CTI lauded by business leaders

The construction industry already knows the Community High: Okaloosa Institutes for Career Education (CHOICE) program fulfills a need by providing a trained workforce.

Now the Construction Users Round Table (CURT), representing the businesses that rely on construction trades to build their infrastructure, have recognized it, too.

It chose Crestview High School’s Construction Technology Institute CHOICE program as one of its six nationwide Workforce Development Award winners for 2007.

“The CHOICE program demonstrates the need and success of collaboration among the private and public sector encouraging participation of construction contractors with public education,” CURT’s Web site said in announcing the award.

When CURT speaks, the construction industry perks up and listens. Its membership list includes names like Chrysler, Boeing, Eastman Kodak, DuPont, General Motors, Merck and even Walt Disney Imagineering.

“CURT depends on the construction people who build their facilities to affect the bottom line,” explained CHOICE Program Specialist Matt Clark, who was featured on the cover of the January “Florida Trend” business magazine.

Clark said the CTI at Crestview High School uses a curriculum by industry for industry employed by the largest construction companies in America.

“There was a lot of talk around Florida that our students couldn’t do a curriculum this vigorous, and we proved them wrong,” Clark said proudly. “If you challenge a student, they’ll work harder.”

The model for an industry and education collaboration developed in Crestview rapidly is becoming a nationwide model.

“It’s completely innovative and completely different from anything that’s going on in the United States,” Clark said.

“Our programs are not only strictly vocational, we think of them as career education,” he said.

Students can earn Bright Futures Gold Seal scholarships to a community college.

The “professional track” programs offer construction management curriculum designed for students who will seek a four-year degree.

Crestview High’s CHOICE program “is more like a lattice of opportunity instead of tracks,” said Clark. Students can go to college, or go to work and attend college, or go right to work.

“Some students have gone on to work for industry partners and have received 100 percent tuition from their employers to go to college,” Clark said.

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Alexis Tibbetts “backs us 100 percent. She’s all over this thing,” Clark said.

With the success — and industry recognition and support — of Crestview’s CHOICE program, county school officials are starting to explore ways of introducing CHOICE education as early as middle school.

“Students can understand there’s more careers out there than doctors and lawyers,” Clark enthused. “We’re going to give these students enough information so by the time they get to high school they can make informed career choices.”

Clark cited education experts’ figures that said up to 75 percent of high school graduates won’t go to college.

Crestview High School Principal Ed Coleman says “one of the best thing we can do for these kids is give them vocational training,” Clark said.

“It’s definitely right for students, it’s definitely right for industry, and it’s definitely right for education. There’s a lot of synergy here; a lot of dynamics involved. We have a good school system, good students and good teachers, and we have people who are interested in making a difference in students’ lives.”