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Mike Benbow, Business Editor benbow@heraldnet.com

The trades also need our best and brightest

By Mike Benbow

Last week, I had the privilege of visiting the Sno-Isle Skills Center, which provides technical training for upper-level students at some 14 school districts in the area.

Students typically spend half a day at their home high school and the other half at the skills center working with computers, learning various construction trades, studying how to be a dental or veterinary assistant or gathering skills in business, marketing, culinary arts, fashion or criminal justice.

Last week's visit was a program set up for U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to give adults and young people the chance to talk about why so few people are joining the trades these days.

The bottom line is that most kids today are being pushed to go to college by both their parents and their school districts.

I didn't get her name, but one member of the audience talked about being a career counselor, then added quickly, "There is no significance to the title 'career counselor.' You are a college counselor. And I think it is a major crisis."

I agree.

And things could get much worse next year.

Sue Ambler, director of the Snohomish County Workforce Development Council, said the skills center could lose half of its students next year. Difficulty in passing the math portion of the state's basic achievement tests could prevent students from taking electives at the skills center, meaning they'd have to remain at their regular schools all day.

The students who talked to the senator said both counselors and students are stressed out about the tests. They said school is mostly about academics and going to a university, not enough about a successful move to the work force.

Student Samantha Livers of Snohomish, which has its own skills training program, had thought she would be seeking a career in the computer field, but now is excited about event management. She plans to start at a community college. I'm guessing she'll eventually be getting a four-year degree.

Either way, career training has clearly been a good thing for her. She knows what she's interested in becoming and what she needs to do to get there.

So does Chris Furrer, a student in Monroe who has been an entrepreneur since he got his first tractor at age 13. He's even hired other students to help with the custom mowing jobs he does.

He plans to go to Washington State University and major in entrepreneurship.

When I went to high school, there were some clear distinctions between the kids who went to college and the kids who were in "industrial arts" or took a job or job training. Basically, anybody not going to college was considered not too bright.

It was clear to me last week that is not the case these days, but it doesn't look like everyone gets that.

"If you're not college-bound, somehow you're a second-class citizen," noted Dave Johnson of the building trades council.

Taking electives at the skills center can help young people learn a skill or a trade, understand what they enjoy doing or just help them to stop being bored out of their minds from sitting in classes that all seem alike. It also clearly can get kids interested in going to college.

Johnson noted that the construction trades really need young people because a wave of baby boomers is starting to retire.

The trades pay well, often helping people later pay for college on their own.

We need to increase our skills programs and continue to make them more relevant, not cut back on them and make our kids spend more time in math class.

Brett Sarver, director of an Arlington program that teaches manufacturing, said there are ways to teach math that don't drive kids crazy. "You can hide math in the stuff we teach," he said. "We're teaching the math, we're just not calling it algebra."

We need more of that kind of math, not less.

Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459 or benbow@heraldnet.com.