Class learns skills through R-II admin building project
PHOTOS BY SKYE POURNAZARI/DAILY FORUM
Jordan Piveral, a junior at Maryville High School, works with Jarrett Partridge, junior, at the site of the new administration building on the Maryville High School campus. The Building Trades class of Northwest Technical School plans to have the building completed by the end of the school year. The administration expects to move into it for the 2018-2019 school year.
From teaching automotive skills to knitting, Northwest Technical School offers many different courses throughout the year. However, it’s the Building Trades class that completes a home or building project in that time.
This year the class will build its 50th project. Usually building homes in Maryville and the surrounding area, the class will change it up occasionally for other purposes. This year it’s a new administration building for the Maryville R-II School District.
“This program started in ’67 and it’s built a house (or other building) every year since then,” said Jay Drake, Building Trades instructor. “In the early nineties, the class built the current administration building.”
In fact, it was under the direction of Instructor Pat McKee, that the 1993-94 Building Trades class completed the current administration building. McKee worked as an instructor for the technical school for many years.
Other projects the class has completed include the addition to the technical school itself and the three cabins on the east side at Mozingo Lake.
Jeremy Ingraham, director of Northwest Technical School said the skills students gain from working in the Building Trades class allow them to move directly into the workforce or further their skills with more technical training.
“Those kids are truly getting the skills they need to have in order to find work locally or across the country,” Ingraham said. “I’ve worked with the advisory committee to make sure those students have the real tools of the trade. Through grants and funding, they’ll have tools that are used on professional construction sites, whether local or across the country.”
The students gain hands-on experience using, for example a telehandler, something the school didn’t have when the program started 50 years ago. The vehicle, similar to a forklift, allows the students to lift materials high enough for use on multiple levels without carrying it on their person. This adds safety and gives the students access to equipment currently used by professionals.
The technical school serves 14 Nodaway County schools, most tend to be from Maryville, but all are welcome.
“We will take students in the afternoon from any school,” Ingraham said.
In the morning Building Trades class, there are 11 students. In the afternoon, there are five. These 16 students plan to complete the entirety of the building by the end of the school year.
Jordan Piveral, junior at Maryville High School said. “We’ll probably get it done March or April if we have no snow days.”
Drake said the class will give students the skills to “build their own house, or maybe do their own repairs.”
Working on this project is an opportunity to see a project from start to finish.
“We will work until it’s done,” Drake sad. “We’re shooting for the end of this school year. We have to have it done by May. I think we’re a little ahead of schedule. We’re going to try to get it closed in before the first snow flies. You never know what it’s going to be like.”
The administration plans to move to the new facility for the 2018-2019 school year.
“We’re thrilled about it,” said Becky Albrecht, superintendent of Maryville R-II Schools
The district’s comprehensive school improvement plan showed that the school was in need of expanding its alternative services, and also adding some separation from the buildings that were already on campus.
The project began as a new alternative school, but it was decided that the current building could meet all the needs for the alternative services and a new, smaller building would work for the administration.
“They’ll (offices) be a little smaller,” she said. “We won’t have two levels, like we have here. We really don’t need that space. It’s great, but we don’t need it. So, then we can convert this into the school.”
The superintendent sees it as more of a way to keep, “everything on campus, consolidated where we can just walk across the street and communicate.
SKYE POURNAZARI/DAILY FORUM
Jarrett Partridge cuts a board, after measuring more than twice, to place on the frame of the new administration building.
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SKYE POURNAZARI/DAILY FORUM
Building Trade class instructor Jay Drake shows Jarrett Partridge where she should be cutting this board in the administration building site.
