrow. The addition to the northwest side of the school building will include a welding shop with an attached classroom and storage for materials and tools, an agricultural science lab, a greenhouse, a diesel mechanic shop and staff offices.
Lance Nichols, a Weld RE-4 board member, called the groundbreaking a “happy day” and cited Colorado statistics to showcase the importance of CTE opportunities — particularly how graduation rates improved if students took CTE courses for a year or more.
In 2022, the Colorado graduation rate was 82.3%, but there was a 96% graduation rate for students who spent one year in CTE courses, Nichols said. That figure increased to more than 97.5% for students who spent two years in CTE courses.
Severance High School will also expand its campus, adding 42,239 square feet and increasing the school capacity to 1,200 students. The additional wing, or “pod,” will have 18 classrooms including flexible learning spaces and science labs, a culinary kitchen with catering prep space, teacher work rooms, collaboration space and conference rooms.
Weld RE-4 staff turned both projects from a dream into reality with the community’s support of a November 2022 $271-million bond package. Nichols ensures the Board of Education spends the funding wisely, he said.
In addition to the developments at Severance High School, the bond package funds two new elementary schools, a new 900-capacity middle school, an addition at Severance Middle School, a Windsor Charter Academy expansion and existing repairs and replacements.
To view the projects, go to bond.weldre4.org/projects.
Weld RE-4 expects construction on the Severance High School projects to conclude in 2025.
“College was once seen as steak, while CTE was seen as hamburger,” Nichols said, citing a quote. “Today, college is still steak, but CTE has become lobster. In the ideal K-12 school setting, all students would be engaged in high quality surf and turf.”