Air Quality Upgrades on CCTC Campuses

Dear Collins Career Technical Center families and faculty,

A new school year is upon us, and I look forward to starting a new school year filled with endless opportunities for growth, academic success, and memorable experiences. I am pleased to remind you, our valued school community, of our recent investment to support the health and well-being of everyone who enters our buildings. Last year, our school district installed state-of-the-art air purification units in common areas throughout our facilities, including classrooms, offices, and more.

Our partnership is with Protect|ED, a trusted medical-grade device company that provides NanoStrike™ units that disinfect our air, beyond the capabilities of HVAC filters that simply capture pathogens. Instead, NanoStrike™ destroys them at the cellular level.

Our children and team deserve to breathe clean air. Over the course of a K-12 education, a child will spend more than 15,000 hours at school. Even when cleaned to high standards, classrooms, cafeterias, labs, and offices can contain chemical and biological contaminants.

We knew we could do better. With the realities of the ongoing pandemic, school districts like ours are turning their attention to air quality – an area that has largely been overlooked and underfunded in school buildings for decades. The time was right for us to make this critical change; thankfully, federal funds were available to help. 

The well-being of our school community has always been our top priority, and our students deserve to learn in a place where their health is nurtured alongside their intellectual growth, social engagement, and emotional well-being. Likewise, supporting our faculty and staff is equally important to ensure we best support our students – keeping everyone engaged and learning in the classroom. Our valued partnership with Protect|ED helps us live out this commitment.

Additionally, we know from Harvard University researchers that clean air sharpens cognitive ability, improving test scores and helping students focus.

This air purification option stood out to our leadership for several reasons. First, NanoStrike™ is supported by science and embraced by the medical community. It is used by respected institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic because of its efficient inactivation technology. Clinical studies have shown how Nanostrike™ can reduce certain viruses and pathogens by up to 99.9 percent. It goes far beyond COVID-19, defending against typical school germs such as influenza, noroviruses, strep, cold viruses, allergens, and more. The slim and lightweight devices are extremely quiet and will not disrupt our learning environment.

We look forward to seeing the benefits of this decision unfold in the coming year in our students' health, wellness, and academic experiences.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

Have a Great Year!

Adam M. Pittis, Superintendent

Collins Career Technical Center

Collins Sees Major Growth in High School Enrollment

Collins Career Technical Center (CCTC) has seen a thirty-five percent increase in high school enrollment over the past three years as more families nationally see career technical education (CTE) as a real alternative to a traditional high school experience. Nearly seven hundred juniors and seniors from Lawrence County’s seven local school districts are enrolled in one of CCTCs twenty-six career technical programs of study.

This steady growth resulted in the birth of a new construction academy at CCTC. There are now six academies: Construction, Health, Services, Technology, and Trades. These academies are smaller learning communities containing similar programs that share the same core group of academic teachers and intervention staff. This structure makes it easier for a science teacher to teach sound waves as part of an audio engineering lesson or a math teacher to teach geometry as part of framing a wall.

When asked about the growth, CCTC Superintendent Adam Pittis said, “people have caught on that career tech education has something to offer students on any career path. We still have students who go to work in the trades, but we also have students who are seeing success in college.” Rihannon Carter completed the Graphic Design program in 2019 and is wrapping up a double major with honors in Graphic Design and Music at the University of Notre Dame. Skylar Hayes earned his Practical Nursing license in 2022 and is moving on to study pre-med at Marshall University this fall.

Success in college isn’t the only benefit of career technical education; statistically, these students earn more money faster. According to data from the United States Department of Education, students who participated in career technical education saw higher wages in eight years than those who did not attend CTE courses.