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La Grande Pride
August 2022 • www.lagrandesd.org
REVITALIZATION GRANT
LHS Home Construction Program gets $515,000
By Trish Yerges
The La Grande School District is pleased
to announce that the district was recently
approved for a revitalization grant award in
the amount of $515,000 that will be spent as
seed money for the new Construction III home
building class through the Career Technology
and Engineering (CTE) program at LHS.
Superintendent George Mendoza stated,
“We applied for a grant with the help of field
representative, Jessica Keys, from the office of
U. S. Senator Jeff Merkley.”
The district worked through Senator
Merkley’s office to ask for one-time funds.
“We wanted to get a congressionally directed
spending bill, and we needed to apply for that,”
Mendoza explained.
In addition to this, the district spent time
working with the City of La Grande to have
them write letters of support, and they also
held discussions with GTC Construction, City
of La Grande, Grande Ronde Hospital and
Union County Commissioner Paul Anderes
about what could be done together to improve
housing in the community.
“During the last year and a half, the district
purchased two lots of land to be able to build
a house. The high school began implementing
curriculum for our Construction I and Con-
struction II as well as started to implement
home and landscape design courses as part of
our CTE programs,” he said.
After revamping the curriculum and ad-
dressing staffing need the district also started
to partner with other organizations so that
they could move forward with their home
construction and trades program goals.
“When it came to the congressional direc-
tive spending, the district applied for a grant of
$515,000 so that we could have the seed money
so we could buy the materials, pay for the first
year of the teacher and start moving forward
with building our first Tiger Home,” he went
on to say.
The district’s goal is to address housing
needs in the community because the lack of
housing is currently a barrier to people want-
ing to move into and work in La Grande.
“There are people from EOU that want to
purchase homes, and there aren’t any avail-
able---same thing with Grande Ronde Hospital
and for our district employees when they are
moving here,” Mendoza explained. “So there
are issues with housing, and we want to ad-
dress that.”
However, the primary purpose of the Home
Construction Class is to create a pathway
program so students are able to develop trade
skills and become the future general and sub-
contractors working in La Grande.
“Then when we have more needs for hous-
ing, we have people to carry out those trades in
our community or region,” he said. “If you’re
going to have great jobs and a great economy,
you also have to have housing, and we wanted
to start moving in the direction of starting to
design and build affordable homes and then
teach our students important trade skills.
The first Tiger Home floor plan is likely
going to be a two story, two resident townhouse
structure with three bedrooms, two baths, a
living room and family room and hopefully a
two-car garage.
“If we could build two townhouses to start
things out, we’d like to partner with Grande
Ronde Hospital. That’s their biggest need.
They would like to purchase homes from us if
they can, and (preferably) have them close to
the hospital,” Mendoza said.
The district’s first choice of home is to build
a wood constructed townhouse, and when the
district chooses a contractor to work with, that
contractor might have their own townhouse
designs that can be used or edited for the
district’s needs. Other options to a townhouse
would be a duplex or an affordable single-
family home. Those decisions will be made
later when the district starts working with a
general contractor.
Students participating in the construction
classes will earn CTE elective credits, and if
they work their way through the three con-
secutive construction classes, they can earn
a pathway certificate in the trades as well.
“Usually those are three or more elective cred-
its earned,” Mendoza said.
The Construction I class covers an intro-
duction to woods, cutting, simple designs and
building projects. The Construction II class
would be more project based and understand-
ing more about electrical, plumbing, dry
walling and other finish trade work. Darren
Henrickson is currently the teacher of those
classes. Rhonda Calhoun also teaches a course
in design. These classes can enroll between 20
and 30 students each.
Lastly, Construction III would involve the
actual building of a Tiger Home project, and
the district is looking this fall for a teacher
for that class. Preferably, the teacher will be
certified as a teacher and as a general contrac-
tor. The teacher will supervise the students’
learning and work as well as plan and organize
the construction from skilled sub-contractors.
If student interest in this class is greater than
expected, the class may be divided into A and B
sections so that proper supervision and safety
is assured on the building site while students
handle electric tools and machinery.
“This is starting to move us to a pipeline
experience that helps us create a more skilled
labor force and address the housing needs in
our community. This will be important to us,”
Mendoza concluded.