KTEC Prepares Prepares,, Educates Educates,, and Produces Successful Students By Cindy Chan
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ou can’t spell KTEC without CTE. Established in 2012, The Kootenai Technical Education Campus (KTEC) is a joint venture between the Coeur d’Alene School District No. 271, Lakeland School District No. 272, and Post Falls School District No. 273. It is a stateof-the-art technical training high school for 11th and 12th grade students, which started out with 10 programs and has grown to include 15. According to KTEC Director Colby Mattila, students are able to come to KTEC for half the day – either morning or afternoon – and return back to their original high schools for their core programming. “There’s a huge labor shortage,” Matilla says. “We reflect the industries in our area, and the schools are extremely responsive to the industries’ changing needs. We make sure our students come out of the program with those skills.” “We strive to train students with the
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valuable tools that they will need to go out into industry after their KTEC experience and succeed,” Casey Syth, Regional Construction Instructor, adds. “I not only teach them how to build a house, but also the soft skills that are required to get and keep a job.” Workforce development is a huge challenge in Idaho’s construction trades, and KTEC is doing everything they can to help, from providing a trained workforce from an earlier age, holding job fairs, inviting employers to speak to students, and creating internships for students. “Every week, I have at least one or two companies contacting me about needing to hire individuals for their companies,” Syth says. “This equates to way more jobs available than I have students to fill them. I think what could help is more schools opening up more CTE programs to get students interested in the trades. I feel that we have pushed the ‘college is the only option to succeed’ narrative for too long, and have not shown our students
that there are other ways to make a good living.” KTEC offers a wide variety of programs, from health care to construction. Syth teaches residential construction, a twoyear program that requires the students to receive a minimum of 80 percent or higher to get the KTEC certification. “This class is also dual credit with NIC (North Idaho College), and it gives them six credits that will follow them to the NIC construction course,” Syth says. “We have a very high placement rate at KTEC and in my program,” Syth adds. “I currently have past students that moved on to some of our local commercial contractors, and one in particular is working as a lead on a house framing project for a local home builder. We used to participate in the SkillsUSA competition in Boise where we regularly
