SEPTEMBER 25, 2015, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A3
CTEC opens doors, poised for future growth
By ERIC A. HOWALD
Of the Keizertimes
John Honey was getting
fi rst-hand demonstrations of
the need for the Salem-Keizer
School District’s new Career
Technical Education Center
even before the doors opened
to students.
“I was talking to one of the
construction guys who was
hanging almost upside down
trying to connect the metal aw-
nings to the front of the build-
ing,” said Honey, principal of
CTEC, during a recent tour of
the building.
The man was visibly and
audibly frustrated and Honey
asked him if he was all right.
“No, I’m not all right. I have
no idea who designed this, but
you can’t get in here to attach
the thing,” the man replied.
If everything goes according
to plan, one gauge of CTEC’s
success might be less frustration
on the part of local construc-
tion workers. That’s because the
school seeks to give students a
more holistic education when
it comes to the art of building
things.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if the
kid who had struggled with
something like that was the
next one designing the space
or designing the tool that al-
lows them to perform the job,”
Honey said.
CTEC students, who spend
about two-and-a-half days each
week at the school on Port-
land Road in northeast Salem,
get hands-on instruction in ev-
erything from CAD design to
the actual creation of products
they’ll use in everyday life while
in school and beyond.
About a fi fth of the 165
students currently enrolled at
CTEC are also McNary High
School students. The CTEC
campus is the result of a pub-
lic-private partnership deal
between Salem-Keizer School
District and Mountain West
Investments, a Salem-based real
estate company. Anything in the
facility that might be found in
a traditional classroom, com-
puters, desks, etc., is paid for by
SKSD while the other equip-
ment, which ranges from high-
end industrial saws and steel-
bending devices, was paid for by
Mountain West. Several million
dollars have already been in-
vested in the school, and it isn’t
even entirely built out yet.
Currently, the school only
offers manufacturing and con-
struction curriculums. By next
fall, Honey and school dis-
trict plan to have a cosmetol-
ogy program and some type of
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medical/dental program up and
running. Beyond that, plans call
for programs revolving around
bioscience and aquaponics, un-
manned aerial devices (drones),
culinary arts with its own food
carts, and even a maker space
that will be open to the com-
munity.
Each program is designed
to feed into another one on
the site and lining up all those
ducks accounts, in part, for the
slow roll out.
“The manufacturing stu-
dents spent the past two days
measuring, cutting, drilling and
welding 16-inch hooks that are
going to be put up in the con-
struction side of the facility to
hang gear and hoses,” Honey
said.
When the culinary pro-
gram arrives, the hope is the
construction and manufactur-
ing students will be building
and modifying the carts’ inte-
rior spaces to fi t menu-specifi c
needs.
What separates CTEC from
other similar programs is that
math and English instruction
is taught side-by-side with the
construction and manufactur-
ing aspects. In other programs,
students would go back to their
home school for those classes,
but they are taught on-site at
CTEC.
“Our big focus is on applied
learning. Instead of learning
straight geometry, CTEC stu-
dents will learn to describe a
crown moulding using the math
they learn here,” Honey said.
That approach leads to some
surprising moments even for
Honey. The day of the tour, he
walked into the math classroom
to discover students disassem-
bling desks. It turned out that
they were working on precision
measurement and developing
a complete parts list for every-
thing that went into making the
desks in the fi rst place.
“Our intent is to develop a
kid so that they have opportu-
nities to deeply explore career
paths. We have kids with 4.0
McNary High
School and
CTEC student
Elsa Olsen
grinds down the
edge on a piece
of metal.
KEIZERTIMES/
Eric A. Howald
GPAs in the programs and some
kids with .9. Ideally, both of
those students could come out
of these programs and make six-
fi gure salaries one day,” Honey
said.
Five entries in holiday card contest
By CRAIG MURPHY
Of the Keizertimes
Maybe it will grow next year.
That was the hope Tuesday
night among members of the
Keizer Public Arts Commis-
sion (KPAC) as they looked at
entries for the city’s fi rst holiday
card contest.
Following months of public-
ity, all of three people submitted
potential designs, with a total of
fi ve designs turned in.
“There were very few, but I
love one of them,” KPAC chair
Lore Christopher said.
Entries had to be submitted
by Sept. 18. KPAC members
looked at the entries Sept. 22
and agreed the “Let’s go to the
parade” design by Salem’s Jef-
frey Flores was the top design.
In addition to his design be-
ing used as the city’s holiday
card for 2015, Flores will also
be receiving a $100 gift card to
Michael’s Arts and Crafts.
As KPAC members looked
over the entries on Tuesday, sev-
eral noticed the same thing.
“Most of these said Salem,”
Beth Melendy said.
Only one of the entries,
by McNary High School se-
nior Fallon Dunham, was by a
Keizer person. The other two
KEIZERTIMES/Craig Murphy
Lore Christopher shows the winning holiday card contest
design, done by Jeffrey Flores of Salem.
applicants were listed as Salem
residents.
KPAC members realized
they had inadvertently left a
loophole, as there was nothing
in the rules stating a person had
to be a Keizer resident to sub-
mit a design.
“Perhaps in the future we
can specify preferential for
Keizer residents,” Rick Day
suggested. “We can amend our
protocol slightly since we made
a mistake, or weight a propor-
tion to Keizer residents. I’d say
we go to the Salem-Keizer
School District and say we had
a misstep.”
Christopher noted the
school district doesn’t distin-
guish between Salem and Keiz-
er students, so artwork submit-
ted by any student would need
to be accepted. An assumption
was made the three artists sub-
mitting work were all students.
There was no requirement in
the rules for age to be listed.
The KPAC chair liked the
idea of preference for Keizeri-
tes.
“I don’t think anything in
the rules says it expressly rules
anyone else out, but we pre-
fer Keizer,” Christopher said.
“We’ll amend it for next year.
I like your criteria, Rick, about
preference given to Keizer
residents, but I don’t think we
should exclude anyone.”
Day expanded upon his sug-
gestion.
“We could weight that crite-
ria, then judge accordingly,” he
said. “You could have criteria
like artistic expression, details,
what we’re after and maybe 5
percent for being a Keizer resi-
dent.”
Jill Hagen suggested prefer-
ence for either a Keizer resident
or a member of the Keizer Art
Association, an idea Day agreed
with.