Students, Port of Camas-Washougal team up

A group of Washougal High School students is diligently preparing for an upcoming forklift certification examination with the help of a newly purchased simulator, installed in the school’s construction technology classroom May 15.

“It’s kind of like a big video game,” said Margaret Rice, the Washougal School District’s career and technical education director.

Rice sent a survey to businesses in the Port of Camas-Washougal’s industrial park earlier this spring, asking if they would be interested in talking to the students who pass the examination. She received positive responses from 16 business owners and plans to invite them to the Washougal High campus to conduct interviews after the exam.

“It’s hard getting jobs right out of high school, especially in the industry that you want to be in,” Rice said, “so we want to try and get (students) as far down that road as we can while they’re still here.”

The forklift connection is the latest example of the burgeoning partnership between the Washougal School District’s career and technical education department and the Port of Camas-Washougal.

“I think we’ve built a really strong relationship,” Rice said. “We’ve done a really good job of supporting each other, and this is just another example of how we’re starting to bridge our students to those employers. With every step we take, it just gets stronger.”

Rice and Derek Jaeger, the port’s business development director, communicate on a regular basis about potential opportunities to collaborate.

Rice takes career and technical education students on field trips to port businesses and invites business owners to speak in classrooms. The port hires students for summer maintenance jobs and has indicated a willingness to provide space for Cascadia Technical Academy’s newest satellite program, which will launch at Washougal High this fall.

“A lot of our students want to stay in our community, and we want them to stay,” Rice said, “so if we can help them get connected with businesses that are going to offer them a living wage out of the chute with opportunities to advance and grow their skill set, we should be doing that.”

The partnership with the school district is a critical piece of the port’s efforts to strengthen community partnerships, a pillar of the port’s strategic plan update that will be voted on by commissioners this summer.

“We understand the importance of our role as being an economic development engine in our community,” Jaeger said, “and what better way to do that than through the schools with our kids that are coming up in the workforce?”

Forklift certification

The school district received a Federal Perkins Grant, a form of federal funding provided through the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act to improve and expand career and technical education programs, to cover the purchase of the forklift simulator and the students’ exam fees ($150 per student).

The SimLog Forklift Simulator, purchased through Klein Educational Systems, is suitable for Occupational Safety and Health Administration Class 1, 4 and 5 operator training.

The simulation is of “real factory/warehouse/distribution center forklifts,” with a rated capacity in the 5,000-to-6,000-pound range for a forklift with four wheels and rear-wheel steering, Rice said.

“This means skills transfer to virtually all real sit-down counterbalanced forklifts that one would encounter in the United States,” she added.

Fifteen Washougal High students are using the simulator to prepare for a forklift certification examination Saturday.

“Many construction tech jobs — metals and woods and manufacturing and even logistics — need forklifts,” Rice said.

Jaeger and Rice said students who graduate from high school with a forklift certificate in hand will have an edge.

“I think it’s huge,” Jaeger said. “It gives them an advantage of having a skill set that they can walk in with and have to offer.”

Vancouver Public Schools’ new Endeavor Technical Trades Center at Hudson’s Bay High School also has a forklift simulator, said Rice, who attended the facility’s ribbon-cutting ceremony May 20.

Forklift operators in Washington earn an average of $20.20 per hour, according to ZipRecruiter.