YCCA is a program not many people know about. But that should change. YCCA is a student career academy.

The YCCA is an educational program that focuses its lessons on the student’s future career. There is a common misconception that the career academy is targeted to students that don’t do well or kids that don’t want to go to college. But that is false.

The superintendent of the Yamhill Carlton school district, Charan Cline said “they[classes] are not targeted at a certain kind of student, they are targeted at a student who is interested in a technical education.

A technical education is a way of learning that focuses on skilled trades, applied sciences, modern technology, and is a way to prepare for a career right after high school, rather than going to college or university.

YCCA has an array of classes that consists of many levels of animal science, horticulture and viticulture, manufacturing technology, and design and production. Those are only the electives; there is also YCCA core classes that are there for the kids that want to pursue this type of education  such as technical english and YCCA math, along with workshop science.

While career academies are all over the United States, they are especially useful in our small part of the country. Oregon is a huge agriculturally dominant state, Oregon alone produces 99% of the nation’s filberts.

Some might be concerned with the fact that our schools budget is very structured and can’t budge for some program that doesn’t affect everyone. Our new career academy does not affect the money in our school except for some new annual school supplies.

“The program is grant funded, so it doesn’t affect the school budget, and we are in the process of filling out a second grant to continue,”  says Brittany Hartmann, who teaches Workshop science.

“People should think about joining the career academy if you are interested in joining the workforce right after high school,” Cline said.

“They[career academy students] have better entry, in terms of making money over time, there is research that their families are more stable over ten years.”