POWERS — North Central Area Schools introduced a new program during the school year to allow eligible seniors a chance to gain experience in the workforce, test out a possible career choice and acquire elective credits.

Bruce Tapio, school superintendent and junior/senior high school principal, implemented the School to Work program with the help of industrial technology teacher Gerald Whitens.

“What we do is we take eligible high school seniors, which means they met most of their credit requirements in the main subjects (of) math, English, social studies, science, foreign language, P.E. (physical education), all of them — the Michigan Merit Curriculum. And if they have room in their schedule, we set it up through Mr. Whitens with local businesses for them to go work from noon until 3 p.m., Monday through Friday,” Tapio said.

The first semester of the school year was spent preparing all of the paperwork to start the program. Tapio explained the school had to fill out paperwork through the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) to be able to issue elective credits for the work experience.

“Because we issue credits — elective credits for this particular program, we have to meet requirements. Safety requirements, weekly checks, attendance, behavior. So (the students) kind of have to be young adults working in a real world situation,” he said.

Whitens said he did all of the paperwork and coordinated the placement of the students according to their skill set in high school.

“So the purpose of it is that they can get a certain level of training here at the high school and then take that training that they learned here and enter the workforce a little bit earlier during the second half of the day so they can go test their skills,” he said.

The program came about as a way to make up for the lack of access North Central students have to career and technical education (CTE) schools. North Central is located in northern Menominee County, making the closest CTE school in Delta County. The CTE school in Menominee County is an hour away, meaning students would have to spend two hours a day driving. The CTE school in Delta County is usually filled with students from Delta County schools.

“We are not a CTE school. We are a general education school who through the Michigan Department of Education — many conversations with them — allowed us to set this up and issue credit,” Tapio said.

He explained despite not having access to CTE schools, North Central has always offered industrial art classes. But students weren’t getting the benefit of getting real life, on the job skills that could lead to possible future careers.

“Our industrial technology classes are a wonderful thing, but once you’ve taken woods, welding, CAD (computer-aided design) — we needed something else to add to the senior year and we thought why not the school to work (program) and the benefits you get from that,” Tapio said.

According to Whitens, the benefits of the program are its ability to allow students to jump start a possible career and how it creates communication between the school and industries.

The program officially started at the beginning of the second semester and a total of seven seniors participated. Five local businesses, Whitens Kiln and Lumber Co., Superior Welding, Pinecrest, St. John Forest, and Wildwood Truck Stop, worked with the school to employ the students within the program.

“One of (the students) was hired full-time now by Superior Welding,” Tapio said.

The students that participated are now graduated, so the program concluded for the year. According to Tapio and Whitens, the program is going to expand next year with more local businesses and they’re looking into setting up a way for the experience to count for credit at local technology schools.