When the 2019 tornado hit Preston Hollow, one of its casualties was Walnut Hill Elementary School, an 80-year-old building known for its Spanish-style facade. Though students from Walnut Hill were moved to a nearby school, Dallas ISD rebuilt the demolished portions and rebranded the building as Career Institute North.

CI North is a CTE (Career & Technical Education) school, part of a push that started 10 years before it opened. The 83rd Texas Legislature passed the Foundational High School Program as a requirement for high school graduation, requiring each student’s diploma to be “endorsed” with a career (or CTE) pathway, a requirement that became nationally funded in 2018 under the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (aka Perkins V.)

There are 14 approved pathways in Texas, with several endorsements each, from aviation to law enforcement to cosmetology and culinary arts. While most are approved further by Dallas ISD, not every school has the resources, space and appropriate faculty to teach every CTE pathway.

Dallas ISD has three institutes aiming to bridge those gaps, with the Charmaine and Robert Price Career Institute serving southern Dallas high schools and Career Institute East serving eastern Dallas high schools.

Last year, the district opened Career Institute North, a campus for students at Conrad, Hillcrest, North Dallas, Thomas Jefferson and W.T. White High Schools. Though all three institutes have been operating for years, Career Institute North is the first permanent building the district has finished.

And $75 million later, some classrooms are still unfilled.

All of CI North’s pathways and programs are aimed toward securing post-graduation jobs in careers in-demand in our area. Though the programs are tuition-free and transportation is provided, program director Jean Laswell says they have had trouble getting students to sign up due to language barriers, class schedule complications and lack of awareness from the community.

Since Dallas ISD is on a block schedule, students who want to pursue career pathways that are not available at their home campus are able to go to CI North on one of their blocked days. To ensure that more students are able to access the courses, foreign language courses are also available on campus.      

“When we first started the program and when I did this in other districts, I found that counselors want to enroll students that are in the ninth grade, as freshman, into as many classes that will get them their graduation credits as possible,” Laswell says.

“They don’t want to put them in electives, so we offer Spanish or German, which is one of the languages other than English that is required for graduation, to entice the counselors to put them here so that we could get them into those classes as well as their program of study elective.”

Though not all classes offered are specific to a career, all classes are aimed toward preparing the student for whatever career they go into, specifying language classes toward industry terminology and offering classes on entrepreneurship with presentation skills and business modeling competitions.

“We also found that we have 250 German businesses throughout Dallas-Fort Worth that have recruiting groups. They bring their students that are recruited into their programs and train them in Europe and send them to locations all over the world. They also pay for their four years of college,” Laswell says. “So German is a great thing to have. We also do heritage Spanish for Careers because 75% of our population here at this campus are English learners.”

Architecture and Interior Design

Ely Aceitino, a sophomore at North Dallas, is on the interior design pathway. After taking German and employability skills, she took her first interior design class.

“I want to learn different languages, and I want to branch out to maybe going to different universities in other places in the world,” she says.

“So far, I want to do something in the medical field, but it’s nice to learn something else in high school, because if anywhere in life I want to change my mind, I can go be an interior designer because it’s actually a passion of mine.”

Interior design courses are taught by Bridget Williams, a certified interior designer who has worked in the industry for over a decade.

“We do a lot of teamwork,” Ely says. “It helps us get out of our own spaces and our comfortability, like when we planned and modeled an entire house.”

Aviation

Tucked inside an area that was the former elementary school’s auditorium, the aviation students have a donated first-class cabin for both the culinary and aviation students to use, as well as secure drone flying areas and several flight simulators.

The program partners with Dallas Love Field Airport, aiming to provide students with internships and postgraduate jobs in air traffic control and as Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) operators or electromechanical technicians.

Construction

In the construction classrooms, students gain industry-required certificates, and each course has a laboratory component with hands-on shop projects, local field trips and preparation for their senior year practicum.

Last year, the students built and assembled a tiny home — complete with plumbing and electricity — and underclassmen built birdhouses and benches that were donated to the Dallas ISD Environmental Education Center.

“We’re hoping that maybe we can get some kind of situation with them where we can have the students build the tiny home and get paid for their labors, so they’d actually be working for that company when they’re here in the lab,” Laswell says.

Some of the students that are in their practicum semester in the spring are working with Dallas ISD maintenance, Laswell says.

Cybersecurity & Software Development

“I look forward to, in the future, being able to work with computers and hacking legally,” says Emely Marroquin, a junior from North Dallas who is on the cybersecurity pathway.

Marroquin is taking computer science and technology networking, two classes required for a computer science endorsement in either cybersecurity or software development. Next year, she will be eligible to do a cybersecurity practicum, where she can get school credit for an internship, mentorship, independent study or school or work-based laboratory experience along with earning four related certifications.

“This is a class I definitely recommend to a lot of people because it teaches you stuff that your home campus probably could not,” Marroquin says.

Medical

First-year students aiming to go into the medical field start with medical terminology and principles of health sciences classes before branching off into their specialty of choice: Emergency Medical Technician, patient care, dental assistant or phlebotomy and EKG.

The institute has fully-functioning dental and EMT labs, fit with an electronic X-ray machine, dental exam chairs and an AI-operated hospital simulation lab, where mannequins of all ages and sizes talk, cry with real tears, describe their conditions and allow students to practice procedures.

During their senior year, students are also able to test for their patient care tech certification, EKG or phlebotomy certification, dental assisting certification or EMT certification. Outside of Dallas ISD, it would take students months to years and cost hundreds to thousands of dollars after graduation to pursue the same level of certification.

“Right now, we’re studying the systems of the heart and we’re learning to dissect the heart,” says Fatima Vega, a senior at Conrad in the patient care pathway. “For us, as seniors, we’re working with EKG, phlebotomy and patient care as well to get all these certifications.”

Vega hopes to be a combat nurse after graduation using the certifications and knowledge she got in high school.

HVAC & Refrigeration

“[I joined because] my sister was in HVAC and because I actually have an interest in air conditioning systems,” says Daniel Zavala, a sophomore at W. T. White in the HVAC pathway.

Though his first few classes are focusing on safety, Zavala says it’s important to take the classes seriously.

“The torches, they go to like 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, so don’t mess around with that and really focus,” he says. “When you put the copper together, it’s very hot and copper doesn’t change color when it gets hotter and hotter, so I’m really focused.”