Henrico ACE students will help build their own school with new HCPS partnership

For the first time, Henrico Schools will have its own students help construct a part of their new school, with students working alongside contractors to build the second floor of the new Advanced Career Education Center at Hermitage High School.

HCPS announced its new “groundbreaking” partnership with the Associated General Contractors of Virginia, an organization for construction firms, on Feb. 25 at the second floor of the Hermitage ACE Center – what is now a construction site and what soon will be two wings of classrooms for new ACE medical programs.

Beginning this spring and spanning the next two years, HCPS high school juniors and seniors from ACE trades programs will work with their instructors and outside industry partners to complete the second floor, devoting one year to the first wing and another to the floor’s second wing. Rising sophomores and juniors also will get to work on the site during a summer-long program.

The project will involve between 1,000 and 1,200 students, providing them the opportunity to get hands-on experience and connect with potential future employers, said HCPS Workforce and Career Development Director Mac Beaton.

“When you go into the actual career field, you have the knowledge of what to do, what not to do, all the safety tips, and then you already have a base knowledge. Compared to somebody who’s not already having prior knowledge, you’re already a step ahead of them.”
– Hunter Spaulding,
2023 ACE Center at Highland Springs graduate

“The students won’t just say, ‘I went to school here.’ They’ll say, ‘I helped build that building,’” Beaton said. “Everybody says, ‘Well, your building’s not finished.’ Oh, the building’s finished exactly like we wanted it, because this is the lab our kids will learn in.”

Construction teams from the AGC of Virginia and other industry partners will help provide students instruction, materials, equipment, and mentorship opportunities on the site. With 80% of AGC members struggling to recruit construction workers nationwide, the partnership will help firms find much-needed future construction employees, said AGC of Virginia CEO Brandon Robinson.

“Workforce development is the number one priority of the construction industry. We need more construction workers,” Robinson said. “One of the best ways to develop the next generation of talent is giving students a chance to do the very thing that makes construction such an attractive job: building something they can be proud of.”

Helping solve the workforce crisis

HCPS has given CTE students similar real-life, on-site training experiences in the past, with the largest recent project being the construction of the Regency Adult Education Center, which opened in 2023 with the help of 600 ACE students.

Hunter Spaulding, a 2023 graduate from the ACE Center at Highland Springs High who now works in the electrical industry, said that the hands-on experience you receive as a CTE student is invaluable when it comes to joining the trades as an adult.

“When you go into the actual career field, you have the knowledge of what to do, what not to do, all the safety tips, and then you already have a base knowledge,” Spaulding said. “Compared to somebody who’s not already having prior knowledge, you’re already a step ahead of them. You can be worth more to a company than just coming off of, per se, the street and just jumping into a career field that you don’t know much about.”

For Spaulding, the most impactful part of his CTE experience at Henrico was the dedication and support of his ACE instructors.

“I would say that my three teachers definitely motivated me and inspired me to have a love for the electrical field,” he said. “So it’s really heavily on the teachers for me, because they gave me an opportunity and helped me realize that this is something that I never knew I could do before, but now I know that it’s an option for me and I can build a steady career with it.”

Beaton is hopeful that this student-led project can become a “national model” for other school districts, giving students more CTE opportunities in school and reducing the workforce shortage currently afflicting the construction industry. 

“Rising tides lift all boats. We’re proving this can work. So now someone else, I hope, will take this model,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot of work to solve the workforce crisis, but I think we have to make dents in it and try to move forward.”

But HCPS is still looking for more industry partners to join the partnership, which Beaton believes will create a long-lasting impact in Henrico’s CTE program.

“To truly make a difference in a young person’s life, a single person could move the needle some, but when the community gets behind the goal, you see change,” he said. “We’re fortunate enough to be in a county that believes in change.”

Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.