SANDPOINT — It’s not often that you meet a high school senior with a detailed plan for the future, let alone two. Yet, that is the case for Brent Campbell, a senior at Sandpoint High School, thanks to the school’s dual credit programs.

Campbell wants to become an HVAC technician, earning his certification at Lewis and Clark College through its two-year program. To get into that highly competitive program, he’s already taking real world math at SHS through the school’s dual-credit programs. 

"To start the program for HVAC, that’s the math I need to have going into the program,” Campbell said. “So, taking Math 123 just makes it so I can kickstart and start the program instead of having an extra semester taking math.” 

That isn’t all, to ensure he has backup plan; Campbell was one of the first in his class to earn a commercial driver’s license, or CDL. Alongside the help of SHS staff, like Jeralyn Mire, the school’s post-secondary transition counselor, Campbell went through the process of earning his license completely free. 

"I just saw the posters we had up all around the school and I was like ‘You know what, I’m going to go see if this is something I could do’” Campbell said of earning his CDL. “It’s nice to have trucking as a kind of backup.” 

Students across the state have access to $4,625 from the state that they can use to propel themselves to the next level. Mire said how those funds are used can differ by the student’s needs, going toward classes that count for college credit or in the case of students like Campbell, workforce training. 

The programs allow juniors and seniors to jumpstart their careers, either by directly going into the field or having the ability to graduate college earlier. Mire said the school has seen students graduate SHS with their associates degree or jump straight to working for companies like Microsoft after earning their IT certification in high school. 

Mire said the ability to get a headstart provides students an opportunity to better map out their careers. She said oftentimes many students don’t know what they want to do and the funds help them search for the right fit completely free. 

“I think a lot of times students don't necessarily know at the age of 16 or 17 that I may want to be a plumber," Mire said. “Sometimes they have to get out and experience life a little bit and before they sort of find their career path. But I think it helps them, at least we can provide some opportunities for them.” 

One of Sandpoint High School’s largest partners in the dual credit program is North Idaho College. Through the accredited two-year university, students have a whole host of options available to them from classes to advising.  

Mire said advisors from NIC come to SHS and help students map out the path they need to take for their career goals, whether that be workforce training or earning their associates degree before making the leap to a four-year university. 

“You don't want a student just to take college credits. You want it to get them somewhere, right?” Mire said. “It's great if, if you take a whole bunch of physical education classes, but it's got to lead [somewhere] we want students to think about it like, what's it leading you to?” 

Starting this past year, NIC brought both its certified nursing assistant and CDL testing to its Sandpoint satellite campus. Prior to that, students from Bonner and Boundary counties had to make the trip to NIC’s main workforce training center in Post Falls. 

“That's kind of the way that we help the school with that part of it," Corrie Kinman, enrollment coordinator at the Sandpoint campus, said. “Then, like Bonners Ferry, can send their students to it as well. If they wanted to come down here and take the course, any of the kids can do it for schools.” 

Kinman said one of the other opportunities that NIC offers are apprenticeship programs, which offer students the ability to work professionally as a plumber, electrician and construction worker. The programs are based out of Post Falls and Rathdrum and see students working at least one day a week. 

Both Kinman and Mire expressed that the relationship between high schools and colleges is constantly improving to provide more opportunities for students.  

“People got to start taking advantage of these opportunities, there’s so many here,” Campbell said. “The faculty at our school work so hard to get all these and not a ton of people take advantage of them.”