I teach video production and broadcasting at Oak Harbor High School. A few times each year I’m lucky enough to get to meet my students’ parents face to face. After a classroom tour or demonstration of student projects, parents often say the same thing: I wish they’d have taught a class like this when I went to school.

I agree. Career/Tech classes when I was in high school consisted of woodshop, newspaper, auto mechanics, photography, typing and home economics. They were called vocational back then and were very low tech. In those days there was no reason to teach us about computer software or digital imaging or microwave ovens or 3D modeling or nail guns or ABS brakes because that was the stuff of science fiction, not real life.

I’m only talking about 35 years or so ago, around the same age Oak Harbor High School will be by the time we get it renovated after Oak Harbor voters approve a critical bond measure May 16.

At the beginning of each semester I tell my new students that its unlikely any of them will work for a television station. Then I tell them that the chances are better that they will BE a television station. Technology is leading them in that direction and beyond. Keeping our students in technology’s jet stream will require innovative teachers and staff, regular upgrades of classroom resources and strong community support.

We can’t prepare today’s kids for tomorrow’s world by arguing about enrollment numbers, tax rates or pet peeves with the school board. After all, the stuff we built out of untreated wood in woodshop 35 years ago has rotted away, our old darkroom prints are faded and discolored, the cars we repaired have gone to the junkyard and our IBM Selectrics are now advertised on eBay as vintage.

OHHS was designed and built for a much-different time. We need to stop making our kids work in a school that by technological standards is an ancient ruin.

In another 35 years students attending OHHS today may have to vote to renovate it again. Let’s hope that they can look back at the community who supported them and make the same progressive decision. Let’s also hope that they can visit one of their children’s classrooms, see the exciting, mind-boggling new things the kids are learning and come away saying, “I wish they’d have taught a class like this when I went to school.”

Chris Douthitt

Oak Harbor