LA GRANDE — An unconventional class assignment next fall awaits some La Grande High School students.

Students in the school’s construction class will begin building an approximately 2,000-square-foot mid-level home.

The structure will be constructed as part of a homebuilding program now being created at the high school that will start early in the 2023-24 school year. The program recently moved a big step forward when the La Grande School District officials learned their district will receive $515,000 federal funding to start the program.

“That gave us a big boost,” said Darren Hendrickson, the school’s construction and woods teacher.

Hendrickson will be helping guide La Grande High School students at the home construction site, which will be directed by a private general contractor.

The $515,000 grant will provide a springboard for the program. The structure, once complete, will be sold, and money from the sale will be used to construct a second house. Money from the sale of the home and all other homes later built by the program will go toward constructing more houses as part of a perpetual process.

The first house will be built at I Avenue and Third Street on a lot the La Grande School District purchased for the construction program. Hendrickson said the second house built through the program may be constructed on the same lot.

The program aims to help students develop the skills they need to land jobs in the construction field after they graduate. Hendrickson said the chances of securing a high-paying job in homebuilding are excellent now because there is a nationwide shortage in construction workers for a variety of reasons.

There is a pent-up demand for building construction following the COVID-19 pandemic, the teacher said, and a large number of construction workers are retiring.

Hendrickson said construction workers often retire when they are 45 to 50 years old because the work is so demanding physically.

“It has a high rate of turnover,” he said of the industry.

Getting ready

Hendrickson is preparing students in his woodworking classes for involvement in the home building project by having them construct sheds. He said building a shed is good preparation for homebuilding because one must do many of the same things they do when constructing a house, including putting in trusses, a floor system and a roof.

In the process of building sheds and later homes, students will be applying what they have learned in math classes to the construction process. For example, when determining heights and measurements needed to give a roof a certain pitch level, the students use the Pythagorean theorem they learned in geometry.

Hendrickson noted that when students have a chance to apply things like geometry and algebra concepts to construction, they develop a better understanding of them.

At the house construction site, work requiring professional certification, such as the pouring of concrete and installation of electrical writing, will be done by subcontractors, all of whom will be helping students learn about the building process.

Hendrickson said a spinoff of being involved in homebuilding is that it will give students a sense of ownership in the community and the chance to feel like they are making a difference.

“Years from now they will drive by these homes and say to themselves, ‘I helped build that.’ They will have a real sense of pride,” he said.

Similar programs

The new course will be comparable to a construction class taught at Elgin High School since 2015.

The course’s students have completed almost two homes under the direction of Matt Adams, the high school’s woodshop and construction teacher. Adams said students are learning life skills that will help all of them even if they do not pursue careers in construction. For example, they are learning how to install drywall. The ability to do this will come in handy, he said, when the students build or add on to their own homes.

“Something like that is in everyone’s future,” he said.

Adams said it can be challenging to get students interested in taking the class, but once they enroll in it, many continue taking the course until graduating. He said it is heartening to see how students take ownership of the homes they build. Adams enjoys hearing students or former students refer to seeing “our house” when discussing one of the structures they constructed.

Elgin High School has a history of having students build houses that dates back before the current program started. Elgin School District Superintendent Dianne Greif noted students constructed the building that now houses the Elgin Museum and the school district’s alternative school building.

Gust Tsiatsos, owner of the local construction firm GCT Land Management, is a fan of the effort to create the homebuilding program at La Grande High School. Tsiatsos hopes that the new class will help get more students interested in blue collar careers. The contractor said interest in such careers has slipped in today’s computer age when many young people are more interested in all things digital.

“Blue collar careers have been undersold,” he said.

Tsiatsos said that when he was growing up more young people wanted to go into the construction field.

“Young people aspired to it,” he said.