Back in May, the Fort Walton Beach High School CTE Carpentry Program hosted a Board Cutting ceremony to celebrate their new classroom and shop spaces. 

• This was the first year the Vikings have had a CTE Carpentry program with students collectively earning over 150 HBI PACT CORE and HBI PACT Green Building industry certifications. 

Now, the high school program is in need of an overhang outside of their classroom to help store materials such as lumber. Currently, the wood is stored inside the classroom which doesn’t make for the best learning environment. 

This is where the local Building Industry Association is stepping up to help the next generation of builders. 

“The Building Industry Association reached out to a few of our vendors and members and we’ve gotten some stuff donated,” said Jason Carducci, President of the BIA. 

Lumber was donated to the program and before school was out for the summer, students formed the foundation.

• Carducci was able to get base rock donated for the overhang’s foundation from Fort Walton Beach Concrete and Justin Mitchum Clearing and Trucking delivering the rock for free from Crestview. 

“The construction industry as a whole is an aging workforce and we’ve realized it for a while,” said Alan Baggett, VP of the BIA. “The industry wants to be a part of this and truly, with an aging workforce, we don’t have a way to backfill and bring people into the industry.”

Baggett added that thanks to the the Construction Programs throughout the Okaloosa County School District, close to 1,500 students will participating in some form of construction. 

• From there, Baggett says the goal is to determine if students will go straight into the workforce, head to college or to the Career Technical College in Fort Walton Beach. 

Back to the FWBHS overhang, Carducci says that over the summer, the concrete will be poured and hopefully they can get more donations from the community and building industry to further support the needs of the programs across the district. 

“We are going to make this happen,” he added. “This is how our community works.”