Exciting times for Career and Technologies Studies: principal

New sewing machines, fridges and stoves have now arrived at Jasper Jr./Sr. High School as part of a provincial careers and technologies grant given to the Grande Yellowhead Regional Division (GYRD) to help improve and update the Career and Technologies Studies (CTS) being offered.

Principal Mark Crozier said it was an “exciting time for career technologies” in Jasper. According to Crozier, the home economics program has had a total revamp with a fleet of new sewing machines, fridges and stoves that replaced the sometimes 25-year-old machines.

The school received a similar grant in 2007/08 towards their shop, and the new machinery has been slowly put in place. “We’ve got a whole bunch of new equipment that arrived in the fall of this year and we’re just getting that set up,” the principal said.

The latest provincial grant, which was announced in the summer or 2008, gives GYRD a total of $400,000 which is being rolled out in $135,000 increments over the next three years amongst the five high schools in the region. 

Nicole Merrifield, communications manager for GYRD, said the money was designed to go directly to the costs of equipment to keep high schools up to date with the latest technology. Merrifield stressed the importance of this money going towards up-to-date technology that meant students would be using equipment at school that is also used in the workplace. According to Merrifield the main idea of CTS training is “just to keep students interested in their high school education and that when they do graduate they can move into a field that they’re interested in.”

Sharon Styles, GYRD learning services supervisor, explained that the board had to prioritize where to put the money: “there are three areas of concern. Firstly, safety issues [with workshop equipment, for example]. The second area was current programing, to make sure we could maintain the area of the programming that we currently have in place and the equipment was updated to meet those needs. And, the third priority was to look at future possibilities and that’s where the grant proposal came in.”

Crozier confirmed that the next round of funding, for the 2008/09 school year, would again reach Jasper and would be used to purchase some digital cameras to implement Photoshop publishing. He hopes the money will come in over the spring so they can be purchased and implemented over the summer.

Harry Collinge High School in Hinton has also prospered from the provincial grant and has upgraded their shop as well as purchasing embroidery sewing machines. “They want to run a bit of a partnership with community members also, where they will have capabilities to create team jerseys and things like that,” Styles said.

Edson’s Parkland Composite High School is also hoping that future grant money will allow them to set up a full-scale hair salon that would run outside of school hours and allow students to start their apprenticeships prior to leaving high school.

While both Syles and Merrifield were happy to see the funding coming to the region, after many years without, they said it was still difficult to plan without knowing when the next lot of funding will reach GYRD. “One of the problems is that the funding hasn’t be announced in a sustainable, long term way,” said Merrifield. “We’re not able to do long term planning.”