High school firefighting classes

This is interesting.

Seeking to tighten spending, the Austin Fire Department last year decided to ax a program at LBJ High School that allowed students to become certified to be firefighters upon graduation.

But the Austin school district has decided to pick up the tab for the training, so the dreams of students wanting to become firefighters might not be extinguished after all.

Annette Gregory, the district’s executive director of career and technical education, said district administrators felt it was necessary to find a way to continue the “well-rounded program” — one of just a handful of such collaborations in the country.

“It builds a lot of character,” Gregory said. ” It’s one thing to read about something and see it on a video. It’s another thing to go into a burning building and come out of it. It’s real-time exposure.”

Since 2006, students in the two-year firefighting academy have gone through the same drills and training — putting out fires and learning lifesaving resuscitation techniques — as other Austin fire cadets. At the end of the program, the students can take a state exam that, if they pass, certifies them as firefighters and emergency medical technicians.

Gregory said that the LBJ program counts toward college credit and that students are ready to enter the workforce with the credentials they earn.

The program sounds like it does a lot of good. There’s a need for vocational training in high school, and this program produces kids who can step right into a job after they graduate. It also presents the option of firefighting to a broader audience, and as one kid who plans to be an architect noted in the story, gives kids who will go into some other field a little extra depth of knowledge. The main problem is cost; the financial burden for the curriculum has shifted from the Austin Fire Department to AISD, though the school district currently lacks a full-time program coordinator. I think what needs to happen is for AFD and AISD to work together to find a local philanthropist or foundation to underwrite the cost of the program and ensure its survival going forward. Surely there’s someone out there who would love to be the fairy godparent for something like this.

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