Article by Stephen Knapp
When Conifer High School re-opens for business this August, a group of bright young students more interested in creating value than in quantifying it will get to build a lot more than cookie-cutter college resumes.
The long-dormant Building Trades Program is again rising within the Jefferson County School District, and 18 eager builders have already signed on for the project. By the time vacation rolls around next summer, those CHS students will have learned the nuts and bolts of professional construction and built a solid foundation for a prosperous future.
“The trades are what make our civilization work,” says Dave Graham. “Not every kid belongs in college, and there’s a very good living to be made in the trades.”
Graham, a builder himself, attorney Ted Sells and gallery owner Phil Shanley are the hearts and hands behind Evergreen Benefactors, Inc., a child-centered nonprofit that’s spent the last dozen years trying to persuade Jeffco Schools to bring the building trades back to local high schools. Happily, the current district leadership stands four-square behind the program.
“Our society’s position seems to be that if you don’t go to college, you don’t matter,” says Graham. “But we’re a country built on the principle that everyone matters, and kids should be able to learn the trades in their own community among their own peers.”
Conifer’s Building Trades program combines classroom instruction with hands-on training in valuable skills from framing and drywall, to plumbing and electric, not to mention an introduction to construction management and the basic principles of architecture, all of it shored up by a strong emphasis on work-site safety. The one-year class is open to Conifer and Evergreen juniors and seniors, who can take it twice if they like, and participants will earn one applied math credit and one elective credit.
Rather than working off-site, the CHS builders will construct finished modular home sections that can be readily transported to home sites anywhere along the Front Range. CHS school counselor Joey Wilson will oversee the program, and the district will provide a roughly 8,000-square-foot construction yard, a temporary building for instruction and storage, and a teacher. Evergreen Benefactors will underwrite Building Trades, supply tools and materials, recruit expert guest-instructors in a variety of disciplines, and put the students’ coursework on the market.
“The goal is sustainability,” Graham explains. “By selling what the kids build we can help fund the next year’s program, and maybe even have a little left over for team jackets. If the model works, we’d like to export it to other schools in the district.”
If the number of boys – and at least one girl – enrolled in Building Trades is any indication, the program is already a working. And for what it’s worth, many of the students signed up for Building Trades are very much on a college-track, which doesn’t surprise Graham at all.
“Construction is a very challenging, complex field. The amount of math alone is incredible. This program will be a big asset to kids planning to study math, engineering or architecture in college. And even if they aren’t, they’ll learn some really useful skills that they’ll be able to use all their lives.”