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With $66 million in construction money to spend, the Salem-Keizer Public Schools could get a new high school focusing on technical and vocational training.

The possibility is getting an enthusiastic response from Oregon’s construction tradespeople.

District officials have a couple of options: They could repair existing school buildings or they could return the money to district taxpayers by lowering taxes.

However, tradespeople such as Dave Baker want to see the money used for a vocational high school. He is an electrician with International Brotherhood of Electricians Local 280 in Tangent, and helps direct a vocational education program for high school students in Linn County. Anything that promotes vocational education merits strong consideration, he said.

“A lot of vocational programs have been dumped over the past 30 years,” Baker said. “We’ve done students a serious disservice.”

Vocational education is not just for kids interested in becoming electricians or welders, he added. Learning to solve real problems in the real world promotes critical thinking, he said. Students don’t learn those sorts of problem-solving skills sitting in a classroom.

“We are raising a generation of test takers,” Baker said.

Salem-Keizer Public Schools Superintendent Sandy Husk said officials have limited options for the $66 million because it’s left from a $242 million bond that voters approved in 2008 to build two new elementary schools and a new middle school. The money must therefore be used for construction or capital improvement projects.

If the money were returned to district taxpayers, Husk stressed that it would not be a direct refund, but rather an adjustment in the tax rate. One thing that school officials will definitely not do is rehire any of the 420 teachers and staff members who were laid off last year.

Husk said a group of citizens recruited for the district’s Citizen Bond Oversight Committee has met three or four times to draft recommendations for the district. Although she said she doesn’t know when committee members will meet again, she expects to receive a recommendation from them within the next two months.

A vocational high school would likely be favored by Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian. He told a group of educators in March that Oregon will face a severe shortage of skilled workers if school districts don’t put more focus on vocational education.

鈥淭he average age of people in trades such as electricians in Oregon is the late 40s to late 50s,鈥� Avakian told educators. 鈥淭he average age of apprentices used to be 19, and today it is 26.鈥�

Legislators in 2011 passed a bill to enhance career and technical education throughout the state by setting aside $2 million in grants to restore and expand vocational training in middle and high schools as well as establish skills centers and vocational charter schools.

Avakian told educators he wants to increase funding 鈥渦ntil career education programs are reinstated in every school district in the state.鈥�

Baker’s program exposes kids from Corvallis, Crescent Valley, Lebanon, College Hill, Sweet Home and surrounding areas to carpentry, electrical work, welding and auto shop for three weeks as a sort of a trades “boot camp.”

“It’s been copycat of what some of the trades have been doing in Portland,” Baker said. “We’re not making electricians out of them. We’re very up front about that.”

Instead, Baker said, he wants students to learn real-world applications of math and other subjects even if they never go into the trades themselves.

Mike Bryant, director of , a vocational high school in Portland, said he likes making electricians out of students as well as seeing them enter other trades. That’s why a vocational school in Salem would be great, he said.

“We’ve made high school a training ground for just going to college,” he said. “Sometimes we shy away from the fact that it’s OK to be an electrician.”

ACE Academy has 150 students. More such schools are needed, according to Bryant, not only in Salem, but throughout the state.

鈥淲e know we are deficient in creating a workforce for Oregon,鈥� he said.

Steve Porter, an estimator and a project manager with in Springfield, said he has long supported the idea of vocational high schools.

“This is something I have been talking about for some time,” he said. “Being in the construction industry for 27 years and having four boys of my own, I think the education system is delinquent to the young and the construction and manufacturing industry in not offering such programs.”