TUSD Step Up Expo shows students and parents their schools and programs

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Walking into TUSD’s Step Up Expo, many were met with booth after booth offering information on their different schools, programs, and extra curricular activities.

Students like Felista Nabintu, a tenth grade student at Tucson High Magnet School, represented her school by offering information to potential students and parents.

“It’s so much students that you feel like you spend more time with different people,” Nabintu said about her school.

The school district has over 41 thousand students, and some of them are in the career and technical education programs.

Esmeralda Almazan is a junior at Pueblo High School who was at the expo representing their biotechnology program, filling up tubes with a liquid that exemplified their many labs.

“Helps you with instruments in the lab, and lab terms, lab experience, and all those things that most biology classes don’t offer,” Almazan said.

Some CTE programs like the engineering program at Saguaro High School also offer clubs that are related to the subject matter.

Benita Luhando is a senior at the school and wants to be a medical doctor or biomedical engineer. She said the robotics club is helping her towards her goal of going to college in Arizona.

“I have like engineering class, and I have a computer science class, so like doing robotics help me integrate both of them and I get a lot of skills from that” Luhando said.

TUSD said their CTE programs and innovation and tech programs are expanding to more schools next year.

Kendra Linch is a teacher for the healthcare program at Pueblo High School. Helping students at the expo learn how to perform CPR, she said the program is an opportunity for students to get ahead with training they would have had to do after high school.

“If maybe college isn’t for you…that there are other avenues, and we teach you how to go out into the world with a vocational skill,” Linch said about what the CTE programs offer.

However, the expo was also an opportunity for parents lie Brian Crosby, who has students at Safford K-8 School, to explore what is in store for his kids’ futures.

“TUSD is kind of…it gives you that feel like you want to be a part of it, rather than you have to be a part of it,” Crosby said.