About 100 Salem high school students can get a head start on careers as pilots, aircraft technicians or drone pilots when an expanded aviation program opens next year.
The Salem-Keizer School Board on Dec. 13 decided to buy a $1.8 million building at the Salem Municipal Airport to house an expanded career education program for high school juniors and seniors.
Rhonda Rhodes, principal of the district’s Career Technical Education Center, said she hopes to open the new aviation program in the next school year.
“We have a lot of partnerships coming to the table so we have a lot of industry support and people ready to plug in,” Rhodes told the school board.
The program is intended to train students for in-demand jobs in the aviation sector.
Currently, industry training programs and pilot schools are only providing about 38% of industry need, Superintendent Christy Perry told the school board, and the aviation industry expects to need an additional 610,000 aircraft maintenance technicians by 2040.
“From the industry side, we would say yes there’s a need,” Perry said.
A survey of 254 students at the district’s six high schools showed four out of 10 students were interested in the program, she said.
The district will buy the 16,590-square-foot building currently owned by Entek Technology Holdings, which sits on city of Salem land at the airport. The district will have to take over a lease for the ground. The current lease with the city expires in 2038 and is about $13,000 per year, Perry told the school board. District employees are negotiating to extend the lease to 2048 and reduce the cost she said.
The purchase means the district’s existing drone program will move to the new building at 3080 25th St. S.E. from its current home at the Career Technical Education Center on Northeast Portland Road.
Rhodes said the expanded program will function like other programs at CTEC, which have a two-year course of study students typically begin their junior year of high school.
During the first year, students will learn the basics of the aviation industry and be exposed to multiple career options. As second-year students, they will choose an area of focus – piloting, maintenance or drones – and work toward certification, she said.
Students would take classes at the airport two days per week and remain at their home high schools the other three. The aviation curriculum will include English and science courses to meet high school graduation requirements but tailored to the aviation industry.
The move will also free a space at CTEC to open a new career program. The facility in northeast Salem currently teaches 10 career options, including cosmetology, law enforcement and residential construction.
Rhodes said she hopes to add behavioral health and human services programs.
“With the current shortage of therapists, counselors, social workers, psychologists, and other mental health professionals, I can’t think of a more important program to establish,” she said in an email.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
