Texas City ISD's fire academy important and innovative

The Daily News
By TRISTIN SAPSKY
October 9, 2023

The art of combating fires is complicated. Being a firefighter requires physical strength to use the equipment properly and to carry people to safety.

The job also requires mental strength, because firefighters must keep a level head while working in intense, life-threatening situations.

The difficulty of the job and the commitment required to do it right might account for the troubling fact that fewer people are willing to step up and serve as firefighters.

Over the past several years, news organizations across the country have reported that fire departments, like other employers, are struggling to fill their ranks with new hires who’ll one day replace those now leading the vital community organizations.

Volunteer fire departments, which provide fire and EMS services to about 80 percent of U.S. communities, have had an especially hard time attracting qualified people, National Public Radio, The Texas Tribune and many others recently reported.

This all comes at a time when fires are becoming more frequent and burning faster and hotter because of things such as climate change and modern materials, Fortune magazine reported in January.

And all of that makes it hard to overestimate just how important and innovative a new Texas City ISD program is.

Texas City High School is part of a new vocational program that gives high school students a leg up on careers as firefighters or emergency medical technicians, who also are getting harder to recruit and retain, according to reports.

The four-year program is an option starting when students are in ninth grade, Texas City Fire Chief David Zacherl said.

The school district program works closely with the Texas City Fire Department, said Carling Caldwell, the district’s career and technical education coordinator. The coursework is in a progression that takes all four high school years.

A firefighter’s main task is to protect the lives of people and animals and minimize damage from fire to buildings and the countryside. But that’s not all they are capable of. They also are trained in emergency incidents including floods, traffic collisions, bomb alerts, rail and air crashes and chemical spills. And almost 38 percent of the emergency medical care first provided by responders come from firefighters cross-trained as medics.

Civilization might be able to get along without some job types, but firefighter isn’t among those; firefighters are vital.

The Texas City program is designed to take students with an interest in working as firefighters or EMTs all the way to basic certification over four years of training, officials said.

“In the ninth-grade year, they get Introduction to Fire Service,” Zacherl said. “In their 10th-grade year, they will get some medical terminology and other things related to being an emergency medical technician.

“In their junior year, they go through a Firefighter I course and then in their senior year they go through Firefighter II and EMT-Basic. The goal is that they will graduate with a certificate in fire and a certificate in EMT-Basic and be employable when they are 18.”

There are 13 students in the program from both Texas City and La Marque high schools. Zacherl would like to see the program expand.

“We’re hoping to get some other school districts involved with it,” Zacherl said.

We should all be hoping for expansion of the program because we all depend on having skilled firefighters and EMTs just a phone call and a few minutes away.

So, let’s support firefighter education and help our future firefighters have the best chance to succeed.