SANDPOINT — Panhandle Alliance for Education recently surveyed this year’s financial statistics and strategic initiative progress in its annual report for 2023 which was titled, “A Blueprint for Success.”

One portion of the report focused on the residential carpentry program at Sandpoint High School. Officials referenced the success of Alicia Prins, a 2017 graduate of SHS. Prins, a fourth-year electrician apprentice, did not have the same access to trade-related education now available to SHS students.  

Now, Prins gets to see students excel through recent opportunities for students, like the residential carpentry program made possible by Construction Combine, a PAFE-funded teacher grant. She was able to help administer career technical instruction at the school in 2022. 

“I loved teaching high school students the basics of electrical work at Construction Combine,” she said. “... I wanted them to see that I enjoy this work and they can, too; if I can do this, they can. I didn’t know about skilled trades back in high school. If I had, I would have gone into it sooner.”

Stories like Prins’ are inspiring leaders at PAFE to focus on funding programs that offer students the chance to observe trades and learn practical skills in the high school classroom, as opposed to after graduation. 

This year, PAFE’s total revenue was $827,096, officials said in the  report. Fundraising, its primary source of income, provided 64% of those funds, while endowments contributed 24%, donations contributed 8%, and grants contributed 4%. 

Expenses at PAFE this year totaled $958,883 which include program and endowment investments that fund teacher grants and strategic programs. 

Fifty-four percent of those expenses were put toward programs, while 25% was put toward fundraising, 19% was put toward endowment and 2% was put toward administration costs. 

“As a citizen of this community, a business owner, and a donor to PAFE, I have many choices in where I give,” Kendon Perry, PAFE president, said. “I choose PAFE because of the blueprint for success they have created: working with families and children literally from the day they’re born with our Born to Read Program to our READY for Kindergarten program and then READY to Read right on through the 12th grade with teacher grants and now with our residential carpentry program.”