News
June 26, 2019Thanks to BOCES, Students Have Jobs and Careers as they Graduate High School this Week
As high school students across the Capital Region graduate this week, many are already looking forward to the next chapter of their educational life in college or technical school.
Some, though, are set to embark on lucrative careers thanks to the skills they learned and perhaps more importantly, contacts they made, at Capital Region BOCES.
Among them is Jared Strokes, a Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk graduate, who is working Schenectady manufacturer Package One Industries thanks to the welding program at Capital Region BOCES and the diligence of Work-Based Learning Coordinator James Haas and Business Liaison Nancy Liddle.
Similarly Construction/Heavy Equipment and Middleburgh graduate Emily Elsis of Middleburgh is working at Lancaster Development, a major highway contractor, and HVAC/R graduate Bryan Sidney, who was hired by Albany Mechanical at a career fair.
“They have a good business and they have been good to me already. I’ve worked part-time for them since last year and … they are just a good place to work,” said Sidney. “It’s great to know where you are going to work before you graduate high school.”
Overall, as many as one third of Capital Region BOCES students directly enter the workforce with the skills they learned at BOCES; many of them also further their education through part-time college or technical school classes, said Liddle. The remaining students go to college or technical school before entering the workforce.
“With the costs of college so high and student debt mounting, it’s becoming increasingly imperative that students have a skill set they can use upon graduating high school,” Liddle said.
This is a concept many of the students already understood when they enrolled at Capital Region BOCES.
“I didn’t want to be $100,000 in debt from college, so BOCES was a perfect fit for me,” said Lindsay Tutay, a welding graduate from BOCES and RCS working to get into a union job.
“I never liked sitting in a classroom. Working and learning with my hands is what I have always wanted to do. Now, I’m graduating with options and a job. What more could you ask for?,” said Chris Zautner, a manufacturing and machining gradate from Voorheesville. Zautner was placed in a work-based learning job in Schenectady’s Ren Tools and Manufacturing as a high school junior and has turned that into a career.
“I was able to at BOCES learn and make money while working on making a career,” said Zautner.
