High school construction academy building careers

LEESBURG — Leesburg High School put life back into its Construction Academy this year, offering students a place to learn about the trade and even make business connections while staying in school.

An $866,000 grant the school won this year has helped reinvent the program into something that can give back to the community while preparing students for trades.

Dan McAuley, the academy’s primary instructor, said the program was overhauled this year as part of a push to provide students with practical, career-oriented experience.

Students were in the workshop only a month after school began, and by homecoming they had constructed a float for the parade among dozens of other projects they’ve put behind them.

Eighty students are in the program’s six classes, which puts them on a path to earn carpentry certification from the National Center for Construction Education and Research.

McAuley said the program also offers students certifications for plumbing, electrical and other trades.

Officials chose carpentry for the core program in hopes that students might encounter these other fields and see something they like.

Carpenters typically have a wider view of a construction project, McAuley said, and so that viewpoint was the best start.

Previously, students went through a rigorous but less focused management program that taught plenty about the wider business but didn’t leave a lot of time in the workshop or offer insight into specific jobs.

Leesburg High Principal Michael Randolph said there were years that students saw almost no workshop time.

Under the new program, students start by learning the ins and outs of the business, how to market themselves to employers and how to stay safe on the job, and then progress to advanced classes that mix education with hands-on skills.

The goal, McAuley said, is to give these students options for the future and to put them four years ahead of anyone they’re competing against.

Once they work through the core NCCER certification, earning subsequent certifications is much quicker.

The Construction Academy is much like any other vocational program offered in Lake County Schools, such as Culinary Arts or Agricultural Sciences. It’s a way to offer career paths to students other than college.

The program’s partnerships make it unique, however.

Sixteen businesses are lined up to interview students for internships in April through the school’s partnership with the Academy of Construction Technologies in Orlando.

Randolph said the Construction Academy was also attracting attention from other schools. The program has met the demand so far, but he predicts that after this year’s showing, there may soon be a waiting list.

As well as promoting business partnerships with the academy, McAuley and other career readiness teachers have been discussing two yearly showcases to help promote the school’s vocational programs and generate interest.

The construction showcase would mostly show off picnic tables, chairs and other, smaller woodwork projects, but McAuley said they soon hope to make sheds and children’s play places as well.

These would contribute to the program’s second funding source — community commissions.

Businesses and community members can already request tables and chairs from the academy, and the school delivers its projects.

The money gets paid up front to pay for the supplies.

Students were working Friday on a number of picnic tables for local businesses and the school’s cafeteria.

Projects are the primary learning tool in the program, McAuley said.

“The skills learned in this picnic table alone are immense,” he said, pointing to one of several tables lined up outside the workshop.

The workshop is where the students store their projects, typically in various stages of construction, and where they work with tools under supervision.

New equipment paid for by the grant is still arriving, McAuley said, and each piece leads to new possibilities.

Students in the program, such as Ashley Rosenmund and Kasey Martin, were excited for the opportunities.

Martin joined the construction academy this year and found the work to be satisfying and the projects to be challenging.

Rosenmund said she was in her third year in the academy, and felt empowered by the program and excited by the work they were able to do.

McAuley said he was proud of the young women in his classes, and that he had even begun looking into an all-girls class. The interest seemed to be there, he said, as long as he could get 24 students to agree.

He added that taking away the stigma of women in construction work was hard, and that he wanted to give girls room to explore construction as an option without having to feel like they were being watched.

The current classes are still a perfectly welcoming environment, he said.

The Construction Academy has a larger milestone coming up in the form of a field trip.

Forty of the students will be going to a Habitat for Humanity site in Yalaha in early November to do maintenance work, gaining their first worksite experience.

The Construction Academy has “bigger plans” for next year, but no one gave hints as to what those might be.

Before then, the parade float from Homecoming has to become a working bathroom.