SkillsUSA
Special thank you to Prairie Mechanical for donating cordless construction tools and lumber to this new EPS organization!
SkillsUSA is an organization new to the three Elkhorn high schools beginning in the 2024-2025 school year in order to help students build technical skills that will benefit them in high school and beyond. This organization aligns with the national and local push for more skilled-and-technical tradespeople. The inaugural year was made easier by a donation of Milwaukee cordless construction tools and lumber from Prairie Construction, a local Omaha construction company.
The materials – donated by Prairie Construction and Steve Rease, owner and executive vice president – are required for students to compete in a SkillsUSA competition. There were 30 student participants between the three schools this year. “Steve and Prairie Construction helped SkillsUSA with the hurdle of buying construction tools as they are an expensive startup for any chapter,” said Jon Critser, Skilled & Technical Sciences instructor/SkillsUSA Advisor at Elkhorn North and South. “With the donation, students were able to compete. As SkillsUSA expands at EPS we will need other donations to help students compete in other areas.”
During the SkillsUSA meetings, the instructors at each school – Jon Critser at Elkhorn North High School and Elkhorn South High school, Thomas Petersen at Elkhorn High School, Matt Wachter at Elkhorn North High School, and Patrick Schiley at Elkhorn South High School – guide students as they practice skills such as cabinet making, residential framing, blueprint reading, 3D printing, laser engraving, and building toy trucks. This guided practice is so important because once students are at the competitions “they are on their own,” Jon said. “As teachers and advisors, we are not able to interact with them during their competition. They are given a set of instructions to work off of for their competition and use what they have learned to complete that task.”
In April, all three SkillsUSA clubs attended the Nebraska State Leadership and Skills Championships in Grand Island, and one student from EPS placed and is now eligible to compete at the National SkillsUSA Leadership and Skills Conference in June in Atlanta. Jon noted, “To have one place in the top two and be eligible to go to Nationals our first year at EPS is just an awesome testament to our students, teachers and SkillsUSA advisors.”
Jon notes, “SkillsUSA empowers students to become the skilled professionals, career-ready leaders and responsible community members that we need today. It improves the quality of our nation’s future skilled workforce as many industries today face a shortage of skilled workers. SkillsUSA offers a tangible way to help solve this problem.”
The Elkhorn Public Schools is encouraging careers and trades in a variety of ways, and a notable effort was the partnership in 2024 with the Elkhorn Public Schools Foundation to create the ACHIEVE Career & Technical Education (CTE) Scholarship that parallels the already established ACHIEVE Advanced Placement (AP) Scholarship. For the ACHIEVE CTE Scholarship, students who complete a series of required coursework (including a Program of Focus, featuring a variety of careers), participate in a number of Career Exploration Experiences, are in school-based extracurricular activities, perform community service hours, submit a resume & cover letter, and are enrolled in a post-secondary institution receive the scholarship. In 2024, there were 32 graduates who received the ACHIEVE CTE Scholarship, and this year 87 graduates from the Class of 2025 will be awarded the scholarship. These growing numbers show that students are becoming more aware of skilled-and-technical trades and careers available to them.
Ultimately, throughout his career, Jon has seen the impact of SkillsUSA, the importance of strong community partnerships like the one with Prairie Construction, and the overall benefit of putting more emphasis on the trades.
“Every teacher’s hope and dream is that their students will find that niche that they want to work in after high school,” Jon said. “I saw students go on to trades school and technical college, who normally would not have gone on to focus on a career that will change their lives, as well as their community forever.”
