Career and Technical Education (CTE)

PPS currently offers a wide array of exciting career and technical education (CTE) opportunities. The CTE program at PPS is underutilized for many reasons. The community proposal breaks down many of the current barriers and allows CTE to become a more viable option for many students.

There are many barriers that currently exist in the PPS CTE program

• Most CTE programming begins in 10th grade, a year after starting high school and building social networks (a few programs start in 9th grade or 11th grade)

• If the CTE program of interest to a student is not at that student’s feeder high school, they are faced with two options

  • Be bussed to the school that offers the program or

  • Transfer to that school

• The CTE choices are not transparent for students and families at a single point during the academic career

As the system is currently designed, we make students attend feeder school for their 9th grade year. They do the hard academic, social, extracurricular work of setting up support systems in their feeder school. They are then asked to switch schools or be bussed away from their feeder school for a portion of time for their CTE training. This creates a very difficult decision point for most teens. It is also hard to get parents involved in CTE training decisions when parents and families are not exposed to all the CTE options.

What if we were able to eliminate these barriers to pursuing CTE? In the community proposal we promote CTE by designing the system differently and allowing choice earlier in the student’s academic journey.

• All students have a choice of any high school in PPS, allowing them to choose the school with the desired CTE program from the beginning of their high school career

• The enrollment for high school includes transparent information for students and families, including all CTE offerings at each school location

• Planned exposure and introduction to CTE offerings in middle school to help make high school decisions

• Reduction of the transportation burden by allowing students to be at the school that houses their CTE offering rather than be bussed mid-day (twice)

We can create a system where students can actively pursue their interests by building their high school career at a school that meets their educational needs from the beginning of their high school careers. They are more likely to succeed and develop skills if they are in the place learning skills with peers that are also interested in those same skillsets. By making it easier to choose to train in one of the many vibrant CTE programs offered at PPS, we are enhancing the post graduation possibilities for our students.