Really Building Better Futures

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

For the first time in 23 years, a student at the Randolph Career and Technical Center received a gold medal by taking first place in carpentry at the annual Skills-USA / MICHIGAN Conference recently held in Lansing.

Justin Proch, who attended Mumford High School, was the student who earned that honor for Randolph. Two other Randolph students also won awards at the Conference. In masonry, Fausto Lopez, a junior at Western International High School received a gold medal for first place and Marcus Tyson, from Crosman Alternative received a silver medal for finishing second.

The Skills-USA program is a vocational youth program made up of nearly 264,000 students across the country and in Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands who are enrolled in career and technical education classes that can lead to careers, in both middle and high schools.

And back on the home front, Randolph students at the school were working just as hard to finish a house. The masonry students laid a temporary foundation and then for 8 months students during the school year, students in carpentry, plumbing, electrical construction, masonry, computer aided drafting, heating and air-conditioning and painting and decorating classes, contributed their skills to complete the house which was recently unveiled on the school property.

It is a three bedroom ranch with an attached garage and will go on the market after it’s moved to a new location in the Brightmoor area. The house represents a great collaboration between the District, the Northwest Neighborhood Development Corporation and Schiller Construction…a partnership that truly benefited the students.