Cool it, KTEC critics

You KTEC mumblers and grumblers, keep your hard hats on.

We think the Kootenai Technical Education Campus will one day win you over.

KTEC broke ground on Tuesday, tossing the first shovels-full of dirt on a past in which our region's more technically inclined students were at best underserved. When it opens next fall, the professional-technical program for skilled trades will train juniors and seniors from Kootenai County's three school districts.

Critics believe KTEC will be a breeding ground for more low-wage careers, training employees for prosperous businesses at taxpayer expense. The best argument we've seen against that came from Wayne Meyer's daughter, Jaime. Wayne is the former prairie farmer and state legislator whose family donated land upon which KTEC will rise.

Here's what Jaime posted this week on cdapress.com:

I am the mother of 2 special needs children that will never be able to attend college and get any kind of education above high school and KTEC offers my boys that opportunity to learn a trade hands on. My kids are not book smart and don't read very well and my parents knew that. That was my father's one goal was to provide them with a place that they can go to learn to weld or work a job that's going to pay more than sweeping floors or bagging groceries the rest of their lives.

That's a great starting point to put KTEC into perspective, but the positives don't end there.

As Gov. Butch Otter mentioned during the groundbreaking ceremony, some 5,000 students drop out of Idaho high schools each year.

"That happens because, in some cases, it simply isn't relevant," he said.

KTEC will make education relevant for some of those who just can't conform to the existing academic system. And as local businessman Ron Nilson noted, it will provide a means for some of our children to live and work here, rather than be forced to go elsewhere to ply their trade.

Tom Luna, the state's top education official, said KTEC sets an example that the rest of the state wants to emulate. Constructing the school is part of that equation, certainly, but Luna also may have been alluding to the fact that the measure funding KTEC was supported by voters in all three school districts - at a time when pain from the recession was near a high point. Perhaps it's recognizing and sacrificing for quality education that Luna was also suggesting.

We close with one more reason for KTEC optimism. Reserve judgment until you get to know Mark Cotner, KTEC's administrator. He's a soft-spoken, hard-driven, highly intelligent leader whose passion for technical and professional training is infectious. The man knows what he's selling, and we're certain demand will quickly exceed supply.