CALDWELL — The high school students shuffled into the classroom, sporting dark purple scrubs.
On the margins of the classroom, medical dummies lay supine on hospital beds, with boxes of nitrile gloves at the ready. No ordinary high school class, these Elevate Academy, Caldwell campus students are preparing for careers as health care workers.
And at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, they listened intently to a presentation from Southwest District Health staff about the kind of services the health district offers — services the students could help provide as part of their future career.
Elevate Academy’s Caldwell campus , and its three other campuses in Idaho, are 6-12th grade career and technical education schools providing training in careers “tailored to that community’s needs.” Medical arts, construction, culinary arts, and business are some of the schools’ focus areas.
“Our big push here is community,” said Diana Mysinger, one of the school’s medical arts teachers. “Most of these kids are not going to leave this community. So we want to make sure that they’re going to be the ones you can trust, and give them that good career foundation.”