New 4-year, full-time trades high school would open in Spokane if voters approve $200 million bond

Spokane public school students may in coming years have the opportunity to spend their entire four years learning how to weld sheet metal or suture a laceration instead of studying Shakespeare, which school officials believe will in many cases better meet their personal learning needs and fast track them into a well-paying career out of school.

A proposed trades high school would operate out of Spokane Community College and run in partnership with Spokane Public Schools, providing students with hands-on learning and mentorship from current industry professionals while still meeting all of their state-mandated standards for basic education. The school would provide training pathways for construction, manufacturing and health care.

It is one of the school district’s marquee proposals for a $200 million, 20-year bond it will ask voters to approve this November.

The new trades school wouldn’t replace the Newtech Skill Center, which currently offers half-day supplemental trades education to high school juniors and seniors from 11 area school districts, as well as home-schooled and private school students.

The proposed trades high school would be a full-time, four-year high school in partnership between Spokane Public Schools and Spokane Community College. Graduates would walk away with both a high school diploma and a two-year trade school degree. Newtech also does not have the space to meet the demand, according to Spokane school officials.

Unlike the skill center, where students juggle between taking core classes at their district’s high school and learning the trades for half of the day at Newtech, all of a student’s liberal arts education standards – English, social studies, history, etc. – would need to be met in the proposed trades high school.

“For instance, understanding the three branches of government,” Spokane Public Schools Superintendent Adam Swinyard noted. “A kid in a comprehensive high school may be learning that through the lens of current topics or voters rights, while a kid in a trades high school might be learning about the three branches in relation to how policies make their way to the worksite or affect apprenticeship programs.”

There might be some topical issues that can’t be supplanted with a trades-based example, Swinyard acknowledged – the history of the Civil Rights movement or French Revolution might not translate well to the workshop. But in many cases, trade-based projects can incorporate other core lessons, he said.

“We’re going to build a small home, for example, and we’re going to bring in biology because we have to evaluate the site and the landscape, and we’re going to fold in the civics component through the process to get the permits you need,” Swinyard said. “They’ll pick a project and try to fold in as many disciplines as they can, similar to what they do at the Community School.”

If the school bond is successful, the trades school likely would not immediately launch as a four-year school, school officials said in September. Instead, it would probably launch with only 9th grade high school students and 11th grade Running Start students and expand after its first year.