Civil Municipal Magazine - Nov 2023

242 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 11 6th grade – that provides athletics, STEM, creative and performing arts, and school tutoring in four different seasons across the school year.” “We use staff and support staff and fund the program by paying them a salary outside of the school day to work with kids. We have an interscholastic competition between our 4th, 5th, and 6th graders across the district. We have eight elementary schools – they play each other in sports; they participate in plays and musicals; we have STEM programs like Minecraft and computer coding; and we have some tutoring. We think it’s one of the best investments we’ve made to connect our kids and families to the school under the auspices of our Office of Family Engagement. We have a director, Pat Collins, who’s been wonderful in implementing that vision. It’s a differentiating program for our district that nobody else around us has.” Career options for high schoolers While the OAISD provides administrative and support services, trains teachers in the latest research- based methods, pilots innovative programs, and coordinates early childhood, special education, and vocational services across the Ottawa area, it also has programs for high school-aged students, including its Careerline Tech Center (CTC), which offers juniors and seniors the opportunity to gain skills and/ or prepare for post-secondary education in one of 27 programs, or “pathways,” within the following disciplines: Natural Resources and Agriscience; Arts & Communications; Business, Management, Marketing & Technology; Engineering/Manufacturing & Industrial; Health Sciences; and Human Services. “Students spend part of their day in our high school and a portion of the day in the Careerline Tech Center,” Bearden explains. “Students can pursue career-related pathways there, and get exposure to something that they think they’re interested in now to find out if it is something that resonates with them. It’s not necessarily directing kids to a certain pathway but allowing them to discover different things, find out where their passion lies, and then help them determine ways that they can pursue continuing education, whether that’s in college or vocational study, or maybe a career path in that area.”