By John Howell
The North Panola Career and Technical Education Center in Como overflowed Monday afternoon as it hosted its spring advisory council meeting.
“You all can help us to move beyond the vo-tech stigma,” Career and Technical Eduction Center Director said, opening the meeting. “Vo-tech’s is kind of like a bad word around here because it’s often associated with low level thinking and a place you put kids who aren’t going to college or a place where you put kids when you can’t find anywhere else to put them.”
“That’s not the case at all,” Pride continued, speaking to about 70 people from across Panola County including community leaders, students and parents from the school and other invited guests.  “We are about exposure. We want to expose students to various technical colleges, universities, various career paths and so on and then let them decide.”
Pride reviewed student activities of the closing school year that included visits by NPCTE students to nine industry/workplace visits and eight community colleges and universities.
NPCTEC provides instruction to students in construction/carpentry, business marketing/fundamentals, teacher academy, health science, law and public safety, automotive technology and information technology.
“We’re state-tested just like the high school, only we take the CPAS which stands for Career Planning and Assessment System,” she said. Information Technology students instructed by Ollie Jackson take a national certification exam. “What’s really neat about the certification assessment is that it’s good anywhere in the United States,” Pride said. “No longer are we just teaching; our programs are rigorous,” she said, prior to introducing a group of outstanding NPCTEC students and their parents.
“You have a champion here in Ms. Pride,” said Tyson Elbert, a research associate with the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University. The Institute has acted as a subcontractor for funds provided by the Appalachian Regional Commission through the Mississippi/Appalachian Higher Education Network that have been funneled to the Panola Partnership to administer grant programs for the career and technical educations programs in the North and South Panola school districts.
“Finding champions are hard things to do,” Elbert continued. “This is our first year working with the North Panola School District; it is our exemplary program in all of the state.”
The grant funds administered through the Partnership are primarily used to fund students’ visits to institutions of higher learning and work sites.
“What we try to do is get students off campus,” the Stennis Institute representative said. “We try to get them on community college campuses, get them to Ole Miss, to Mississippi State, get them up to the University of Memphis. Then we want to have a conversation about what type of job do you want when you get out of high school. … To do that we try to get them into industry.”
“We try to link what type of job you want with the type of education that you need for it and the type of institution that can give you that education,” Elbert said.
“These vocational trades, technical trades, we need them just as bad as we need doctors,” Ralph “Fitz” Fitzgerald said. Fitzgerald directs the Delta Technical College at Horn Lake and has worked closely the NPCTEC.
Fitzgerald also praised what he said are the “soft skills” center students learn. “I’m talking about attitude, being on time, initiative, integrity — all those key things that they need to be successful,” he said.