Heading into the 2025-26 school year, Lewis-Palmer District 38 is leading the charge with a new state-of-the-art facility for multiple new career pathways. Named the Career and Innovation Center, the standalone facility will be available to all district high schoolers and offer learning opportunities in fields unique to the area.
The five pathways were determined by a combination of recent data on the region’s current and future economic landscape, along with D-38’s student interest and community advisory groups.
Starting with Phase 1, juniors and seniors will have access to new coursework in advanced manufacturing, engineering and skilled trades at the center located at 1200 Synthes Ave.
Available classes will include welding, aerospace engineering and electronics engineering as well as the home build project that was previously at Lewis-Palmer High School. Transportation will be provided to all students and classes will span two periods for more immersive experiences.
“Palmer Ridge High School has never had a home build and they’ve never had a welding class, just because of their facilities,” D-38’s Secondary Programs Coordinator Jessica McAllister said. “Now with this centralized facility, Palmer Ridge students are going to get to experience that.”
Phase 2 will eventually expand offerings to include computer science and health care pathways. While there isn’t a concrete date for these programs, McAllister said their entry-level courses will be offered at existing schools as both the facility and advanced coursework continue to develop.
In addition to the school district’s own dollars invested in the program, a large part of rounding out the new center’s programming is through a growing number of industry partnerships. McAllister said this emphasis on partnerships was planned early in the center’s development, hoping to both educate current students and prepare the future workforce for local industries.
“We were having conversations with someone from Springs Fab [Fabrication], and he was saying that he cannot find welders,” she said. “And so, when we started telling him that we have 90 students that are interested in our welding program alone, that became really exciting to him.”
To date, Nova Flex, Integris and IEEE are among the center’s nationwide partners, along with local employers like Jabil and education entities like the University of Colorado Colorado Springs and Westminster D-50.
D-38 has met with UCCS to discuss possible collaborations with the university’s electronic engineering course to ease matriculation, while D-50 recently donated $188,000 worth of equipment from its sunsetting trades program.
McAllister said these partnerships, along with the various grants the district has applied for, have expanded their reach and planning for the incoming center.
In addition to providing work-based learning and internship opportunities, she said the partnerships will also provide students with what she referred to as “supervised entrepreneurial experiences” to give them the opportunity to solve real problems that local industries currently face.
“How can we create projects that will serve your industry? So, we’re also taking about different ways in bringing the relevance and intentionality that is happening in industry to our learning environment,” she said.
In applying for the U.S. Department of Education’s CTE CHIPS Challenge, D-38 will launch Colorado’s first high school course in electronics and semiconductor engineering and manufacturing in partnership with local industry leaders at the center.
The nationwide competition, which was born out of the federal CHIPS Act signed into law in 2022 to grow domestic semiconductor production and manufacturing, would ultimately get terminated by the Department of Education July 17, but McAllister said experiences like this have offered them new opportunities to develop their offerings to students.
“We get to collaborate on a national level with these different competitors, but also bring in different voices from industry, the government about the importance of CHIPS-aligned occupations and training,” she said.
The nationwide competition was born out of the federal CHIPS Act signed into law in 2022, which seeks to grow domestic semiconductor production and manufacturing through funds and incentives.
Further increasing its use as an overall community resource, McAllister said the plan is for the center to be open to adult learners during the summer months, weekends and after-school hours to develop their respective skills.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
Elsewhere in El Paso County, other districts are in the midst of their own respective CTE expansions.
This fall, Colorado Springs D-11 will be ready to open the Colorado Springs School of Technology. Much like D-38’s incoming center, the innovation zone will offer students the opportunities to work alongside local businesses and business leaders and earn industry certifications through internships and mentorships.
Where it differs is that it will offer coursework focused on careers in aerospace, defense, cybersecurity, information technology and space technology. Students will also have opportunities for dual enrollment with the University of Colorado Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak State College.
While it’s not slated to open this fall, Academy D-20 is hard at work developing a new center for expanded career and technical education (CTE) programming as part of its rebuild of Air Academy High School.
To complement the existing Center of Excellence at Liberty High School, the center will offer career pathways in aviation, advanced manufacturing/mechatronics, hospitality management/culinary, and computer programming/AI technology for all D-20 high school students.
D-20 spokesperson Mark Belcher said talks to develop the new CTE offerings began several years ago as part of the district’s long-term strategic planning. Conversations gained momentum as leadership evaluated district-wide facility needs, student interest, and workforce demands when considering the Air Academy rebuild through a 2024 bond vote.
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