The force of nature that is Sue Segura, who has been pushing, cajoling, encouraging, and outright forcing in some instances, the seniors at Churchill County High School to apply for financial aid, pursue training, and try out internships has employed those same skills to acquire grant funding from the state to continue the CTE program for at least three more years.
The Career and Technical Education Competitive Grant provides $160,471 per year for the next three years to cover staff, student travel, and professional development to the program that is now in the second year of assisting students make and prepare for their futures.
Segura has assembled a group of community leaders to serve as an advisory committee to the program and she met this week with them to report on the activities of the program so far this year and get commitments for the August 8 back to school event as well as offers to host interns.
At the beginning of the school year, Segura met with 219 seniors to kick off the year, make connections with the students, introduce the program and write career pathways plans when that was a fit. She reported at the meeting this week that at the beginning of the year 4% of the students said they had no idea what their plans were after high school and recently at the spring check-in, only 1% of the senior class is undecided.
At the beginning of the year 23% of the class planned to attend trade school and now that number is at 30%.
Currently, there are 1,052 students enrolled in all four grades at the high school and 392 of those were on the 3.5 GPA and above honor roll, and 144 students were at 4.0 and above, Segura explained.
This year as part of her program, Segura has taken five students to tour the cosmetology schools in Reno, 14 students have toured Truckee Meadows Community College and all of them have signed up to attend there after high school. On April 30, a counselor from TMCC will be on the CCHS campus to meet with students and talk about their specific plans.
On March 1, Segura took 40 students to a University of Nevada basketball game to give them a “college experience.” On the way home from that trip several students approached Segura asking what they needed to do to qualify for the Nevada First program so they could begin planning to qualify for scholarships to attend UNR.
Segura has also been working with five seniors who want to pursue teaching degrees, each of them will graduate this year with their diploma and an associate degree. On March 28, one of the Deans from the School of Education at UNR came to Fallon to meet individually with each student and worked with them to complete their schedule for their freshman year at UNR which begins in August this year.
One of the scholarship programs the state offers to Nevada seniors requires eight hours of volunteer time to qualify. Segura is working with each student to find work sites to complete that volunteer time, but she also has several rakes and shovels in her classroom and is known to send students out to spots on the CCHS campus that need attention to complete their requirements.
Plans are under way for the grand kick-off to the 2024-25 school year, with a community-wide celebration on August 8 at the Rafter 3-C Arena beginning at 6 p.m. Students will visit over 60 booths set up by each department and club at the high school, local businesses, and each higher education school across the state. Sponsors and volunteers will provide hot dogs and hamburgers, which will be cooked and served by local elected and appointed officials.
For more information or to become involved with this program, Segura can be contacted at [email protected].
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