CARES program gets Juneau students back on track

Blinking lights and pink umbrellas will be on display Thursday night at the Goldtown Nickelodeon as students in the Juneau School District’s CARES program show off their work.

CARES allows students who have fallen behind on graduation credits to take alternative classes after school.

It often partners with the Juneau Economic Development Council’s STEM education program, short for Science Technology Engineering and Math.

It’s 5 o’ clock on a weekday afternoon, and about a dozen students are spread out at workstations in a large classroom at the Marie Drake building. Some are soldering wires together. Others are using hot glue guns to attach LED lights to their projects. A few more sit at laptop computers writing code that will make the lights blink on and off.

Yaakoosge Daakahidi Alternative High School sophomore Lexi Nelson works with a bright pink umbrella adorned with various shades of electro luminescent wire.

“I’m zip tie-ing my battery pack on the inside of my umbrella, so when I twirl it and stuff it doesn’t fall out,” Nelson says.

Her partner, Alexa Adelmeyer, sews the brightly colored EL wire to her umbrella. They plan to use them in a dance routine as part of the final project presentation.

Adelmeyer says the CARES program has improved her study habits. The classes are also more hands on and project oriented than regular school.

“Not all in the book and a bunch of homework and a teacher just blabbing at you,” Adelmeyer says.

Students can only get into CARES when they fall behind on their regular coursework. The program acronym stands for Credit Achievement Recovery & Employability Skills. Josh Deutsch is a Student Advocate with the Juneau School District. He’s part instructor, part CARES program recruiter.

“These are students that for one reason or another haven’t succeeded completely in their regular school classes,” Deutsch says. “So we like to give a little extra engagement, a little extra support if they need it in getting re-engaged. That’s our key goal is getting these kids re-engaged in regular school.”

Deutsch says the Juneau Economic Development Council’s STEM education programs are a near perfect fit for CARES’ mission. The students in this class are trying to recover physical science credits needed to graduate. But rather than focus solely on science, Deutsch says they tweaked it slightly.

“We added an ‘A’ in it like some people do. So, it’s STEAM education and that just adds Arts in there,” he says.

Thunder Mountain High School Arts Teacher Heather Ridgway is assisting with the CARES class. She says it’s important for the students to learn about electricity and other physics concepts. But it’s equally important for them to produce something that shows what they learned.

Lamas and his partner are making a backdrop for the final project presentations. It’s a model of a circuit board mounted on a giant piece of cardboard, with LED lights and EL wire that will light up throughout the show.