HIS Top Dogs

be in the finals and will perform a second time. The girls will compete in three categories including band chant, school fight song, and cheer. If Howe were to make the finals, all three of those categories are grouped and performed at once.

“In the band chant, the judges will throw out a football game situation where the girls have to determine whether they need to perform an offense or defense cheer,” said Cheer Coach Pam Kirby.

Katie Grogan was the designated situational cheerleader for that portion, but having suffered an injury, she will not be able to perform at the competition which is a big loss to the cheerleading squad.

Grogan said the competition is a gruelingly long day which begins at 5 am and if all goes well ends very late.

“It’s a lot of sitting and waiting,” says Grogan who has performed for the previous two years. “You perform for like a minute and then you sit and wait for hours. Then you perform again for a minute and then you sit and wait and do it all over again. It’s a lot of stress and pressure.

Fellow cheerleader Brooke Robinson said that she doesn’t get nervous anymore because she’s been doing it so long.

“I remember my freshman year, I freaked out at first but I got more and more comfortable,” said Robinson. “I think it’s more exciting than nerve-wracking.”

Two years ago, the girls experience technical difficulties during the fight song portion of the competition. When the audio did not work, the Howe girls quickly used their own audio and sang the school song which eventually worked to their advantage in the judges' eyes.

“We want to make finals because we want to prove to everyone that this is a sport that is real and we want to show everyone that for the past eight months,” said Grogan. “It’s been important to us and we want to show the hard work that we’ve put in.”

Grogan says getting in the top five would be a good goal as Howe has climbed to eighth in previous years. Howe Intermediate wants to congratulate our Top Dogs of the week: Estrella Carreon-Perez, Shannon Darling, J.V. Vargas, Mosis Edwards, Audrey Sullivan, Levi Madden, Maylem Murrillo-Ramirez,Nikki White, Jacob Sheff, Madison Janek, and Mya Vines. Way to go!

“We’re really at the mercy of the judges, much like band competition,” said Kirby. “The one year they did so well with the fight song, they loved it so we took the exact performance the next year and they weren’t looking for that.”

Kirby says this is the first year they’ve brought in an outside choreographer to critique the performance. “She did a little bit of tweaking, but not a lot and she seemed to think we would do well,” said Kirby who pushes the girls to be their best.

“All in all, I don’t care if they finish last because I’m proud of them because they put in the effort and the hard work,” said Kirby. “It doesn’t end after football. These girls are still practicing five days a week.”

Vocational education and workforce demand in Texas

Texas has a lot going for it—low unemployment, population growth, and a favorable regulatory environment. People want to come here, and it’s not just for our brisket and breakfast tacos.

But our prosperity is unevenly distributed, with some regions experiencing a disheartening “tale of two cities” dynamic. Port Arthur is one such place. With the enormous growth in the petroleum sector along the Gulf Coast, one might expect Port Arthur’s unemployment rate to be low. Instead, Port Arthur’s unemployment is 8.7%, compared to the statewide rate of 3.1%.

One culprit is the striking mismatch between high school career and technical education and the demands of high-wage, high-skill, and high-growth jobs.

In the Gulf Coast region, where Port Arthur is located, the largest job growth above median wage— 20%—is in the manufacturing and construction sectors. With the high demand for these jobs in many parts of Texas, employers are not looking for bachelor’s degrees. Instead, they need workers who already possess or can learn specific technical skills and who have an ability to execute consistently, safely, and punctually. the following: first, recent research reveals that each upper level vocational course in high school yields up to a 2% wage benefit after graduation. Second, the most common pathway to management-level jobs in manufacturing and construction is through on-the-job experience, supplemented with job-specific certifications and training.

With prospects like these, it seems reasonable that local high schools would adapt their offerings to give interested students a head start on these kinds of careers. Unfortunately, this is largely not the case.

Recent research on vocational course-taking reveals that as of 2016, 21% of students who concentrated in a single “vocational cluster” in the Beaumont/Port Arthur region focused on agriculture, the largest share of vocational

Erin Davis Valdez concentrators in the region. Agriculture makes up less than 1% of the jobs in the region, and this share is not growing. Despite strong demand in the manufacturing and construction sectors, the number of students who concentrated in manufacturing and construction made up less than 1%.

Simply put, high school students in Port Arthur were not taking sequential career and technology courses that would prepare them for the high-wage, high-demand, high-skill jobs in their back yards. In possibly related news, Port Arthur’s poverty rate is 29.3%. Statewide, that number is 16.7%.

Recently, Port Arthur’s leadership has shown strong interest in changing this story. But these efforts are not being aided by well -meaning educators who still cling to the notion that higher education is the only path to wellbeing. The dogma isn’t serving young people or the community well.

School districts and local businesses have an opportunity to address regional unemployment, poverty, and depopulation by entering into partnership with each other. The Texas Legislature has made a variety of tools available for just this purpose, including Texas Partnerships, Pathways in Technology, and Industry Cluster Innovation Academies. By working together, districts and businesses can offer high school students meaningful careers and technical education sequences, culminating in apprenticeship— whether they are “college bound” or not. Getting onto the first rung of the skilled craft ladder can give learners the financial and social capital to pursue happiness in many forms, including attending and completing college.

Texas taxpayers, businesses, and lawmakers should examine whether individual school districts are prioritizing their CTE funding to prepare interested students for high wage, high growth, and high skill jobs in their regions. If not, it is incumbent on businesses and school districts find ways to work together to give students more options that can lead to improved post-secondary outcomes, whether they take the form of college, trade school, entrepreneurship, or skilled employment.

Let’s focus on giving students strong, foundational knowledge and a range of relevant, domainspecific skills and experiences. If we invest hard work and resources into these goals, we may find that the return is even greater than merely financial for students.