Sep 28, 2014 3 min read

What if your son or daughter could graduate from high school with a marketable skill, one that could immediately propel them into the workforce, or give them an edge to help pay for higher education? That option exists at the Greene County Career and Technology Center in Waynesburg.

In an ongoing series, we highlighted four graduates of the GCCTC.

We had two reasons: Those featured deserved to be recognized for their achievements; and we wanted to dispel the stereotype that vo-tech students are “losers” or second-class students in comparison to those in a more typical scholastic setting.

Consider Tracy Russell. She has been a licensed practical nurse for more than 20 years. She launched her career when she was a student at Mapletown High School in Southeastern Greene School District, when she made the decision to attend the technology center.

She enrolled in the program that trains health assistants and graduated in 1989 with the skills she needed to quickly secure employment in personal care facilities.

Russell tried to get into the practical nursing program at GCCTC right out of high school, but the program was full.

Nonetheless, three years later, she returned to the school and graduated in 1993 with a class of fellow practical nurses.

She began working at Kade Nursing Home in Washington, and is still there, providing care for patients aged 25 to 104 years-old.

She also works part time as a detox nurse for Greenbriar Treatment Center.

Work is always available for her, because there will always be people who are going to be ill and infirm.

Then, there is Charlene Mitchell, a cosmetology graduate who is currently operating her third salon.

Her daughter, Kirsten Clites, is a junior at Jefferson-Morgan High School, and is following in her mother’s footsteps as a cosmetology student.

The family ties to the technology center don’t end there – Mitchell’s sister studied marketing at GCCTC, two of her nephews went through the precision machining program, and a third nephew studied drafting and design. Mitchell’s husband, Bob, instructs the electrical and power transmission installers program.

We also featured Doug Laskody and his son, Jake, who operated the company DL Machine in Waynesburg.

Both are graduates of the precision machining program at the GCCTC, along with Eric Elli of Greensboro, a drafting student who worked at Aquatech International Corp. in Canonsburg.

He now works as a senior draftsman and surveyor at Dra-Surv Inc. in Carmichaels.

These are success stories of graduates, but other success stories are just beginning to take shape for students presently enrolled at the school.

The famous battle cry, “Remember the Alamo,” took on new meaning when nine students from Greene County Career and Technology Center headed south in July for the Family Career and Community Leaders of America National Leadership Conference.

There, the students qualified to compete against thousands of other students at the national conference in San Antonio, Texas, after placing at the state competition held in Lancaster last spring.

The competition resulted in three gold, four silver and two bronze medals, captured by students from Waynesburg Central, Jefferson-Morgan, Carmichaels and Mapletown high schools.

Hearing nine names of GCCTC students announced as winners at the state competition left the teacher who took the students to the competition flabbergasted.

It should have left the Greene County educational community proud.

Label them “techies” if you want.

We will just call them winners.