VOORHEESVILLE — The school district here is offering its students what it calls a new pathway to graduation: career and technical education, known as CTE.

“We’d like all students to have the opportunity to graduate college and career ready,” middle school teacher and work-based learning program instructor Jeanne Young told the school board on Tuesday night.

For the most part, she said, Voorheesville students now graduate with the humanities or STEM — science, technology, engineering, and math — pathways.

Young said of the CTE pathway, “It brings in key behaviors and attitudes...the skills that will help anybody in any career.”

CTE students need to complete the college-ready curriculum as well as passing a nationally recognized exam for career readiness, she said. When they meet these requirements, they receive a Regents diploma with a technical endorsement. The CTE students would still need 22 credits and four Regents exams to graduate, Young said.

CTE programs are currently offered, and available to Voorheesville students, through the Capital Region Career and Technical School, which is run through BOCES and serves 23 school districts. The program has existed for more than half a century, and offers courses for students with disabilities as well as skills-based and academic courses.

Voorheesville could have its own CTE program, Young said, in three areas: business, family and consumer science, or technology and engineering. “We’ll start with one,” she said, and business is the most logical choice, since Voorheesville’s business department already has classes in place.

The CTE program needs approval from the State Education Department. Voorheesville’s Personal Finance course will be reworked to line up with the requirements of Career and Financial Management, Young said, and other courses to support the program will be developed.

“The greatest benefit is the résumé builder,” she said. “They’ll build on what they’re learning.” Student projects will bolster their résumés, she added.

A three-part exam includes performance, such as creating a business plan and presenting it to a panel of business partners for evaluation; writing; and completing a project.

“As early as next June, we could have somone graduate with a technical endorsement,” said Young of 2018 with a larger projection for June 2019.

“It’s rebalancing the career and college equation,” said Superintendent Brian Hunt, noting the emphasis at Voorheesville had been on college.

Trustee C. James Coffin called it “a great idea.” He said, “It’s something for all students.”

Trustee Diana Straut asked if the program would be just for Voorheesville students.

“For now,” said Hunt. He said he’d been talking with leaders at nearby Berne-Knox-Westerlo, which is developing an agricultural program. Hunt said, “Perhaps we could share,” meaning, through distance learning, Voorheesville students could take ag classes, and BKW students could take personal finance classes.

Other business

In other business, the board:

— Heard a glowing report from leaders of the school’s Key Club, a service organization sponsored by Kiwanis.  The club’s advisor, Michelle Bintz, said she was concerned that the Kiwanis had an aging membership. She is also concerned that there are so many groups raising funds in Voorheesville that it can be hard for student-run groups like the Key Club to get support;

— Heard a question from Laura Minnick about two elementary teachers, Kristy Riccio and Nadine Peek, sharing a job next year. “We’ve done this before,” said Hunt. “Each teacher is in the classroom for half the week,” he said, with shared planning time as well;

— Heard questions from Rachel Gilker, the mother of a sixth-grader, urging another section for the group as it moves to seventh grade to reduce the class size. She also noted that the number of students on the honor and high-honor rolls had dropped from 90 to 80 percent of the class and wondered why.

“Where are the grades coming from? What do they mean?” she asked.

“My child is extremely bored and would like more challenge,” said Gilker, noting the teachers don’t have time with so many children in the class to individualize instruction. “He comes home every day dejected,” she said of her son.

Finally, Gilker asked a question that was answered. She wanted to know about the percentage of Voorheesville students who had not taken the required state exams this year.

Hunt replied that, on the English test, 29 percent had opted out at the elementary school, and 41 percent at the middle school. On the math exam, he said, 29 percent had opted out at the elementary school, and 40 percent at the middle school. He said the opt-out rate was “up slightly from last year”;

— Heard from Straut that the board’s curriculum committee had “looked at chronic absenteeism.” Hunt said this applied to a few students at the high school;

— Heard from Coffin that the board’s facilities committee had 209 items cleared, which he termed “absolutely amazing.” He said 17 or 18 items still need work. On Wednesdays, May 10 and 17, he said, “We’ll walk through all our buildings, looking for more things to do”;

— Adopted the state’s deferred compensation plan to provide employees with a “tax-favored method of saving on a regular and long-term basis and thereby provide for their retirement,” the resolution said; and

— Met in closed session, as the law allows, to discuss the history of a particular person or corporation on matters leading to appointment, employment, promotion, demotion, discipline, or dismissal.