By Mary Owen
A residential lot donation has inspired a new Stayton High School Pathway: building homes.
Long-time Stayton resident Bill Martinak and his family, operating jointly as JCNW, LLC, donated a property on West Washington Street in Stayton for SHS students to work alongside professional contractors in building a residential home starting in September. The donation resulted in a new SHS pathway that has SHS Principal Alan Kirby excited.
“It has taken lots of community and district support to get it going and it is going to be a huge benefit to the students who participate,” Kirby said. “They should leave the program with skills, workplace environment experience, and knowledge of the trade that they would be hard pressed to get in any other way. It’s another great step forward for our school and community.”
North Santiam School District Superintendent Andy Gardner said the construction” pathway” – the latest in a list of learning experiences in the SHS program – will allow students hands-on and real-world experience in home construction.
“Pathways helps kids make a choice in high school that increases the relevance of what they are doing,” Gardner said. By participating in the construction pathway, he added, “They will get to see a project take shape as a result of their efforts and learn about all the systems which come together in a home,” Gardner said.
“Our intent is to make the work continual and self-sustaining, which is accomplished through the sale of the homes when they are built. The model already is being done in the Forest Grove School District.”
After the lot donation was confirmed, NSSD formed an advisory committee of experts in the construction industry and business community to join construction class teacher Rodney Weeks and Kirby in establishing the strategy to develop and implement plans for the Construction Pathway and its home-building classes.
Advisory committee member Nick Harville, business retention and expansion manager for SEDCOR, focuses his work on supporting the needs of businesses and workers in three counties.
“SEDCOR worked with companies throughout the region to identify the skills that industries, including construction, need,” Harville said. “Companies like Emery and Sons, NORPAC and dozens of others helped create a database of documented skills unmatched in Oregon. The training NSSD is attempting to provide is about ‘industry-driven’ skills.”
Martinak of Emery and Sons knows the importance of training skilled laborers. “The vision is to work with kids whose futures are not in college, to create a place where they can learn a trade,” he said. “I grew up learning these skills from my father. Youths don’t have as many hands-on opportunities as we used to have.”
Emery and Sons and Stettler Supply will contribute to the project, in the form of training and skill-building.
“Workforce development is a critical piece of this for us,” Gardner said. “For kids to experience this kind of thing – to work with contractors, to see the complexity of the work, and to do the various types of work that contribute to construction, from bidding all the way down to the actual building – that’s a real life experience and that’s incredibly valuable.”
Kirby said students should leave with skills, workplace environment experience, and knowledge of the trade.
“It’s another great step forward for our school and community,” he said.
