San Jon stakeholders want more career tech instruction

SAN JON — More than 30 people chose career technical education as the highest priority for San Jon Municipal Schools when it updates its five-year strategic plan.

The school district held a community needs assessment meeting last Wednesday at the San Jon Community Center to hear input on updating the plan. David Chavez, CEO of Cooperative Educational Services, presided over the two-hour session.

Chavez let attendees sound off on nearly 30 ideas to improve academics and other conditions at San Jon schools.

They then were placed into groups of students, board members and administration, parents, business community members and staff members to rank each idea.

After that, individuals then were reassigned into other randomized groups and to rank each idea again.

When the results were tabulated, career tech education — or trade instruction for students who can’t or won’t go to college — ranked the highest, with 10 points.

Next-highest with seven points each were adequate staffing, after-school non-sport enrichment clubs, keeping and maintaining funding for teacher housing and STEAM, or science, technology, engineering, arts and math.

Totaling six points was mental health resources.

Chavez said a school board typically will focus on the top three to five items on the priority list and incorporate them into goals in the strategic plan. He said the board ought to review those goals quarterly.

Chavez said a report on the needs assessment meeting will be sent to the board later, with the plan for CES to hold two work sessions on the plan.

San Jon superintendent Alam Umholtz said after the meeting that the session brought no surprises to him.

“This is so good for our future,” he said. “It helps our district go in the right direction.”

Umholtz said it had been seven or eight years since San Jon had last updated its strategic plan, but he surmised that delay was due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Board members noted a few items on the wish list — such as more electrical outlets in classrooms, improved staff parking and more bathrooms — will be addressed when the new school is built in a few years.

As the wish list swelled with such items as a foreign-language course, music or home economics classes, computer science and civics, a few attendees suggested using one class period per week for those.

Michael Erwin cautioned against that, saying such instruction won’t help students.

“They run in 40 directions, and they never excel in any of them,” he said.

He also said with current schedules and mandatory courses, schools often lack the time to add other classes.