WAYNESBORO, Va. (WHSV) – Waynesboro Public Schools is partnering with Blue Ridge Community College for the first time ever to allow recent graduate students from Waynesboro High School to receive various certifications, including heavy equipment operator, a sit-down and stand-up forklift certification and the OSHA 10 certification.
Beth Burdick, program coordinator and career coach at Waynesboro High School, said it is important to allow students to have paths after graduation outside of just going to college.
“College is not for everyone, and you don’t necessarily need college to be successful,” Burdick said. “It just depends on the career path you want to go down. So we definitely encourage, you know, all the pathways and expose students to all the different pathways available to them.”
One of the biggest hurdles to help students get their certifications, Burdick said, was due to transportation and sometimes financial trouble. She said thanks to the program, members of the wide diversity of students in Waynesboro were provided the course for free.
“It felt really good to continue working to eliminate some of those barriers and make sure that our students are successful after high school as best as we possibly can,” Burdick said. “Waynesboro is very lucky to be able to have some grant funding in their back pocket that we can use to kind of help students obtain those certifications.”
The program lasted for seven weeks, and Burdick hopes to be able to continue doing programs like these in the future.
“I really hope that we can continue collaborating between Waynesboro and Blue Ridge and continue to bring maybe a greater variety of programs to Waynesboro. I think that would be wildly successful. I think we can better serve a lot of our students that way,” Burdick said. “There have been some conversations and some things in the works, but nothing hardcore solidified yet.”
After the completion of the course, all three students received job offers, thanks to Burdick’s help coordinating interviews for them. She hopes to help many more students get jobs in the future.
Original Article: WHSV3 | By: Mason Willett | https://www.whsv.com/2024/07/29/waynesboro-public-schools-certification-program-offers-alternative-path-college/
