Bud Johnson, an award-winning instructor who taught masonry at a career center in Oklahoma, teaches the PHS program. He said it should give students who had few chances before gain skills that have instant marketability.

“They literally can walk out of here and take $400 and get the tools they need — good tools, because bricklayers don’t need much — and start out making $15 an hour,” he said. “If they get a union job, that’s $29 an hour. And there’s a real need for it. The average age of masons right now is 47, and look at all the projects that demand it.”

Johnson had just a week to recruit students like Daniel Blair, a junior, who enrolled because he saw the value in having a skill that is so needed.

“I thought this way I probably would never be out of a job,” he said. He said he was absent from other classes before, but he never misses the masonry class.

Blair and his fellow classmates are learning mechanical skills such as repairing a mortar mixer, discipline and how to meet deadlines, and applied math in estimating bricks and laying out a job.

“This opens up many doors for our kids,” Zerr said. “Their education is now focused, and they have a reason to come to school and something they care about. We have one student, a senior, who lives on his own and supports himself. He works a minimum-wage job, and somehow he makes it. But when he gets through this class, this will give him a highly marketable skill that he can use to pull himself up even more.”

Sterrett said putting the program in place at several locations in such a short time was nothing short of a miracle. He attributed the success in doing so to a highly visible need that everyone saw.

“They see the possibilities and the transformation of students who can engage, in a very practical way, when they might not have been before,” he said.

The best part of the program, administrators agree, is the articulation agreements in place, something those involved call “2+2+2.”

“This program allows students to earn industry-recognized credentials and be in a national registry in multiple trades,” Sterrett said.

“Then they’re given the opportunity to pursue an associate’s degree at FSCC without having to complete duplicate course work, which makes them even more marketable when they’re done with that. Then, if they choose to go to Pittsburg State University, they can enter as a junior and, again, not have to repeat classes. They come out as a skilled craftsman with real wage-earning potential.

“Or, at any time along the way, they could take the off-ramp and go right into the marketplace.”

Officials are planning to expand the program to include Uniontown High School next spring, and eventually offer it from Crawford County up to Miami County.