The Stanly school board approved a CTE local plan for the next academic year on June 3. Photo courtesy Stanly County Schools

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ALBEMARLE — Stanly County Schools has given its official approval for the district’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) local plan for the upcoming 2025-26 academic year.

At the Stanly County Board of Education meeting on Tuesday night, CTE Director Mandy Melton presented the plan before it received its acceptance in a 7-0 vote by the school board.

She had previously shown the presentation at the Stanly school board’s Curriculum and Instructional Committee meeting back on May 14.

“This is a continuation of a two-year plan that we are in the second year of,” Melton said on Tuesday night. “In the presentation, I discussed our goals and how we could support reading, math and science, as well as post-secondary credentials and different forms of post-secondary attainment.”

The CTE local plan presentation covered enrollment figures, graduation rates, earned credentials, career and technical student organizations, courses offered, apprenticeships and internships.

Melton explained that the county’s CTE enrollment prior to COVID-19 was around 5,000 students when combining both middle and high school students together.

While that enrollment number dipped during the pandemic, the figure has now exceeded where it was before the pandemic.

“One thing we are extremely proud of in CTE is our credentials that we are giving our students the opportunity to obtain while they are in our courses,” Melton added. “In the fall semester, our students earned 2,563 credentials. That was 75% of the credential potential for the fall semester. I am proud to report that we have brought our average up for the year from 69% to 72% this school year.”

As of this past year, SCS has introduced a new program where it advertises CTE by sending every eighth-grade student in the county a book explaining the department, complete with a list of courses offered at their high schools, descriptions of the classes, and pictures and names of instructors.

SCS also introduced three new CTE courses during the 2024-25 academic calendar year: Interior Design Studio at Albemarle High School, Electrical Trades II at North Stanly High School, and Natural Resources at South Stanly High School.

“We have some great CTE programs in this county,” Board Member Bill Sorenson said. “There’s a cultural shift and societal shift taking place in the country to where skills and trade jobs are going to be replacing a lot of the four-year college approaches. We need to keep doing what we’re doing.”

The Stanly County Board of Education will hold its next regular meeting on Aug. 5 at 6:15 p.m. in the Gene McIntyre Meeting Room at Stanly County Commons.