Career/tech: What other districts do

Here’s some of what Northwest Arkansas’ smaller school districts offers for career and technical education:

Decatur shares programming with Gravette and Gentry. Students attend classes in nursing, welding, diesel technology and heating, ventilation and air conditioning. The agriculture program is the district’s strongest, said Superintendent Jeff Gravette.

Elkins offers career and technical courses in business/ marketing, agriculture, and family and consumer sciences. This year it is piloting a new program — pathway, supply chain and logistics. Elkins and other districts send students to the South Washington County Career Center at the old Farmington High School, where students take courses in health professions and computer engineering. It’s a partnership of Northwest Technical Institute and Northwest Arkansas Community College.

Gentry last year opened a $2 million, 13,000-square-foot Career and Technical Education Center, the result of public and private cooperation. Programs include health care, information technology and diesel technology. Northwest Technical Institute and Northwest Arkansas Community College help with instruction.

Gravette offers classes as a satellite campus of the

Northwest Technical Institute. Students may get nursing assistant certification, take classes in welding or heating, ventilation and air conditioning. This semester’s welding students come from the Gravette, Decatur, Bentonville, Siloam

Springs and Gentry school districts, according to Gravette

High School Principal Jay Chalk.

Greenland programs include agriculture, business, and family and consumer sciences. Each program incorporates community partnerships. For example, the agriculture greenhouse

grows plants and vegetables that are sold and sometimes used in the cafeteria, according to Superintendent Andrea Martin. Other programs — such as dental hygiene, computer science and welding — involve partnerships with Northwest Arkansas Community College, Northwest Technical Institute and the University of Arkansas.

Pea Ridge launched a conversion charter school in 2014 called the Pea Ridge Manufacturing and Business Academy, a two-year program giving students real-world exposure to careers. Health care and nursing, industrial technology, plastic and metal fabrication, and marketing and logistics are the pathways offered. The academy has 162 students.

Siloam Springs has the third-most vocational offerings among Arkansas schools districts, according to Superintendent Ken Ramey. The Career Academy of Siloam Springs, opened in 2015, offers instruction in manufacturing trade skills. A new internship program allows high school seniors to work 10 to 15 hours per week in 10 areas of interest. A customer service class gives bilingual students an opportunity to practice their English and Spanish skills in business

settings through internships to help fill the need for bilingual employees.

West Fork offers four programs of study: Family consumer science, business education, agricultural science and construction technology. In the family consumer science area, West Fork received a grant from the state this school year to continue a program it started last year, called orientation to teaching, in which students may take several education courses. The program gives students field experience in classrooms of district teachers, according to John Crowder, West Fork High School principal.