District's charter objective outlined by school officials

The Sentinel-Record/Mara Kuhn PLANS FOR EDUCATION: Hot Springs School District Superintendent Stephanie Nehus speaks during the Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club's weekly meeting Wednesday at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa.
The Sentinel-Record/Mara Kuhn PLANS FOR EDUCATION: Hot Springs School District Superintendent Stephanie Nehus speaks during the Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club's weekly meeting Wednesday at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa.

Hot Springs School District officials outlined their charter objectives during Wednesday's weekly Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club meeting at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa.

Superintendent Stephanie Nehus and Hot Springs World Class High School Principal Taryn Echols expounded on the school's goal to ensure every student who graduates from the high school receives a "value-added diploma," which Nehus said shows the graduate has added real-world or extracurricular experience to their GED credits.

Nehus and Echols emphasized the importance of providing out-of-classroom opportunities for the students to take with them after graduation, provided through internships and hands-on experiences.

Nehus said juniors and seniors participate in locally based internships each year. To increase the number of interns, the district has hired a career facilities instructional facilitator and attempted to make business connections at functions like rotary meetings.

The school district aims to put 20 students into local internships each year until the 11th and 12th grades are filled to capacity with participating students.

"Our goal is not only for them to be college-ready, but also for them to be career-focused," Echols said.

Nehus said this kind of learning gives students a better picture of what kind of career opportunities are in Hot Springs. She said while many students leave Hot Springs after college, it is important to expose them to local careers they can consider.

She said such exposure is also important for students who don't plan to leave Hot Springs, don't plan to attend college, or both.

"We want to prepare them to be productive members of our society," she said.

Hot Springs School District also partnered with National Park College to offer its students educational opportunities. At the college, students not only participate in programs in studies such as criminal justice, advertising and design, and pre-engineering, but also gain field experience in their area of study.

Echols said earning educational credit this way limits "seat time," or time spent at a classroom at the high school.

Nehus and Echols said this style of career-focused education is key to the objective of ensuring students have an idea of what they want to do as a career.

"Are they gonna change their minds? Absolutely," Nehus said. "We give them opportunities to change, just as they'll have opportunities in college to change or in life to change. But we want to expose them to as much as we can."

Nehus and Echols said they have incorporated differential classroom learning and the school's EAST initiative into its curriculum. Nehus said she has the end goal of changing the status quo of education, at least within her district.

"So many times, students don't even know what's available in our community. They just go to school, they get their education, they get the math, they get the literacy, they get the sciences, they get the social studies, they get the electives," Nehus said. "That's what we want to change."

Local on 11/16/2017

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